Another little play around with the Chroma Keyer in Sony Vegas.

The main conclusion being that’s it a LOT of work to try and merge IL2 footage with real footage, and even then it still looks very obviously fake.

The real video is just shot with a cheap digi camera, so that didn’t help. Getting consistent lighting is a nightmare. Putting a Catalina on the water is very fake mainly because there are no reflections or shadows - that would double the effort, unless anyone knows a good trick?

I used three different types of background to Chroma key. A clear sky works good for shots looking up. Flat water on low landscape settings is footery and not ideal. There was one other method that produced the best results - PM me if you need more info.

Catalina Return to the Clyde (blip.tv)

Calalina Rturn to the Clyde (download better quality version)

All comments welcome.

quote:

Originally posted by Joe-90:
Putting a Catalina on the water is very fake mainly because there are no reflections or shadows - that would double the effort, unless anyone knows a good trick?

Hey Joe- I actually know of a way using After Effects- not sure if Vegas can do it, but here goes: take footage of Catalina, flip 180 degrees. Put inverted layer BEHIND layer of Catalina. Apply a blending mode to the inverted layer. Tweak colour as needed- done.

Sorry to say I will wait until later to watch your video but I can't from work.

I had similar dilimma when trying to create moving shadow for character and similar technique used.

Best of luck Joe. This year has been a fantastic year to a graphics contractor, so I've had precious little time to work on vid projects let alone fly (or sub) virtually.

Cheers

Triad

Like you said Joe its a little rough round the edges but i still think its a great starter for 10, nice work

I think its the best IL2 movie I've ever seen. Ever in the whole www. hehehe.

Rough but a 1st class diamond!

lol, aye.

I was just excited about the tools that we have now to do these kind of things.

I'm sure somebody will put them to good use in a movie competition one of these days

Hey Joe

Looking very promising:

To prevent a partly transparent aircraft try this: Make 2 chroma keyed aircraft layers; place a mask underneath and then your new background layer.(4 layers in total)

Make your mask by separately render a chroma keyed aircraft on a solid white background(media generator)
Use the mask generator plug-in on your rendered mask to get the correct black/white contrast. Change the mask track type to multiply, play radically around with the settings until it looks ok.

The trick of chroma keying it seems is that your color background screen should not be the same as any of the dominant colors of your aircraft.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: biltongbru,

Good idea, but a whole lot more work, lol! I guess you will know how much effort from getting those Stuka pilots right!

The ideal tool that moviemakers need is a green screen background, then you don't need to bother with that extra masking layer.