Best green screen content ?

[ChristopherArter]

Hello there,

So I have been a digital artist for years now (2D), and I've always gravitated towards cinematic story-telling tones in my imagery, I'm also a classical pianist so I deeply enjoy music (especially film scores). Soo, after I was nearly killed in a car crash a few weeks ago, I've decided that life is too short, and that I'm going to embark on a new art form that combines all of my passions, and I'm jumping in feet first.

With that being said, I'm currently writing a screen play that has a Blade Runner / Drive feel that I'm planning to shoot on a Black Magic Cinema Camera. While writing it, I want to get a feel for what my limitations will be with sets.

A static background shouldn't be too hard for me to create, however I'd be excited to be able to add moving elements (such as a future night city back drop). I'm thinking blender would be a good choice ? But with that avenue, how much am I biting off with a task like that? I have plenty of illustration 2D experience, but none in 3D.

The other option would be stock footage if the Blender route would be far too laborious, but I strongly dislike the idea of anything in the film being pulled from stock.

Could I get away with static backgrounds for a Drive / Blade Runner (shot in 2.39:1) or am I better off investing the time into doing some really detailed renders?

 

[Sweetie]

I'll presume you know chroma key stuff from your 2D art.

You could go with a combination of both. Static background with elements that move to give it move life. I believe this is what they did with Dark City... Well I think that is what the movie was called.

Though, to really make it work, it does take a lot. Getting the backgrounds/foregrounds to move both correctly and in an interesting way can be challenging, but not really that hard once you know what you're doing. Similar to your work in 2D. It just takes time to get to know what to do. Though the work can take a little bit depending on what your elements are and how you put your elements together.

Your experience in 2D will help as you're already used to incorporating depth into 2D pictures. The big differences is that the things move and look differently depending on what kind of lens you use (or in your case, simulate usage) in your sets (in your case, virtual sets). Also pay very special attention to your lighting.

Getting the green screen footage to match in video is a lot harder than in photography. Some of the tools that photographers use in still keying can take up a lot of time when you're dealing items frame by frame at 24fps or higher.

Even though all that, I say go for it. I don't know much about Blender, but everything I hear tells me that it's an excellent piece of software, especially considering it's free.

 

[ChristopherArter]

Thanks Sweetie,

Yes, I'm anticipating the lighting to be a challenge. Thankfully I'm already a stickler for lighting to match my composites (I do composite photography, mainly). I'd like to use the key'd elements in tandem with real sets.

For instance, I have an interior restaurant dialogue scene that takes place in a skyrise with glass walls over looking a busy night city. I plan to shoot the actors on set with a lit green screen behind them and softboxes pointed towards the actors to simulate the glow from the city. LEDs being the projected go-to light source in the coming decades for cities, LEDs are typically tungsten in tempeture, I'll probably keep the light source pretty cool on the actors as well to match. It's the little details like that that make me glad I've at least dabbled in key'd imagery.

I doubt I will be placing actors in full CG environments, as I'll probably just be keeping it limited to back drops (given my lack of experience). But I think I'm going to give Blender a crash course for sure!

 

[Santhem]

If i were you I would look into image based modelling. Basically using really simple 3D models with photograph's projected on them. Gnomon (im sure as a digital artist you'v at least heard of them) has some
dvd's on the subject.

These DVD's take you through the entire process of creating and texturing 3D models, but you'll still need to render them, preferably with photorealistic HDRI-based lighting. Gnomon also has some DVD's on that, but none with Blender.

I really admire Blender for being a completly free and open-source package. And I would love to get into it some day, but it is very different from the industry standard packages, which may make your life hard at times.

If I were you I would at least consider using Maya, because it is pretty much the industry standard.
It will also look good on your resume as a digital artist. I know of no high-end visual effects companies that use blender, so that is something to consider.

 

[ChristopherArter]

If i were you I would look into image based modelling. Basically using really simple 3D models with photograph's projected on them. Gnomon (im sure as a digital artist you'v at least heard of them) has some
dvd's on the subject.

