Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please
by Kevin Dearing
on
Apr 17, 2008 at 4:27:46 pm
Ok, first, this project is only self-assigned and does not have to be perfect (or even all that good). It's simply a project I want to
do which should be fun while learning AE (and the rest of the CS3 Production bundle) at the same time..
Plus, it's sort of in retaliation to a friend busting on another of my more nerdy (computer) friends.. (more like me that is! :) )
Ok, here's what I want to do and I would appreciate any advice offered..
I have some footage of my friend fighting (whatever it's called, the Judo fighting style – punching / kicking / wrestling). I want to
put him into the Hulk Hogan fight scene in place of Rocky in Rocky 3.
Like I said, this is not professional – no money is being made and the audience will be a total of about 4 people so I'm not worried
about copyright infringement – or should I be? If so, I'll do something else (or try to obtain permission.)
My plan of attack is as follows:
- Work on the footage of my friend fighting – add an alpha channel to it
- Work on the footage from Rocky – masking out Rocky by using various means – this, I suspect is the hard part, and where I'll need
the most guidance. I could rotoscope it all in Photoshop – but doing so would be quite a daunting task and I think there's a better way
to do this (hence this post for advice).
- When that's done, I should be able to combine the two with some clever editing – of course I'll have to adjust colors and
lighting to make it a bit more believable but...
So, as you can see, my main question lies in, "How do I key out Rocky the easiest way?" (keeping in mind that it doesn't have to be
terrific.)
I was sort of hoping that I might be able to find a few sections of video where Rocky is not in part of the picture so I can grab a
freeze frame and replace different sections as needed.. But I haven't even looked at the movie for several years and am not sure if
that's possible given the footage – or, if that's even a good way..
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Mike Clasby on Apr 17, 2008 at 5:18:50 pm
No expert here, but it seems like if you could make your buddy's movements match Rocky's exactly, movement for movement, and shot from the same angle, and it has a transparent background (keyed green-screen?) then you could simply place that layer on top, your friend literally on top of Rocky.
You might have to scale up your friend, so that he always a little bigger than Rocky, unless he is an exceptionally muscular nerdy computer friend.
Then you'd just have to mask off the shots with the POV from over his opponents shoulder (Hulk Hogan?), so that parts of the new Rocky are behind his opponent.
The hard part will be matching the camera's angle and new-Rockies movements to the original, but it should work, and then you won't have to roto out the original Rocky and fill in any missing background.
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Joey Burnham on Apr 17, 2008 at 5:47:13 pm
Good luck man.
Although in theory Mike's suggestion could work, it would be darn near impossible and a huge undertaking. As a last resort maybe.
I don't know if you already have footage of your friend fighting, but if you don't you should shoot him on a green screen, that takes care of his alpha. If he's already shot then you need to rotoscope him out of his environment. Same with Rocky. This is totally possible and should yield decent results, but be prepared for hours and hours and hours of tedious brain numbing work.
Search for "roto" on the cow. That should give you what you need. AE is better than photoshop for this.
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Kevin Dearing on Apr 17, 2008 at 8:58:02 pm
Thanks guys! I really appreciate it.
Unfortunately, yes, I already have footage of the friend fighting - the 'gig' of it is that he's not supposed to know about this until he see's it anyway. So I'm not really able to green-screen him with planned shots. Hopefully the footage I have will match enough for just a few seconds of the scene - enough for him to realize what it is - I can't do the whole fight scene.. That'd be crazy (well, crazier!)
AE's better than PS for roto huh? Ok (honestly I haven't really done anything like that in PS - just read about CS3's new features supporting video files).
I did some roto'ing in AE recently just playing around with yet another learning project (where I punch myself out {anyone see some sort of a theme here?} :) ) I must be missing something.. I was using the rubber stamp tool primarilly to paint out a little washer I had hinging from the ceiling on fishing wire so I knew where to 'punch' but found out (after doing quite a bit of painting) that I had to change the duration of each paint "stroke". I mean, it was great when the washer was stationary - or even mostly stationary but when it was moving was annoying. Plus I had what seemed like hundreds of strokes saved. Is there a better way? I will take your advice and look it up on this forum..
So it seems like I'll have to roto Rocky.. I'm not too worried about adding the alpha channel to my friend fighting - the mask I did on myself was fairly easy and even quick to do...
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Joey Foreman on Apr 17, 2008 at 9:25:47 pm
I'll be surprised if you don't give up on this project. Rotoscoping people - especially people that are moving around a lot - is INCREDIBLY difficult. Rotoscoping is a skill that takes years of experience to perfect. You need to know how how to use multiple masks per character, you have to master the use of bezier handles and b-splines, and you had better be willing to put in at the very least a couple of hours of work per second of footage.
Sure you could have a go at it after learning the basics - as long as you don't mind the fact that it's going to look amazingly bad. The edges will pop and vibrate. The characters will keep gaining and losing body mass - especially in areas of darkness and poor contrast around the edges. Or they'll be surrounded be blurry, undulating edge that makes them look like they're enclosed in some sort of ectoplasm and not at all in the same environment as the background.
But if you don't mind a Really Cheesy result then go for it.
Not to be discouraging or anything. Yes, After Effects is great for rotoscoping - in the same way that a nuclear submarine is great for cruising around underwater.
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Kevin Dearing on Apr 18, 2008 at 1:21:55 am
Thanks Joey,
The good thing is that I've been using photoshop and illustrator for years and about 15 years ago I was rotoscoping on my Amiga!
