That Greenscreen Tutorial (Finally)

Ian, I know this is a while ago. But I don't understand why you would use emission over the regular principled BSDF shader when loading in your image sequence. Can you please a elaborate a little on this? What is the benefit of the emission, that it reflects light back into the scene when there is light pointed towards the person in the image sequence? doesn't the principled shader do that too without emission selected?

It's true- I haven't uploaded any assets in a bit- but if you click on the assets tag you can see all of them: https://www.patreon.com/IanHubert?filters[tag]=assets

Ian Hubert

yeah, you said we can get 3D assets if we purchase $7 or higher, but most of your posts don't have any blender files or 3D assets. can you upload all of them? that'd be nice if you do thanks.

Kirin Hushino

Can anyone point me to a good green screen lighting/setup tutorial?

James

when i shoot anything greenscreen i have a hard time getting the floor to line up properly. i usually shoot just on a tripod but the feet never match with the floor. the toes go through the floor plane first which i get because its a 2d layer at that point in 3d space, but there is always space between heels and ground, and sometimes more then others it is noticable. is there any suggestions to getting it to match better. does camera angle matter when shooting or height of camera.

This is great stuff. Just getting around to watching it. Some interesting techniques here. I'm trying to figure out the best way to deal with green screen footage I have. Multiple people are walking in the shot but the camera is panning and dollying backward. There are a few tracking markers on the green screen but that's it. No parallax. Ugh. I'll probably end up trying to keyframe a camera manually unless anyone has any suggestions?

In case anyone cares, solved this by projecting from camera like his first example instead of the default mapping applied by import image as plane. Then I animated an extrusion to match the lowest object in the frame

the biggest issue I'm having with this process is when the feet are on separate planes. The shadows are giving away that the foot further from the camera isn't touching the ground.

Do you have any advice as to how to ensure that the footage that goes into Blender is rendered out with the same bit depth and quality? I am shooting with a Blackmagic Pocket 4K in raw, keying out the footage and exporting for Blender as 32bit EXR. I bring those into Blender no problem, yet when I go to render I'm picking up on some artifacts and noise that is not present in the original file. Any idea why?

Kays Al-Atrakchi

how do you get the high rez and the low rez images

Here is the specific details of my process, (.mp4, 4k, 29.97 fps) from my camera going to Premiere to cut down to the take I want, exported to (.mpeg, 1080, 29.97 fps), keyed in the compositer, exported to tiff at 1080, 29.97 fps. Brought into After Effects to be sequenced at 29.97 fps and exported to (.mp4, 1080, 29.97 fps). Yes, it is smooth until the final export.

Ah yeah- you definitely want all the settings to match whatever footage you originally shot the footage at :D Does everything seem to be working alright until the final export? Which format are you exporting to?

Ian Hubert

I'm having a little stuttering on the final video. I think I might be the frame rate. I shot at 29.97, green screen composite render at 29.97, composed render at 29.97. I see in your video you have it set to 24 fps. Anybody else experimenting with frame rates?

Oh man. I figured this out, and it's awesome. I split items into multiple collections, made render layers for each thing, and then I can composite them with different blurs/grains, etc. Blender is amazing.

Mark Miller

Coming back to this after some playing and I've got a question. Do you have an approach for "downgrading" the quality of your CG to match your footage without downgrading the quality of the green screen elements that have been "put back" into CG elements? I'd typically add some blur and grain to CG elements, but filmed elements already have this pre-baked. Normally, I might handle this in post with compositing, but if I'm putting parts of a real scene "back" into CG elements (like behind glass), I need them to be part of the CG output. Maybe multi-pass where the "behind glass" parts are a separate pass that's composited in without any degrade? A quick tutorial on that kind of multi-pass would be sweet, unless there's an easier way.

Mark Miller

Yeah, I was able to composite a 5 second clip as a bunch of transparent TIFs. Now working on putting the actor in a scene.

Well nuts. I tried another tutorial and I can't get this to work either.

That would have been a great moment to launch your own Ian Hubert 'Crinkles' Green screen line!.. Now with integrated tracking points.. 😂

Just some green fabric :)

Ian Hubert

May I ask, what material is your green screen? :)

Love it! I now have both inspiration and a headache simultaneously 😅

Dana Scully

lmao

sofia

Based off "guy posts a video he says he's not happy with and didn't want to post yet, feeling he could improve it with a little more work," followed by "video goes away," I have a theory

Carter Burr-Kirven

Where engine crash video

John Zwick

Yeah me too. I think he might've deleted it?

Alex White

the new "Engine Crash"-video doesn't play for me. same for anyone else?

