Scar Removal

[TomD]

I am currently working on a feature where one of the leads has a fairly prominent scar on his chin running from just under his lip to about 3/4 of the way down his chin. For the most part the makeup artist did a fair job with color but the biggest problem is the scar has relief, and in severely lit scenes it is very obvious.

I have run a few test, and for fairly quick scenes blurring a garbage matte has fairly good results, I know I’m looking forward to many much longer shots that will probably total in the 30 minute range many with the actor talking, making tracking a little tricky. Any feedback from someone who may have tackled such a project or anyone with any ideas would be appreciated.

The project was shot on HDCAM (1920×1080) an I am running flame 9.5.

Thanks,
Tom

[Adam]

Can u post a Regoin Of Interest around the problem area so i can see it?

[ghsnyc]

if i understand you correctly.. i would do a median filter on the shot so you get a clean actor and then track that over with a garbage matte of the region you want to remove. it helped me a lot in some removals i did… the cool stuff about using a median filter is that the lighning changes are not lost. so you dont have a problem putting it over your untouched actor… try it and i hope it will help you out !

[pramod pandit]

At the risk of really sounding like I don’t know what I’m doing, where do you find a median filter in Flame?

[Sinan]

TomD wrote:

At the risk of really sounding like I don’t know what I’m doing, where do you find a median filter in Flame?

On desktop go to “processing->filter”, and also in batch you have a “filter” node, or you can have custom filters, including “median” in desktop paint module. Use the method whichever fits best to your requirements, they all do the same processing.

[sweryagf rrfr]

was this removed for newer flame versions ? cant find a median filter in Flame 2008 but desperatly in need of one ..

[Martin Krol]

desktop –> filter –> load –> median

[sweryagf rrfr]

as said before, there is no median filter
i’ve looked in the specific project filter directory and in the flame_2008/filter directory too

(…,Halo, Jaggies, Negative,…)

30 different filters, no median
how many do you have in your directory ?

[Nicholas Fox]

I checked also, and there is no median filter in flame.

What I have done is track a garbage mask around the feature and then
reposition the fill layer (via matte source) to be a clean area adjacent to
the feature. A little blur and then some added grain/noise to bring back
some texture…and voila.

We use this for Target beauty spots all the time…

[John Jenkins]

I am using Smoke with Tinder Sparks. The median filter is inside Tinder 5.1.

[Amey Gosavi]

@mreithoffer 24618 wrote:

as said before, there is no median filter
i’ve looked in the specific project filter directory and in the flame_2008/filter directory too

(…,Halo, Jaggies, Negative,…)

30 different filters, no median
how many do you have in your directory ?

to everyone,
before starting this, please feel free to contact me if you think i might be wrong on a certain point. At the moment I am studying at university. My total experience with flame is like 5 months in total. So i would appreciate any feedback. My e-mail adress is [email protected].

to mreithoffer,

you can access filter menu by :
Processing->Filter

(i know it’s a little late but though i can use TomD’s case for a little explanation :P)
After you come in the filter menu choose filter 1 and make sure to choose “Matrix” in the dop-down menu. After that choose a 3X3 array and also let it arrange the gain automatically (enable “Automatic” and “Balanced Matrix”) . In the drop-down menu by Symmetry chose “All” from the drop-down menu and enable “Same”. After that on the right side in the menu double click on one of the outer numbers. Chose amount of pixel you would like to pass. In this case it should be something like 2 or 3. and the middle point of your filter should be 0.

if you would like to know more about a median filter (and this is a good opportunity to learn about other filtering methods too) visit this link and its references : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_filter)
there is also a little explanation here : http://www.fxguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2747

After you’re finished, set “Enable” on and match the source and the result by switching between each. Depending on how much noise and grain is present on the footage, try other amounts of pixel value to match your desired result and then process. But make sure that the middle value of your array is 0 (if there is too much motion blur and edges on that spot, try 1 or -1).

[Nicholas Fox]

thank you! We have that..

[Author]

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