book

Compositing Visual Effects

by Steve Wright

July 2012

Intermediate to advanced

264 pages

7h 57m

English

Focal Press

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1.1 Digital Compositing with CGI1.1.1 CGI Compositing1.1.2 Set Extension1.1.3 Match Move1.2 Compositing Visual Effects1.2.1 Bluescreen Compositing1.2.2 Motion Tracking1.2.3 Warping and Morphing1.2.4 Bullet Time Shots1.2.5 Crowd Duplication1.2.6 Atmospherics1.2.7 Rotoscoping1.2.8 Wire Removal1.2.9 Scene Salvage1.3 Compositing Programs1.3.1 Node-Based Compositors1.3.2 Layer-Based Compositors
2.1 Structure of Digital Images2.1.1 The Pixel2.1.2 Grayscale Images2.1.3 Color Images2.1.4 Four-Channel Images2.2 Attributes of Digital Images2.2.1 Digitizing Images2.2.2 Image Resolution2.2.3 Image Aspect Ratio2.2.4 Pixel Aspect Ratio2.2.5 Display Aspect Ratio2.2.6 Bit Depth2.2.7 Floating-Point2.2.8 Multiplying Images2.3 Image File Formats2.3.1 Photographic Images vs. Graphics2.3.2 Indexed Color Images (CLUT)2.3.3 Compression2.3.4 EXR2.3.5 File Formats2.4 Dots Per Inch (DPI)
3.1 The CGI Composite3.1.1 Scaling the Background3.1.2 Semi-Transparent Pixels3.1.3 Summing the Layers3.2 Multipass Compositing3.2.1 Diffuse and Specular Passes3.2.2 Occlusion and Shadow Passes3.2.3 Reﬂection Pass3.2.4 Creative Control.3.3 Depth Compositing3.4 Multiplane Compositing3.5 Sims3.6 Particle Systems3.7 Working with Premultiplied CGI3.7.1 Color Correcting3.7.2 Transformations and Filters3.7.3 The Common Mistake

4.1 The Bluescreen Composite4.1.1 Pulling the Matte4.1.2 The Basic Composite4.2 About Keyers4.2.1 How Keyers Work4.2.2 Despill4.2.3 Color Correction4.2.4 Scaling the Foreground and Background4.2.5 Sum the Layers4.2.6 The Final Composite4.3 Helping the Keyer4.3.1 Garbage Mattes4.3.2 Procedural Garbage Mattes4.3.3 Holdout Mattes4.3.4 Degrain4.4 Compositing Outside the Keyer4.4.1 Merging Multiple Mattes4.4.2 Performing the Despill4.4.3 Color Correcting4.4.4 The Composite4.5 Shooting Bluescreens (and Greenscreens)4.5.1 Lighting the Backing4.5.2 Lighting the Talent4.5.3 The Backing Material4.5.4 Bluescreen vs. Greenscreen4.5.5 Bluescreen Floors4.5.6 Film Issues4.5.7 Video Issues.4.5.8 Photography Tips
5.1 Key, Matte, Alpha, and Mask5.2 Creating a Luma-Key5.3 Creating a Chroma-Key5.4 Creating a Mask5.4.1 The Difference Mask.5.4.2 The Color Difference Mask5.4.3 Geometric Primitives.5.4.4 Drawing Shapes5.4.5 Painting a Mask5.4.6 Combo Masks
6.1 About Rotoscoping6.2 Splines6.3 Articulated Rotos6.4 Interpolation6.5 Keyframes6.5.1 On 2's6.5.2 Bifurcation6.5.3 Extremes6.5.4 Final Inspection6.6 Motion Blur6.7 Semi-Transparency
7.1 The Mix Operation7.2 The Multiply Operation7.3 The Screen Operation7.4 The Maximum Operation7.5 The Minimum Operation7.6 The Add Operation7.7 The Subtract Operation7.8 No-Change Summary Table7.9 Adobe Photoshop Blending Modes7.10 Speed Changes7.10.1 Skip Print/Frame Duplication7.10.2 Frame Averaging7.10.3 Optical Flow
8.1 Transforms and Pixels8.2 Filters8.3 Pivot Points8.4 Transformation Order8.5 Keyframe Animation8.6 Motion Blur8.7 Motion Tracking8.8 Stabilizing a Shot8.9 Match Move8.10 The Wonder of Warps.8.10.1 Mesh Warps8.10.2 Spline Warps8.10.3 Procedural Warps8.11 The Magic of Morphs
9.1 Color Correcting9.1.1 The Black and White Points9.1.2 Gamma9.1.3 Color9.1.4 Color Adjustments9.1.5 Pre-Balancing the Color Channels9.1.6 Gamma Slamming9.2 Matching Layer Attributes9.2.1 Grain Structure9.2.2 Depth of Field9.2.3 Shadows9.2.4 Lens Distortion9.3 Sweetening the Composite9.3.1 Light Wrap9.3.2 Edge Blend9.3.3 Layer Integration9.3.4 Artistic Embellishment9.4 A Checklist9.4.1 Color Correction9.4.2 Lighting9.4.3 Layer Attributes
10.1 Dust Busting10.2 Wire Removal10.3 Rig Removal10.4 Hair Removal10.5 Scratch Removal10.6 Light Leaks10.7 Deﬂicker
11.1 SDTV (Standard Deﬁnition Television)11.1.1 Coping with Interlaced Video11.1.2 Coping with Non-Square Pixels11.1.3 Coping with Color Sub-Sampling11.1.4 Coping with Edge Enhancement11.1.5 Coping with Frame Rates11.1.6 Coping with Timecode11.2 HDTV (High Deﬁnition Television)11.2.1 Image Size11.2.2 Scan Modes11.2.3 Frame Rates11.2.4 Nomenclature11.2.5 The 24P Master11.3 Title Safe.11.4 3:2 Pull-Down11.5 3:2 Pull-Up11.6 DV Compression Artifacts
12.1 Capture vs. Display Formats12.2 Academy and Full Aperture12.3 Projection Formats12.3.1 2.3512.3.2 1.8512.3.3 1.6612.4 Cinemascope12.5 VistaVision12.6 3-Perf Film12.7 70 mm Film12.8 Super 16 Film12.9 Fitting Film into Video12.9.1 Letterbox12.9.2 Pan and Scan12.9.3 HTDV12.9.4 Title Safe12.10 Digitizing Film12.11 Log Film Data12.12 Recording Film12.13 The Digital Intermediate Process12.13.1 Editing the Film12.13.2 Color Correcting12.13.3 The Print Master12.13.4 How DI Works12.13.5 DI and You

Content preview from Compositing Visual Effects

A compositor is, first and foremost, an artist, so this chapter focuses on the art of compositing. There are two levels of artistic excellence. First is the achievement of competent photo-realism, the objective of every digital composite. But beyond replicating reality in a convincing manner, there is also artistic enhancement—going beyond simply professionally assembling the elements provided and adding your own artistic panache to make the shot look cool. Good artistic design makes for good visual effects shots.

Digital compositing can be defined as taking several disparate elements that were photographed separately and integrate them into ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780240809632

Compositing Visual Effects

by Steve Wright

Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
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