Comping Suggestions?

[500cuts]

Hello, I'm a longtime reader, but first time poster.

This question will start the same as so many others... low budget project... new at this... etc.

Cut to the chase. I'm trying to turn this...



Into something like this....



I was thinking I could pull a luma key, and this is what I get.



Her white shirt and light hair are screwing me up. My question is:

Is there any way around roto-ing the holes in the matte? Or is that only/best way? I'm not lazy, I just suck at paint/roto. And I'd hate to have a chattery matte, which is what I have now.

Thanks for your patience and any pointers,
Colin.

http://theforgeproject.com/

[500cuts]

Currently using Nuke, btw.

[Timor]

hi colin,

if you have a static camera you could try a combination of a difference-key with your luma.
another option is the furnace-z-buffer which can be quite helpful sometimes if you crank-up the contrast and you have moving people in the FG...

hope this helps,
timor

[500cuts]

Great suggestion. I'll try the difference key. I have access to Furnace, but haven't gotten too deep, yet. I'll report back with my findings.

Thanks, Timor!
Colin

[jayrandall]

Your matte is a pretty good start. I can count on one hand the number of one click keys I've done in my career.

You are almost always going to have to fiddle with your keys to get them working. If the shot isn't moving, it won't take you long to fill in the holes with roto splines. Roto is tedious, but, it is guaranteed not to boil or bubble or whateveryoucallit if you do it correctly.

If the clip isn't long, just fill it in with paint strokes.

Or, try to key the foreground elements to fill in your matte.

Always treat pulling mattes like a separate composite. If you start thinking about mattes as mini precomps, you will have better success. You can also do another composite to fill in areas that need to be black, or white.

for example...

lets say you have some little white noise where your matte should be black. go ahead and process your matte out. in a new composite, load your matte as the back and matte, but fill that matte with black. invert your matte, fiddle with your shrink/matte ops/matte histogram, or whatever it is in nuke, to fill in those bits without messing with your edges.

the opposite is true for white. use your matte as a back and matte, and white as your front. fiddle with the shrink/matte ops whatever.

good luck.

randy