How did they do it?

[Jake Johnson]

This particular video effect has been such a mystery to me.



Similar to the “Invisible Skateboards” segment done in 2003’s Yeah Right by girl Skateboards.

They use completely green objects, but how are they keying these things out to be content aware like a clone stamp in after effects / photoshop? Or are they going frame by frame and hand stamping these things out?

Really cool technique, I couldn’t see many use cases for it but it would be a life changing to know since I’ve been baffled by this since I was 13 in 2003. :blink:

 

[Samir Patel]

Could it be the pucks are just CGI?

 

[Bob Gundu]

The action is so fast, that painting it out frame at a time is easy. The background is so simple and white that painting out makes it even easier. The sticks have a lot of motion blur that its makes no sense to do it any other way other than paint. I bet the sticks were painted white too.

 

[Jake Johnson]

I remember seeing the behind the scenes on NHL or Bauer’s Instagram and they did have green sticks, now that you said white as well I think they actually did. I’m digging through their posts to try and find some behind the scenes images to post.

Here’s the skateboard reference. I have the DVD of this from back in the day and they had completely green boards.

https://youtu.be/654lUYIhYk0

That’s interesting thought about the CGI pucks. It does look like it could be a mixture of both.

 

[Phil Holland]

There are several techniques to achieve this effect.

Green screen props are one method, time consuming roto another. Object removal via frame examination or even motion detection is another. Interestingly I know of two studios who utilize AI to do some fairly advanced removal.

For locked off stills you can stack images and remove moving objects via the Median Average.

 

[Alan Greene]

These are definitely just CGI pucks. The player's hands aren't always lined up perfectly to indicate that they were holding sticks, especially during the last shot. I'm no hockey expert, but there's also the matter of there being no marks on the ice or particles being kicked up from slapping the pucks. But the effect works, and it's remarkable how suggestible we are when just the right visual cues are in place.

 

[Matthew Macomber]

I recently shot a Bauer commercial and have some BTS info on this one. The pucks were painted in after the fact. Sticks weren't painted OUT - players never had em.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Strange that they did not have sticks and pucks in there. Its rather easy to paint out the sticks. No green needed really, also the ice is a perfect floor for this excercise as it lit softly from above and the ice works like the best softbox bouncer there is hardly any shadows to talk about.

Flame and nuke both have very elaborate soft body trackers these days with thier new motion vector implementations so even add in missing/hidden gloves and shirts is rater easy, especially for these clips wich is rather short in duration.

Then ofcource the puck needs to be animated back in where its hidden behind the sticks blades but also that is fairly easy as the puck is probably one of the easiest 3d shapes you can make. And its only needed for the bits when the blades covers and in between there is good reference for lighting etc from the real puck. Also a ice hockey arena has a very constant / even light setup. One light probe in the middle of the ice and you got it.

THE girl skatbording with no skateboard sequence was a bit more demanding. Hard shadows from outdoor california sunshine. And a more shifting floor / background. And also the feet of the skaters that has direct contact with the boards pretty much all the way trough. There they used tripod tracking and tracked in cleanplates. Then lots of roto to get the feet out and recreate the shadows. If looking closer its actually not so well done but holds up fairly well on a compressed youtube stream or standard def dvd. But not really for todays standards.

If bidding for the post for the hockey sequence above with sticks I would say about 3 days and cost about 5k usd to get it done nicely. No real AI is used for this stuff more tha 3d tracking and generated motion vectors. But also that only give a base, the rest is simply roto and animaton.

Curent rate to get the sticks out in Mumbay is about 3usd a frame. If you pay 6usd then the result will be exelent and done over night for the whole spot. Then there would be a more elaborate process to animate the pucks and render them nicly. A good animator could do it farly well without a 3d track of the camera but a 3d track would improve. But its a bit of choosing path if spending the time to add tracking dots track them and remove them or just bite the bullet and go without and just animate.