A funny (I hope) short video with a pesky critter.

[stephen]

Here is an example of a live character interacting with an animated character.
As always, its not very polished.

I did this with just Anime Studio, Gimp and iMovie HD.

Anime Studio did the video compositing.

Can you guess what trick I pulled to get the crab to crawl from behind the chair, but in front of the wall?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMi_YbQGkwk

[sbtamu]

You taped w/o chair on the right then added chair on right and taped it and used gimp to get alpha channel on right chair and saved as PNG and used atleaat 2 layes in AS, One of you and no right chair, one of the chair, and one for the critter?

Right chair be top layer, critter be 2nd layer, and you in bottom layer, well you and the ctitter could be in same layer so maybe you did in 2 layers.

Am I close?

[stephen]

you taped w/o chair on the right then added chair on right and taped it and used gimp to get alpha channel on the chair on the right and saved as PNG and used atleaat 3 layes in AS, One of u and no right chair and one of the chair and one for the critter?

right chair be top layer. critter be 2nd layer and u in bottom layer

Am i close?

Close but the same idea. Simple but effective.

I actually taped with both chairs there, loaded the movie into AS, and rendered and exported the first frame as a png file. I did it that way to be sure the lighting/color balance and compression artifacts were consistent for the right-chair. Then as you said, in Gimp, I cut the surround of the right-chair out, and loaded that back in to AS as the top layer.

When I taped it, I made sure I did not get near enough to the right chair to cause a problem. But if you look close, the sweeper is seen to swing behind the chair as I lower it after sucking up the crab. Its an error, but its still believable.

Lots of fun.

[sbtamu]

Yes lots of fun.

The sweeper behind the chair looks ok seeing how the curtain is behind the chair and the sweeper never "ghost" though the chair.

[lwaxana]

Nice combination of live action and animation!

I think an alternative method to get the chair in front of the crab would be to put the crab character in a masking group in Anime Studio. That way it would only affect the crab and not the live action people and objects.

[cartooncrunch]

Gr8 work!

[stephen]

Nice combination of live action and animation!

I think an alternative method to get the chair in front of the crab would be to put the crab character in a masking group in Anime Studio. That way it would only affect the crab and not the live action people and objects.

I was thinking about that. Its about the same amount of work, but I could have put a vector layer on top of the first frame, traced a shape around the chair, then used that as a mask as you said.

[J. Baker]

Hey, my swivel sweeper isn't that powerful, lol. Nice work!

[94253]

if you look close, the sweeper is seen to swing behind the chair

I couldn't tell. Excellent work! I really enjoyed watching this. Thank you for sharing!

[PF-Guy]

Enjoyed watching the video. I've been trying to accomplish this technique, but with masking, with no avail. I've tried every combination of masking I know to try. Either the masking of the object doesn't hide the animated character, or the character passes in front of the object that I'm trying to mask out. Or the masking shape is visible on top of the video. I also tried reordering my layers with no luck. . I need to use masking because I want to make the character to be able to go behind a moving object that is part of the live action video. * Please help *


Thanks,

Kevin

[sbtamu]

What kind of moving object?

[PF-Guy]

What kind of moving object?

Basically what I'm trying to do is make an animated character be able to walk behind a real person who is also walking. Also have the animated character be able to "shake" hands with a real person so that the cartoon hand is behind the real hand.

* Thanks *

Kevin

[sbtamu]

Something like this? You will have to adjust the mask every frame for a movie but I only used an image so It was easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFkg_IVzjGY

[PF-Guy]

Yes! that is exactly it. I realize that I would have to animate the mask for motion, but that is fine. Did you use the mask in AS or did you cut out the child in an editor and used two image layers? I hope you could tell me how to do the masking in AS. I know how to do a simple mask with vector layers, but not with an image or video layer.


Thanks,

Kevin

[sbtamu]

Yes! that is exactly it. I realize that I would have to animate the mask for motion, but that is fine. Did you use the mask in AS or did you cut out the child in an editor and used two image layers? I hope you could tell me how to do the masking in AS. I know how to do a simple mask with vector layers, but not with an image or video layer.


Thanks,

Kevin

I could have done it in Sony Vegas or PS just as well but I did this all in AS.

I am not sure I even do it right but its how I do it.

I'll post a tutorial later tonight on youtube.

Stephen