These DVD's take you through the entire process of creating and texturing 3D models, but you'll still need to render them, preferably with photorealistic HDRI-based lighting. Gnomon also has some DVD's on that, but none with Blender.

I really admire Blender for being a completly free and open-source package. And I would love to get into it some day, but it is very different from the industry standard packages, which may make your life hard at times.

If I were you I would at least consider using Maya, because it is pretty much the industry standard.
It will also look good on your resume as a digital artist. I know of no high-end visual effects companies that use blender, so that is something to consider.

That's an excellent point about the professional ceiling of Blender, very good. I think a friend of mine over in LA may have a spare product key I could use for Maya (or I'll just buy my own, probably a good investment). I'm going to look at those DVDs too, that may be a good entry point for me.

 

[Jeff Troiano]

If I were you I would at least consider using Maya, because it is pretty much the industry standard. It will also look good on your resume as a digital artist. I know of no high-end visual effects companies that use blender, so that is something to consider.

I've been teaching myself Blender, for the last year or so. It is a great program, and it is free. Blender is great for 3D modeling. Great for set extensions. Right now I do modeling in Blender, and compositing in After Effects. Blender has node based compositing, but its easier for me to model and render in blender, then composite back together in AE. So ill create something and do the different render passes (main pass, shadow pass, etc...) take each layer in to AE and put it all back together. Blender can also do camera tracking, I've been learning it, but its not as intuitive as Syntheyes. Really syntheyes is well worth the $600 price tag, if you plan on doing a lot of camera tracking. Of course After Effects CS6 has a 3D camera tracker (but I only have CS5 right now). I've been told you can export the 3D camera from AE, into blender as well.

Maya is a great program, and also cost $3600 to buy. They don't issue academic versions, unless you can prove you're a student or faculty. So learning Maya can be tough. Who wants to pay full price to learn something.

I discovered a program, recently, called Houdini. It is similar to blender, maya, and other 3d apps. From my research it is actually taking a huge share of the work, away from maya. The cool thing about it, they have what they call the Apprentice version, you can download for free, and learn (adds a watermark to the work). But for $99 you can get the apprentice HD version that removes the watermark, and you are allowed to use what you produce for your reel. You just can't use for monetary gain. For that you'd have to buy the full version ($4400).

I've started learning it. Look up their website and check out the 2012 production reel, and ill bet you'll recognize more then half the clips. It does great fire and water simulations. And for $99 to access pretty much a full version and learn, I'm all for it.

 

[CraigL]

Blender is a great tool, with some great resources for learning it. You haven't really seen blender in the big pro VFX because it really wasn't ready for it until relatively recently. However, it is getting better and better and better. With it's node based compositing, you can do some really amazing work. I still mainly just use it for modelling and rendering, and it does a great job.
Every 2 years or so they release a movie to showcase Blenders capabilities. Normally, they're fully CGI shorts and you can really see the improvement in Blender over the years going from Elephants Dream to Big Buck Bunny to Sintel, which is very good. Their most recent one, Tears of Steel however, focuses entirely on using Blender assets in a live action movie. The 3D, rendering, editing, match moving and compositing was all done in Blender. For all the first 3 were great in their own right, ToS really shows that Blender is up to the challenge now. There is apparently a 4K release in the works for ToS also, so it can definitely scale up with whatever you're shooting.
Check it out. $3000-4000 could buy an awful lot of gear/props/locations/crew...
http://www.blender.org/features-gallery/blender-open-projects/

CraigL

 

[knightly]

LEDs being the projected go-to light source in the coming decades for cities, LEDs are typically tungsten in tempeture, I'll probably keep the light source pretty cool on the actors as well to match.

Tungsten is orange. Sunlight is blue. the "white" LEDs tend toward really blue, more like sunlight than tungsten... unless you're buying expensive color balanced LED Fixtures, you'll probably need to set your camera for sunlight to get a decent match... although, the reality and the appearance in camera are often entirely different things as our brains' auto white balance is much more sophisticated than the average camera's.