Blue Screen Compositing
using video of a running man rendered in Poser with blue background,
and combining it with another animated background made in PD Pro
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part 1 -
part 2 - part 3 -
part 4
Part 2: Computer stuff happening... (saving and loading image sequences) |
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| Getting Started:
Saving your own background animation |
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If you make your own
animation in PD Pro, here's how you can save it to a BMP image
sequence. That is the format which we'll need for the bluescreen
compositing filter later on. < click to enlarge |
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From the Animation menu,
select Animation
> Save sequence...
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In the save dialog, be
sure to select the Bmp (Windows Bitmap) format. The BMP format is
needed by the compositing tool we're going to use. It is recommended that you make a designated folder just for this image sequence. Call it something like bg (background). As for the filenames, you only need to enter the base name of the file. Project Dogwaffle will append a number sequence to the files. |
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After you've saved the
animation as an image sequence. For example, if the entered
basename was 'frame', then the files will be named like this: frame_0000.BMP frame_0001.BMP frame_0002.BMP etc... |
| Loading the
Blue-screen Clip (Rendered animation or recorded video) |
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Start by loading the clip
which contains the running man and blue background. In our example it's in the form of an image sequence. But it could also be an AVI file. Select menu: Animation > Load sequence... |
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Select the folder
containing the image sequence Set the 'Pattern' string to *.bmp so that it will be listing the BMP files found in this folder. Click-and-drag from the first to the last image in the sequence to select (highlight) the files. You can also use Control-click for selecting additions and Shift-click to add a range of files. Then click 'Load selected' |
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Note that if you have
currently another animation loaded and you didn't save it, you have
this last chance to cancel loading the new clip and save the current
one. |
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When you start loading the
running man with blue screen animation, you will see the progress bar
as each image is loaded. This can take a few seconds or even
minutes if it's a long animation or made of large frames, such as HD. Computer stuff
happening...
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Taking a quick look at
some of the frames, we notice that there's a bit of motion blur on some
of the fast moving parts. This is because when Poser was used to render
this clip, the 2D motion blur was enabled intentionally. |
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You can see that this
running man's clip was done in a hurry. The hand and part of the upper
arms dip into the chest. Oh well, it's no biggie, we'll still be able to use this for blue screening, of course. |
part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4