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After Effects Compositing 04: Color Keying

with Mark Christiansen

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Introduction

6m 31s
1. Welcome
  
  1m 50s
2. Using the exercise files
  
  2m 23s
3. Overview: What is color keying?
  
  2m 18s
1. Work with Keylight

25m 41s
1. Working with Keylight: Introduction
  
  56s
2. Key a green screen simply with Keylight
  
  3m 46s
3. Begin a color key with a g-matte
  
  2m 58s
4. Quickly and carefully sample for screen color in Keylight
  
  3m 54s
5. Precisely adjust Clip Black and Clip White in Keylight
  
  4m 49s
6. Fine-tune Keylight adjustments with Screen controls
  
  3m 50s
7. Use only these two views in Keylight
  
  2m 9s
8. Know which Keylight controls to ignore
  
  3m 19s
2. Manage Edges and Spill

14m 43s
1. Managing edges and spill: Introduction
  
  43s
2. Choose a keying background for contrast
  
  3m 55s
3. Eliminate spill automatically with Advanced Spill Suppressor
  
  2m 41s
4. Refine Advanced Spill Suppressor settings
  
  2m 15s
5. Use the Adobe workflow: Keylight, Key Cleaner, and Advanced Spill Suppressor
  
  2m 36s
6. Evaluate and adjust Key Cleaner results
  
  2m 33s
3. Divide a Matte for Best Results When Keying

14m 27s
1. Dividing the matte: Introduction
  
  53s
2. Recognize when and how to divide a matte for keying
  
  2m 41s
3. Start with an animated and articulated g-matte
  
  2m 41s
4. Add a holdout matte
  
  1m 38s
5. Solve overlapping mattes with Alpha Add
  
  3m 28s
6. Track a c-matte to fill holes
  
  3m 6s
4. Solve Problematic Edges

12m 50s
1. Solving problematic edges: Introduction
  
  45s
2. Create an animated g-matte selection without roto or keyframes
  
  3m 15s
3. Complete a three-pass key with core and edge mattes
  
  4m 7s
4. Solve matte lines with Refine Hard Matte
  
  4m 43s
5. Complex Color Keys and Primatte

22m 49s
1. Advanced keying and Primatte: Introduction
  
  56s
2. Break down a complex color key
  
  4m 50s
3. Think beyond keying: Solve a shot with keying and roto
  
  7m 6s
4. Get started with Primatte Keyer
  
  4m 17s
5. Understand Primatte as a Keylight alternative
  
  5m 40s
6. High-Contrast Mattes (When There Is No Green Screen)

20m 43s
1. High-contrast mattes: Introduction
  
  57s
2. Create a luma key with Extract
  
  3m 27s
3. Set up a simple sky replacement in 32 bits per channel
  
  2m 38s
4. Improve detailed edges with Refine Soft Matte
  
  3m 29s
5. Feather edges with Channel Blur
  
  3m 26s
6. Conceal matte lines with an edge matte
  
  4m 37s
7. Expand and contract a luma matte with Minimax
  
  2m 9s
7. Prep for Success When Color Keying

10m 13s
1. Prep for keying success: Introduction
  
  40s
2. Know reasons green screen is not always the answer
  
  3m 11s
3. Avoid compression: The enemy of mattes
  
  3m 18s
4. Prep a shot for keying
  
  3m 4s

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After Effects Compositing 04: Color Keying

Video duration: 0s 2h 7m Intermediate Dec 06, 2014

Color keying, also known as chroma keying, lets you shoot a foreground scene and insert it into virtually any background; this can save you money and allow you to create shots that are impossible or highly dangerous to take as a single shot. For it to be effective, the key is in the details. In this course, Mark Christiansen shows how to produce feature-film-quality keys in After Effects that fit well within their new scenes, while retaining the subtle details—be they strands of hair or soft or translucent edges—that make the results believable.

Beginning with a brief explanation of the keying process, Mark takes you through the steps involved in creating a perfect green-screen key: generating a rough matte, eliminating color spill and matte lines, and refining problematic edges. He shows how to work with Keylight and Primatte—two indispensable keying tools in After Effects—and explains when to use one over the other. And for times when green screen won't work, he shows how to generate high-contrast mattes, or luma keys, based on the luminance data in your footage. Last, learn about compression and how to prep a shot for keying.

Topics include:

What is color keying?
Using garbage mattes
Getting started with Keylight
Understanding the Screen Color, Clip Black, and Clip White adjustments
Eliminating spill with Advanced Spill Suppressor
Using Key Cleaner to refine edges automatically
Dividing a matte with holdout mattes
Breaking down a complex color key
Creating a luma key with Extract
Setting up sky replacement
Using Refine Soft Matte to improve edge detail
Feathering edges with Channel Blur
Knowing when to avoid green screen
Prepping a shot for keying

Subject:: Video
Software:: After Effects
Author:: Mark Christiansen

Welcome

- Hi, I'm Mark Christiansen. You can't see me right now because advanced green screen technology has made me completely invisible. Color keying is the most common way to create basic movie magic. By shooting actors against a particular shade of green or blue, you can place them into any scene, real or fabricated. You probably associate this technique with big budget effects movies. But in reality, it's just as accessible as the equipment you use to make your own movies. Huh! Color keying is computer-automated, but the best shots require more than just a one-button solution.

It needs knowledge and a little bit of finesse, and that's what I offer you in this course. We'll focus in the most common issues that can leave your shot looking like this. There are a number of words we've come up with over the years to describe this type of edge: clumpy, chewy, sizzly. Whatever word you use, the edges around the hair are completely destroyed, and even smooth surfaces like the arm look really horrible. Or this: matte lines, these nasty, dark borders around the edges of the foreground that are the classic giveaway of a keyed shot, when they could look like this: soft, natural edges so full of detail that you believe this foreground belongs with this background, even if the lighting match could use a little work.

Or you can transform this: not only messy, green spill but heavy background noise, or this heavy foreground noise, as well as matte holes that are often the result of trying to preserve delicate edges, into this: a matte that appears natural and believable, even in a stylized shot like this. So now, let's get started making movie magic.

Find answers to the most frequently asked questions about After Effects Compositing 04: Color Keying .

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Q: How do I locate the exercise files for chapter 5, 6, and 7 of this course?: A: The exercise files are found in the After Effects project that matches the one seen in the movie (named along the top bar of the After Effects interface). Two caveats apply:

1) The latest version of After Effects (CC) shows the full path, including the project name, whereas when the class was recorded only the project filename itself was displayed by default.

2) Source files do need to be relinked.

Each project contains individual compositions whose names match those shown in the movies, and whose state, when opened, should match the state of the comp at the start of the movie, as well.