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Post by Olos Nay on Sept 30, 2005 19:02:09 GMT -5
Here's what it looks like   Is that OK or do I need to modify it? Any hints from the pros are welcomed. |
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Post by Leda EmBorr on Sept 30, 2005 23:06:08 GMT -5
Wow... nice job! Battling your dark side, huh?  I'm not nearly a pro, but here are a few tips: First pic... feet are sometimes the hardest to blend into a screenshot... usually the angle is off, but in this case it fits. Put a thin shadow under your feet (all four!) to make them look "grounded". Plant yourself. The green saber looks slightly bent coming out of the hilt... sometimes this happens even if it's perfectly straight, optical illusion and saber shape can throw it off. I like to start my blade from the opposite tip of the hilt and follow straight through, then erase up to the emitter (and fill in the hole with black if you're using the screening method). Also push contrast just a bit to get more of a white inner glow. Second pic... foreshortening of the blade is excellent. I happen to like that look. You might want to soften the edges of your robes just a bit with a blur tool and color them to get rid of the blue reflections from your original background. Does that help? 
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Post by Olos Nay on Oct 1, 2005 2:29:37 GMT -5
Thanks Leda. That helps a lot. Its really appreciated. note: I was only referring to rotoscoping. The rest was butchered only to try rotoscoping, of course it won't look good. Thanks for the tips... you're right, my "good side" feet aren't looking OK, even if I enable the shadow (well, put the layer with the shadow) Funny - we took a picture, another costumer said "take the other side, so we see the light the other way". When I tryed photoshop, I realised I can place them like they're fighting. I can also change colors of the costume and whatnot. Kinda cool. Anyway, thanks for the hints on the blades.... I did mine simply by putting white (for rotoscoping) where the polycarbonate blade is located.... I might want to look at how it goes in the future and maybe alter it. Now that you talk about it, I fully agree the core isn't good on the top photo. My biggest problem is, as you said, to remove the blue reflection from the blue screen used during the shoot. if you have any hints, it would be appreciated. Here's another image I tried to make look real...  how about that one.? |
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Post by lazlototh on Oct 1, 2005 22:10:32 GMT -5
That pic looks great! Where did you get the background? It looks awesome!
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Post by Olos Nay on Oct 1, 2005 23:28:45 GMT -5
thanks for the comments on the picture. :-) I found it after hours of internet searching for matmata (city) and tunisia (country) - the location where EP 4 was mainly filmed... its a tourist picture, but its too small and I had to reduce myself. See that I still am too big for the doorways and stairs :-( Putting myself on it was fun. yet I still need ways of removing the bluescreen reflexions...  |
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Post by Leda EmBorr on Oct 5, 2005 1:46:28 GMT -5
That one looks really good! The shadow really makes it look like you're there! So much that the size difference really isn't apparent at first glance.
To get rid of the color on the edges I suggest you do the following steps. I'm sorry if this sounds elementary, I'm not sure where you are with photoshop. (not sure where I am, for that matter!)
1. Assuming that you are still on a seperate layer, select the empty space around yourself with the magic wand tool.
2. go to 'Select' in the top toolbar and click on "select inverse" from the dropdown menu. You should now be selected.
3. Sample the color of the area you are trying to match.
4. choose the brush size you need, and change the mode from normal to color. I'd adjust the opacity and flow to 50% to start.
5. color over the unwanted hues around the edges. Remember, you're selected, so the color will stay inside the line. You might need to sample different areas of color due to light and shadow in the robe, etc.
That's how I do it, but there might be some kind of auto adjust that I'm not aware of that does the same thing.
