Thread: chroma key...possibilities???

Hi everyone i am a newcomer to the forum. I have recently started to get into putting together videos and captions etc, it is all for fun but i want to get deeper into the effects side.
I have done some basic work using chroma key, and i am very curious about the possibilites.
Also...i would love to know how you add animation to a existing video?, moving animation that can be pasted over existing movement.
What has pricked my curiosity is the star wars kid parody, how did they add the light sabres? and how did they chroma key him onto other backgrounds with no green or blue screen???. Is it possible to chroma key a video scene moderately successfully without the green or blue background??? obvously if a scene had a consistant background and the colour was not on what you want to lift from it their should be a possibility of pulling this off??

I would love to tap into the knowledge of people on this forum, and would be grateful if you could point me in the right direction to starting this thread if i am not already in the right place? i know a lot of you will be very on the ball regarding this subject, so i would appreciate terminology laying out in laymans terms...just until i get into it more haha.

Many thanks

It's all about masking. Chroma keying is merely a convenient way of keying out the background. Alternatively, and like the Star Wars kid video, someone would have had to rotoscope him out. This means they would literally have to draw a mask around him on every single frame. It can takes weeks.

If you are interested in this kind of thing I can recommend this book as an introduction

Amazon.co.uk: Compositing Visual Effects: Essentials for the Aspiring Artist: Steve Wright: Books

It goes through all the basic concepts you will need. It's not in any way a "how to do this in After Effects" type book or anything like that. Itr'#s a concepts book and that is what I think you are asking. i.e. how and why does thiss stuff work.

What s/w do you have available. you may already have some half decent keying s/w available to you. You neve know.

Hi and thanks for taking the time to reply. I have just bought Pinnacle Studio Ultimate 11, got a fairly decent system so it runs brilliantly.. dual core processor,3g memory 500gb storage and dedicated graphics etc, it does have chromakeying and picture on picture etc. just getting used to everything it is capable of doing.

For £40 its worth messing with and im enjoying tinkering with vids and pics etc, so any help or suggestions people have are most welcome

As for frame by frame actions i think ill pass for now, im not that advanced haha. Still would love to know how to animate a persons face onto another, i suppose carefull manipulation with chroma key will give a result???.

Many thanks

Originally Posted by NH39

Still would love to know how to animate a persons face onto another, i suppose carefull manipulation with chroma key will give a result???.

No. That's a process known as morphing. Google for the freebie WinMorph as an introductory program.

Light Sabre Tutorial: 2 of them on this page
VideoCopilot.net Video Tutorials & Post Production

Originally Posted by TimStannard

No. That's a process known as morphing. Google for the freebie WinMorph as an introductory program.

Sorry - I misread your post as "How to animate one persons face INTO another.
Ignore WinMorph for what you want.