How to bluescreen without a bluescreen

Was wondering if it is possible to use photoshop to blueout everything that one may want to delete then detail it?

Will it look cheesy even if one puts alot of detail into it?

Also can someone point me to the Tuttorial using After effects for lightsabers cause i can't seem to find it.

Thanks.

 

For your second question, click my sig.

 

If you do a very good job, then you shouldn't have any trouble. It will be painstaking as hell. Think of rotoscoping and take that to a whole new level of boredom

 

With your method there is no reason to add the blue. Luckily there are a lot easier ways of keying without a bluescreen, I was going to suggest going to http://hometown.aol.com/bkgstudios/pages/Tutorials.htm but it seems to be down at the moment, but difference keying is the way to go!

 

So it is possible without making ti look like a cheesy B-rated movie? (even though most of the films arne't exactly SW quality, but B-rated relative to fanfilms.)

Thanks for the tips, any more would be great.

 

well actually if you do it right, it will look better than normal chroma keying. It will look vastly superior to anything else on here. The problem is that it is a painfully long process if you do it that way.

 

there is just no way you would be able to do it better than keying... unless you really spent way much more time than needed on it.

You would end up with tons of shaking around the edges, because each frame would be so precise, you would make many different subtle changes in each shot that you wouldn't notice until you watched it all finished.

Wow, it seems like i've been shooting lots of filmstrip ideas down lately No, really guys, I love filmstrips, I really do!

Cya
Mike

 

Like i said if you spent the time and did it right it would be better than an average key (not if you spent your time doing that). I think the subtle differences in cutting out by hand using AE would be no worse than those differences in the edges you get from an average key.

 

no, in cutting in AE you get to see where you were in the previous frame, also, you are just making changes to the cut in the previous frame, the motion around the edges would be MUCH more smooth, beleive me, I did experiment with this in Photoshop. Not only did it take longer, but it didn't look half as good as a bad key in after effects.

Cya
Mike

 

Wix is right -- there's no way that you're going to get a consistent edge in Photoshop that will work the right way -- even if you worked at it for a long time. Using articulated mattes in AE is a faster, cleaner solution.

 

Bastion: I was just on that page you mentioned above. It worked for me and I took a look at the difference matte tutorial for after effects. Has anyone tried that method yet? I hope to find some time today when I´m home from work to make a few test shots and using this method.
I´m pretty sure there must be some kind of problem with this method. Why should everyone build huge bluescreens if they can just use this method... Hm... So, I better do not expect too much...

 

The problem with difference keying is that the two shots need to be identical, except for the subject you're trying to key. That makes things real difficult if you intend there to be any camera movement at all. Not to mention shadows. If you cast a shadow against the background that changes the difference between the shots as well, making keying difficult.

 

It is done in the industry, but teams of talented people work on the images at resolutions that we cannot reproduce. Each team member is only responcable for 30 frames or so and it takes them weeks.


It would be cool though. . .

 

I see what you mean. So... Let´s say I shooting a static scene (no camera movement) having an empty shot of a garage wall without any movement from trees or anything else in the background, just the wall and the floor. Now I let my actors act in front of this scene, not casting a shadow on the wall. That should at least work the way it did in that tutorial Bastion mentioned earlier.

But I´m only working with an analog camcorder and I´m afraid that there will be too much distortion, but anyway I´m going to try it and maybe post the result later on.

Anyway, if this would only work half way as expected I could really save me a lot work for my current movie, as I really have no clue where to get useable blue/greenscreen material to work with.

 

I composited 3 shots without using a blue screen that looked way better than any chroma I've seen. I was only 1 second long but it looked pretty realistic.

 

Interesting! Any chance you can post some before / after footage of those scenes here? I would be really interested in seeing them.