But when I do things I do them big - and I'm so stuborn that I don't give up so I know I'll come up with something... But again, my real purpose in this thing is to get familiar with AE so when I have a real job I won't have any ramp up time.
Since my last post I read the manual a bit on AE's drawing / painting tools.. I see where I could have set it to do a single frame and I also see how I could've hit shift to continue the previous path. See, I'm learning already! :)
And no, I don't think you are discouraging - I'm used to my stupid but huge ideas! Just ask my wife (or neighbors - I once spent about two months collecting soda cans to stack between a friends storm door and his screen door! When the wind wouldn't let me get past the 6th row I came up with this bright idea of creating prefab'd stacks by stringing fishing wire through them - my neighbors saw me drilling holes through cans pretty much all day one Saturday. Anyway, it worked out.) I'm just a big, stuborn kid!
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Kevin Dearing on Apr 18, 2008 at 1:32:10 am
Haha.. It's supposed to be sort of a joke.. He Photoshoped a picture of Hasslehof in K.I.T.T. and put my geeky friend's face on it and said it was him in High School.. So this is the retaliation!
I'm sure that you are right - no matter how long it is, it'll still be too long! But as I said to Joey, I'm extreemly stuborn!
I'll post the results when I'm done (if this board is still around by then! lol)
Here's kind of my plan of attack - can anyone tell me if I'm just stupid instead of crazy? :)
I thought that I'd try to find a segment where the camera doesn't move too much.. I'd take pieces of the background from different frames and assemble a background devoid of Rocky (and Hulk Hogan). Then I might be able to use a matte to key out Rocky. I do expect it to not be very good - and yes, even cheesy but I have faith and think that this can be done so it's not too bad.
So, I take it I shouldn't worry about the copyright infringements - again, I don't really plan on showing this to anyone other than my friends and I'm certainly not making any money on it..
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Brian Berneker on Apr 18, 2008 at 2:59:02 am
Are you sure you're not making a youtube video for Hillary!!?? :)
...ANYWAYS...
Another technique that might dispense with some of the roto work would be to only mask-IN Hogan (Was it really Hulk Hogan? I keep thinking Dolph Lundgren?). Then you don't have to worry about re-creating background and the ropes etc for each frame (a la "hidden Rocky removal").
You would instead re-create the background entirely using AE tools and move the actors how you like. Having masked Hogan, you wouldn't need to roto Rocky at all. (Think of it as a "negative space" approach)
It wouldn't be too much to make a box with four sides of a ring in AE using 3D objects, and just create the ropes in a transparent PSD file. Import the PSD, make it a 3D object and rotate it 90 degrees. Make a copy and repeat 3 times. Create a Camera...
As for the far background, you can grab some audience stills and patch together a nice wide pano to wrap around the whole scene in a cylinder and put some box blur on it to disguise any flaws. The pano could be created in a nested comp with some blinking lights etc. to keep it from looking too static, or possibly even with looped moving footage depending on the crowd shot you have to work with.
I'm not 100% sure that would be less work, but it would give you tons more flexibility in re-creating the scene, and adding in extra punches etc at your whim, re-creating the whole scene! It's probably more work than necessary, but it's more fun than all that blind roto work with likely mundane results...
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Kevin Dearing on Apr 18, 2008 at 4:53:51 am
I love it! I'll play around with the idea - either way, I think your suggestion would help me to learn AE much more which is a major reason for this silly project in the first place!
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Brian Berneker on Apr 18, 2008 at 7:00:53 am
Thanks Kev...
You can take a look at this tutorial to see a more advanced method to create a virtual set. In this example they only had a few green screen shots to work with and the rest was artificial!
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Jeremy Allen on Apr 18, 2008 at 6:39:20 pm
Nice suggestion Brian... Good way to think creatively and see the solution from the other side of the fence. I think part of the art of doing all this stuff is figuring out the best way to work with what you have, and that seems like a great solution.
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Brian Berneker on Apr 18, 2008 at 8:46:01 pm
Thanks Jeremy!
There is never just one way to do a creative project, otherwise they wouldn't be creative would they? One of my favorite parts of watching tutorials isn't so much learning the technique, but getting a feel for each teacher's thinking style.
For example, Andrew Kramer takes a fairly laid back approach, working with extra layers and comps as necessary without worrying about it too much... gets explorative and experimental, tying in the loose ends later. Watching his tutes are like going along for an adventure.
Maltaanon, on the other hand, while he is equally fun and adventurous, seems to be challenge oriented and looks for interesting ways to tighten and optimize techniques for doing things, making the project file itself very tight and compact, elegant in its own way. He also seems to be a bit more of an expression junkie and that's really cool too...
I guess personally I have similarity to both of these guys, but I'd say my signature is in finding a way to invert the problem and somehow isolate it to the simplest elements. I don't always succeed to that end, but it's part of the way I like to think of each project... and have fun too of course...
Best of luck to Kevin in finding his own personal style and techniques, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the final clip looks like!
Re: Big / Difficult project for a newbie - advice please by Kevin Dearing on Apr 19, 2008 at 8:31:48 pm
That's awesome Brian! Thanks for pointing me to it..
I think I can actually make this thing happen. Just bought the DVD today so I'll be able to rip it later tonight and at least check out the footage from the scene that I don't really remember!
