Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

A note on the future... To Jim and Red Team

May Red always start a new REVOLUTION!!!:red_bandana:
 
If you use flame or Maya Live for keying and matchmoving then I suggest you give Houdini a try.
Works wonders for me.
 
Wouldn't shooting with two matching RED's for 3D and some image comparison software be able to compute a parallax related z-channel for any subject matter?

I say this bearing in mind that the "big-shots" over in Hollywoodland are now stating that the future of cinema is 3D - so they're going to be shooting with 3D camera set-ups meaning that they're gonna be halfway there to a parallax z-channel.

Any thoughts?

JohnF
 
I think it's great to imagine new tech, and keep pushing for better methods of solving the same old problems.

Having said that, I'm pretty darned happy with how well green screen and blue screen matting work today. Maybe I'm biased, because I used to do this optically... and brothers and sisters, THAT WAS HARD. This digital stuff is easy and good and only getting better.

To get some idea of what photochemical matting was like, imagine twiddling a slider in your Ultimatte or KeyLight plugin and having a dialog pop up that says, "Check back in 24 hours for the results of your tweak".
 
Jim Arthurs said:
To get some idea of what photochemical matting was like, imagine twiddling a slider in your Ultimatte or KeyLight plugin and having a dialog pop up that says, "Check back in 24 hours for the results of your tweak".
Click to expand...

:sick::cold:
 
phebron said:
I do not agree with im.thatoneguy's statement that chroma/luma will not be supplanted. In fact, they are already loosing ground to another image based method - automatic tracking for mattes, or a little further down the line, depth mattes from tracking software. just today i saw pftrack's automatic depth feature - it was impressive.
Click to expand...

I never suggested that chroma keying would necessarily be the future. In fact my full sentence was "I can't see chroma/luma and image based keying methods being supplanted by anything in the next decade."

The potential for chroma to loose ground was there from the beginning. How many articles have you seen in which an actor discusses how much they dislike greenscreen environments? Wouldn't you say that even in Revenge of the Sith, there were some pretty lame looking keys? And so it will go in the direction of matchmoving and tracking. This means more realistic lighting, edges, etc. But as the medium progresses and realism is an increasingly rigorous demand, we may find a glass ceiling above out heads unless we begin to take in more data on location than the mere R, G and B.
Click to expand...

It's a pitfall however to say "because we don't like it will go away." I hate keying I only see it as a means to an end and if there was some magic technology which automated keying and banished matte extraction to the tomes of history along with things like blimped cameras I would do a little dance that would probably last a full hour. But wanting something to happen and it being feasible are two very different things. I want to be able to travel to mars... but.. well we'll see.

We're not limited to b&w, nor to 3 strip color and soon, there should be no reason why we would be limited to just visible color. Or single parallax. Hell, if nothing else (if all this laser, uv, ir business is too complicated) we need a passive stereographic lens - one just good enough to get another physical parallax on the image we're gonna track in software.

Patrick
Click to expand...

Ok now tracking, that's a whole 'nother bag of worms. I can definitely see an automated 3D Scanning/ camera rig accomplish great things in the land of matchmoving. But those scans won't be pixel accurate and that's where keying comes in.
 
cailyoung said:
3D Motion tracking seems to be doing a pretty good job of autorotoscoping foreground elements these days as well; Z-channel may become redundant if the trackers get accurate enough!
Click to expand...

Check out Voodoo Camera Tracker. Works excellent for me. I think its one of the best "Z-channel" tracking device in post there is. Fast and easy to use. Its not perfect but will do the job in most scenes. And its free...

http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html
 
If the focus assist, that Graeme has created, was accurate enough to work out the edge of an object in focus couldn't a matte be created in camera of the in focus areas only by using the sharpest pixels? Some fx shots you'd have to use a fairly long focal length in order to pick out the sharpest points of course.
 
phebron's suggestions to include depth, rotation, tracking points and alpha channels in addition to the 3 color channels directly in REDCINE suggests a flexible structure for REDCODE itself,

there might be use for this right away, without having to export to a new codec, and it would prepare for more complex RED incarnations later on

if infrared was included on the sensor matrix
you could build a lighting setup that would utilize a very bright infrared light that only hits the object that needs to be rotoscoped. Or it could be used the other way around, you could completely overlight a background in a room with infrared light and keep the actor in shadow.

instead of blue or greenscreen, you have REDSCREEN
 
Historically, attempts at infrared matting (or any energy at other than visible wavelights, like UV) have produced mattes that don't quite fit requiring tricky enlarging or shrinking... in addition, passing through glass, smoke, etc. can be problematic as mentioned before in this thread...

Most of these techniques simply can't be brought up to the quality level we currently have with green and blue backing. And that acceptable quality level with blue and green is a moving target, as we constantly improve our tools both in the post and production side of things...
 
Hmmm I did just think of an interesting use for IR illumination.

If you could keep all other sources of IR under control, it could be used for controlling existing lighting.

Imagine something similar to using a Red, Green and Blue light cg lighting pass for Key, Fill and Rim. Or whatever lights you happen to have.
 
Interesting... But other light sources would probably have to be fluorescent or LED. Tungsten and HMI produce lots of IR and tend to produce more as they heat up.
 
JohnF said:
Wouldn't shooting with two matching RED's for 3D and some image comparison software be able to compute a parallax related z-channel for any subject matter?

I say this bearing in mind that the "big-shots" over in Hollywoodland are now stating that the future of cinema is 3D - so they're going to be shooting with 3D camera set-ups meaning that they're gonna be halfway there to a parallax z-channel.

Any thoughts?

JohnF
Click to expand...

Of course it would, but I think we are really close to that 3D future you mentioned, so it might not worth it -it would be better to focus the research efforts on 3D.
 
I have found a nice tool for keying, go to www.reflecmedia.com
It works like a dream and working with it and FCP is a breeze ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top