Transparency maps and shadow catchers
donato
Posts: 22
I use transparency maps and shadow catchers all the time doing hobby concert videos. But the videos are limited to *.avi and numbered jpgs. I used the movies so they can interact with Carrara features. Like adding shadows on walls and making spotlight look more real and adding audience members.
The one difficult part is the limited formats. I wonder if Daz is planning to add video formats that can interact with live video. I think the lack of video formats really holds back the program. I'm working on another small feature like the "Reluctant Wizard" only a Ghost Story and you have to be very creative about how you add effects because of the lack of video features. That must be a problem for others. Comments?
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Comments
That's a cool vid. Awesome job.
In terms of your question about formats... could you give an example... not sure I understand the question? I presume you're compositing your camcorder video over a Carrara rendered stage. What's the issue?
- Don
So you want to make a film that interacts with Carrara. You can make your background from your camera film or you can film on a green screen and use the person in the texture channel and create the transparency film by blocking out the green from the green screen and making the transparency film black and white so all you have left is the figure. With the figure, you get shadows and it looks cool with a spotlight.
But *.AVI format creates huge files if you do high rez. It can make Carrara crash. Especially moving forward and backward along the time line. And my editing software doesn't create number jpg's.
If you could use something like mpeg, which has a high resolution, big picture and smaller file size.
For old man river, I made a nice background film, Saved it to *.AVI, but it comes across as kind of dreary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzntgDBVKgc
But I loved the background video so much, I also made it into a film by itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjZGNIbDKFM
See how beautiful it looks? How clear, colorful and amazing.
Hope I explained it well.
Hi RIchard,
Some of the coolest hobbyist videos I've seen, honestly. Very impressive!
Sounds to me like your doing your compositing right in Carrara itself? Or your using a basic video editing program? If that's whats going on, I share your concerns because I started out that way myself. You are so ready to step up to a better editing software package, which will not only solve your output format issues but also provide matt chokes and other green-screen aides which will amaze you. Lot of folks like Adobe Premiere. I use Sony Vegas Pro and then there's the venerable Adobe After Effects. And there are others. All of those mentioned do green screen compositing and generate a wealth of output formats. Vegas also has native stereoscopic editing, which is why I use it.
Carrara and other 3D programs are best used as a "feed" into an editor program. All of the above work with numbered frames, rendered by Carrara or your favorite program. its amazing how much easier everything becomes in a good editor program. Cleaning green screen chroma keys, choking edge artifacts, sweetening colors in foreground and background.
Hope I'm not totally off the track here, haha. Great vids. Did you do the boat animations too?
- Don
I agree with Don, that the best method is post production. However, sometimes you just need a billboard or splat to integrate in your 3D scene for whatever reason. Are you sure you're limited to .jpg image sequences? I'm pretty sure Carrara can handle tiff, png, etc. I'm on a Mac, and the Quicktime integration is very good, with many CODECs available.
Unless... Are you using the 64 bit version of Carrara? Is the AVI codec a 64 bit CODEC or one of the more older 32 bit versions?
Apropos of nothing, but since this is an anonymous forum I'll confess that I was a state karaoke champion in Ut 3 years in a row and went to the nationals each of those years too, placed as high as 14th nationally, not that that means much. Haven't been out to sing in a while though...
Nice vids Don, I especially liked the sailing ship with the lanterns.
Yes, I modeled the boats and did the animations in Carrara. I like to do the transparency maps in Carrara because they add the shadows to the backgrounds and interact with the spotlight. Don't see how just compositing green screen adds shadow. For the closeups, I used the video editing and film the backgrounds separately. For instance, on Someone like you at 1:04, I'm sitting on a piece of wax paper and slowly rotating, then I added the background video later so it looks like the camera is rotating around me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31WxwUT59c4
I didn't know you could add different Codec to Carrara. The AVI codec I use is the same one that shows up on every codec since version 1. Do you know how to load different codec if it's possible?And I'm using the 64 bit version on a 6 core Windows 7 unit.
Yeah, I spotted some closeup camera pans in your other videos and wondered how you did them. Thanks for answering my question before I asked haha. Are you involved with video professionally? You seem to think about doing "in camera' like some production people I know, but I'd not seen that trick... never ceases to amaze me what's possible.
How did you do the water ripples? I presume there's a noise formula in bump channel... but how did you tweak that out?
- Don
PS. with green screen Chroma Key you'll end up with a white mat for yourself and black mask for everything else. Invert that and you've got the beginnings of a shadow you can "cast" and blur behind you, on the Carrara rendered stage layer.
If you have them installed, you should be able to access them by clicking the Options button, next to where you select the format.
Yeah, I spotted some closeup camera pans in your other videos and wondered how you did them. Thanks for answering my question before I asked haha. Are you involved with video professionally? You seem to think about doing "in camera' like some production people I know, but I'd not seen that trick... never ceases to amaze me what's possible.
How did you do the water ripples? I presume there's a noise formula in bump channel... but how did you tweak that out?
- Don
PS. with green screen Chroma Key you'll end up with a white mat for yourself and black mask for everything else. Invert that and you've got the beginnings of a shadow you can "cast" and blur behind you, on the Carrara rendered stage layer.
Hello Don,
for water ripples and waves, open your shader in the Texture room, and if you want them in the Bump channel, use the pull down menu to find waves and ripples. I think it is under Natural functions or something similar. To animate it, there is a completion slider. Set it to 0% at the start of the animation and 100% at the end.
In the attached are what's available. Can you add more codex?
Thanks
If you have them installed, you should be able to access them by clicking the Options button, next to where you select the format.
You know, the question is moot. I was just going through the upgrade of the video software I've been using to do my concert videos and they have added a "Image Sequence" feature.
It's Pinnacle Studio 18. I was going through the user guide and found it. I can't wait to get home to try it out.
But I would still like to know if you can add movie codex.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VodQ-gfIcRY
I would think, but I'm not sure how to do it Windows. Quicktime Pro came with a lot, and I have found some that convert AVI formats to play on a Mac with Quicktime. Those are usually part of a third party software that adds it to the CODECs.