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Post by jedidad on Oct 5, 2005 15:38:08 GMT -5
;D ;D ;D ;D ;D Your pics look excellent. I really like the one image from Matmata, Tunisia. Got me started looking at them now. Found quite a few to choose from. Since I'm here I thought I'de share a small one of mine to. Once again fantastic job. 8-)Jedidad  P.S. sig bar has 2 also, forgot about them.  "MTFBWY".....A  |
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Post by Primrodo on Oct 5, 2005 16:39:51 GMT -5
Leda, you can also use selecive colour and get rid of any occurance of blues |
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Post by Olos Nay on Oct 5, 2005 18:14:26 GMT -5
Hai Jedidad! I like to see others rotoscoping too... I think I'll change the topic to "display your rotoscoping"... :-) that way we'll all be able to show off and learn from the others. How did you cut yourself from the original pictures? (I guess the little lady in your signature is your daughter?) I myself was using a plastic bluescreen from a friend, on a sunny outside. The effect is OK, but the blue reflected brightly on the costume, making it harder to cut. Leda: Thanks for the tip. I myself got the best results I could by doing something a little similar. I always uses different layers for 1- background; 2- shadow; 3- character and 4-blade. (repeat 2,3,4 for every character, it can make a ton of layers). Now the character layer, I change the blending options, adding a stroke (inside, soft light) with a selected color. I guess your technique makes a good effect because you select the proper color for every regions... It seams no matter how long you try to use photoshop, there will always be stuff you can't perform. I changed the rotoscoping of the 2 blades, put back the missing shadow, and changed the fabric color of one of myselves...  yet there is something missing on the foot area... I guess I'll have to work that around. Primrodo: thanks for the tips, but I suck with the selective colors, and achieve it better with the replace color tool. |
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Post by Leda EmBorr on Oct 6, 2005 1:17:15 GMT -5
Leda, you can also use selecive colour and get rid of any occurance of blues I knew there had to be another way... I'll have to experiment with that. I laugh because a couple of years ago I spent hours and hours cutting, pasting and painting Darth Maul out of a scene in order to insert someone else and then my son came in, stood over my shoulder and said, "Mom, why don't you just use the clone stamp tool?"  I didn't know what it was...  Olos, now thats a good one... Those blades look awesome! Maybe try shoving the feet down into the sand... like think what happens when you step in sand, it gets displaced and some of your boot would appear to be below the surface, like sunken down a bit. -------------------------- The Maul pic would be this one. Maul was taller than this kid so I had to remove him. It's one of my youngest son's friends. You can see I didn't know how to do the coloring thing yet because the green reflections from the grass are still on his shoes! I just did this one the other day for one of our message board members... It was an easy one... no feet! lol! Once I took some pics with a green tablecloth hung up behind me, but I found that I had to cut myself out with the polygon lasso anyway to touch up what the magic wand left behind, so the green just made more work, I had to remove all the green tones and reflections from myself... especially my lightsaber hilt! I gather that chroma-keying is mainly used for video because of the need to do multiple frames quickly. Now here's a neat link I just found while looking up how to spell chroma key (is it one word, or two?)! It talks about lighting for bluescreen to avoid the "blue spill". Interesting... www.seanet.com/Users/bradford/bluscrn.html |
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Post by jedidad on Oct 6, 2005 7:35:40 GMT -5
;D ;D
Actually the photos of myself and daughter were just taken in our living room. But it would be easier on a solid backround. I prefer white, as my costume uses no white. I use Adobe Photoshop 7 for the photo. I use the magic wand tool and clear all the backround I do not want then use the erase tool for all the edges. It takes a while but the effects aren't to bad. Blending is always a pain but I'm still learning from a graphic artist on how to make the photo's better. My lightsaber can be made in Photoshop but I find it easier to do it in Adobe Photo.
Later,
Jedidad
"MTFBWY".....A
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Post by lazlototh on Oct 6, 2005 19:29:49 GMT -5
Here's a fun one I did:  Jauhzmynn is in Atlanta at Dragon*Con (taken by Leda), I'm in Burbank at makeup artist Mike McGees and the background is Tunisia... The blending of three images is a pain especially with three types of sunlight to deal with. I threw a grain on it too to help blend it all together. Then I did the saber blades. Mynn particularly likes teal so I did hers in teal and mine in blue... Finally I had to make sure we're scales in to the background and each other. We're both pretty short but I have an inch or two on her... |
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Post by Xorren Hedrasii on Oct 6, 2005 19:48:24 GMT -5
Enz and Toth, Double Trouble! LOL! Kinda remindes me of Ms. Peal & Mr. Steed from the classic show "The Avengers"
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Post by lazlototh on Oct 6, 2005 20:12:00 GMT -5
I love that show! And oh man did I just get old... Anybody got a walker I can lean on?
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Post by Jauhzmynn Enz on Oct 6, 2005 20:12:33 GMT -5
What's "The Avengers"? I hadn't heard of it before.
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I didn't know what it was... 
