After Effects vs Chroma Sabers blades?

Since everyone is getting all jazzed about this light saber comp I had a question that I'm sure is old. Which is great for me. The debates should be more of less over and the real answers should be a foot!

I just finished a project where I used solely After Effects. It looks great but there's always the old TIME problem. Had like...10 mins of sword play in the whole thing, from being turned on to the fight. We intended to try and chroma the blades out but never got that far and were, in a sense, forced into using only after effects.

SO! Here's the Q:

What's not only faster but better: Trying to key out the blades or matting them all?

THANKS!

Asked and answered.

 

Discussed, discussed, and discussed again.

Under the right lighting / with a suitably luminescent prop, you can get away with a chroma blade, if your saber is relatively still. As soon as you start waving it about, it becomes nigh on impossible to key. So, for moody close-ups without much stick bashing you could probably save yourself a bit of time using some keying / colour extraction technique, but for fighting, roto is the original and best solution.

 

Look at me responding to my own post.

I read over Dorkman's thread and all looks good. As I mentioned, I used AE to do my movie. Perhaps I missed a response, but is there a good keying method?

 

double post

 

Thanks. I figured as much. I had a really crappy time matting in my low light situations just with AE and lighting is everything when you're keying.

 

The only advantage with keying a lightsaber, is when it's dark, and it's almost not moving. And even then, you'll need a lit blade, like forceFX or LED. When sabers are close to not moving, the rotoscoping can be spotted easier, so in that case, I guess it'll be allright, but for most of the time, rotoscope. You've got much more control that way.

As for what program you use, it doesn't matter. AE is a powerful compositing application, just like Apple Shake. if you can utilize it, it doesn't really matter.