Check out the sweet-ass greenscreen tech we’ll be using in the new studio.
The paperwork is complete. They estimate it will be finished by the end of this calendar year. I’m more skeptical, I think our full studio won’t be ready to shoot in until early next quarter.
Wow, that’s pretty damned awesome :-)
I wish I’d had something like that available for the stereo motion capture installation we did a few years ago for the LotR exhibition in Boston – we had some annoying setup issues with regard to studio lighting, making sure we weren’t getting shadows screwing with the background subtraction (keying) algorithms. That stuff would have made our job so much easier.
That looks way cool! But how do you prevent the blue or green light from hitting the objects or persons that are in the foreground? *confused*
What happens if you do need to light the subject? does that dilute the light needed for the green screen?
this stuff is fascinating to me.
See, what they are not clear about is that you still have to light the -person-, and that light will be your ordinary studio lights. They say that the material is made of “satellite-shaped reflective beads”, which tells me that it is essentially sending light directly back to the camera, rather than bouncing it around the room.
Lighting a person in such a way as to not get reflected light from the wall behind them is always an interesting challenge. I presume that this material makes that easier.
Wow!
I’m totally geeking out right now! You’ll have to tell me if it’s as fabulous as it seems!
That’s way cool!
Are you fully counting on the Key or are you also planning to throw up some mattes on the foreground and background?
Currently, or in the future with Amazing-Mega-Futuro-Technology? (the thing I embedded, I mean).
At present, I use After Effects for my keying (Ultra is kind of crappy for anything complex). With the Keylight effect, I generally do not need to do any interior keying – the light is even, the subject is distant from the background and is separately lit, and the keying program is good.
However, the other day our host walked in with a mint shirt. Or pistachio, as someone said. *headdesk*
It actually wasn’t that difficult to set up an interior key (or matte, if you prefer), but what the heck, guy?
All of this is much, much, much better than the gig I had one summer. I worked for a company that normally did inflatable obstacle courses, and they were branching out into doing green-screen music videos for senior HS all-night parties. So I’d drive a box truck out and set up every night under wildly different conditions with two electronic key/transition machines, a DVD deck for backgrounds, 6 VHS decks, audio boards, various monitors, costumes, et al.
Try getting a nice even key under auditorium lighting (we brought our own too, but still), with kids wearing sequins and green shirts, on a material that was, essentially, spraypainted True Green. Whee!
I made it work, though. Mostly.
Ah, when I said Matte in addition to the key I meant a garbage matte. Sorry to be unclear. Even with professionally lit chroma keys I ended up feeling like it was worthwhile. If they could really get it right That’d be awesome. But yes, I share your pain of poorly implemented green screen productions. (Leprechaun hair for all!)