JØRGEN WETAAS BULL

Hi ian. if you don't mind, can you give us a small tour of your green screen setup and about the lights you are using.

akim mohideen

He used Sony A7iii- and 28-70mm kit lens

akim mohideen

What camera or camcorder do you use to take these shots?

thanks :)

akim mohideen

Oh! I think I was as wide as you can get with that one, so 28mm :)

Ian Hubert

Thanks for replying but am sorry instead of focal length I asked what lens, actually like to know the focal length you used for that particular shot. (Kaitlin follow shot)

akim mohideen

Oh thanks! And it was just the kit lens for the Sony A7iii- a 28-70mm :) I've been enjoying that setup for shooting this greenscreen stuff, since the wide lens and full frame sensor means I can shoot pretty darn wide (which is useful for tracking), and since I'm only making 1080p final videos, I can crop into the 4k footage to refine the shot a bit :D

Ian Hubert

hi ian.. thanks for this wonderful work. I like to know the choice of lens for the shot you used in the follow kaitlin shot

akim mohideen

Yea thanks Ian for the reply completely agree with finding the right Balance within each video What helped me out a lot was just watching at a slower speed and going back reviewing in your older videos great videos

Ry Ken

Man it's DEFINITELY confusing. One of the hard parts is most of the setup is a bit different depending on each shot, so the more specific I get, the less it'll be applicable in every circumstance. Do you have a piece of footage you're working with?? I can do a realtime walkthrough, for sure, yeah. I KIND of did in the first episode of the "Makign a shot" thing, but since he was mostly just sitting there it didn't go deep into the depth-fixing/lining-up-the-feet shenanigans. https://youtu.be/oiwTsVM5oGY We'l get it figured out!

Ian Hubert

damn this is tooo awesome!!!!! im going to have to try this for sure

Ry Ken

yea ive been following ian ever since he started his patreon and seen all his videos even when he directed tears of steels. i havent try slowing the speed but will watch it again. im not asking for a step by step tutorial just alittle more info on the parenting image to camera than adjust with keyframe for me and some other great idea its alittle fast and over my head thats all . but ill watch it again in slower speed

Ry Ken

You can always watch the video at a slower speed—is there a particular spot that's tripping you up? This video is perhaps more focused towards concepts and techniques then literal button presses, but all the information you need should be in there, even if it's only stated once! Where in particular are you feeling like you could use more detail?

Carter Burr-Kirven

any way we can get a slow down version of this tutorial? that would be awesome but i know would be boring for you lol

Ry Ken

Wow wow wow 😳 freaking awesome

Ry Ken

And yeah, I know the city in the background could use some work 😅

Kai Christensen

Finally done with my test shot! (https://youtu.be/oiwTsVM5oGY) And wow, I've made a bunch of mistakes BUT THAT'S OK because I *recognized* them and won't make them again. I am curious as to why the background clips in front of my head momentarily -- I've got a friend who says he's had similar things happen when using an image-as-plane far in the background. ANYWAYS I think I'm gonna move on to trying to make a more in depth shot now using the experience I gained making this one!

Kai Christensen

Thank you btw for not just making this available for Patreons only - this is an absolute treasure trove, I'm very glad you decided to make this a public tutorial! Brilliant! Can't wait for the announced making of ^^

Ben K.

Whoa... that's like a 1 semester class in 10 minutes

Tom Smith

Is it possible to have baby step by step guidance coz I got a massive panic attach trying your method..am constantly failing....parenting and projection is kind of confusing but if I watch it a couple of million times I might get it...haha hahaha lol

shonal bose

Gonna need to watch this once, twice, or like 642,315 more times to wrap my head around it. But fuck man, this is rad.

My guess would be that’s after effects, which if I remember correctly he still uses for final touches like that.

Kai Christensen

How do you add such good lens flares? I've been spending a lot of time trying to fiddle around with different glare node setups in the compositor but it never seems to produce anything close to this. Great video by the way!

AH! That's awesome! Yeah especially after that video you posted the other day (that was you, right?? If so- that was awesome! TOTALLY nailed the lighting!!) I'm crazy stoked to see what you do!

Ian Hubert

Yeah!! It feels so good sticking it on there! Although someone pointed out it's obscured by the length data in the thumbnails. Super cool they put out a kind of unifying badge for the community.

Ian Hubert

Ahahaha, thanks Erich! Yeah this one's a bit confusing :/ Let me know if there's anything specifically you'd want clarified, though!

Ian Hubert

Ah! I hope it makes sense with more viewings! I probably should have re-worked it to make more sense off the bat. I think in this case it's particularly confusing because I'm spending a lot of time addressing issues that folks don't even think about until they run into them, and they wouldn't run into them unless they were trying to do something really darn similar.

Ian Hubert

AH! I'm so glad it helps! I'm excited to see what apeshit movies you're working on!!!

Ian Hubert

Ahahaha, yeah a lot of this is slightly easier in AE (masking, for example. Having to jump into another workspace to generate a mask is a bit of a pain- although I guess I could have my masking workspace on one monitor, and compositing on another?), but not enough easier to justify the 66 bucks a month I've been paying, maybe??

Ian Hubert

Oh cool!!! And yeah... the trade off always seems to be a bit of convenience shooting-wise, for a bunch of time post-wise. It's the reason I've been so jazzed about the virtual production stuff lately. Even if I can just capture the motion tracking data in real time, that'll save me SO much time in the long run (and honestly- having to shoot shots while also ensuring you have enough trackable points in view at all time is SUCH a pain in the ass/stress-inducer on set). Do you know when you'd be shooting?? That's exciting :D

Ian Hubert

So inspiring! I'm trying to budget a small movie and it's such a puzzle doing everything on locations with actors. So tempting to shoot the whole thing on a greenscreen stage. This gives me hope.

Jan van den Hemel

Astounding! Encouraging filmmaker friends to support you via patreon. Keep this up please!

amazing. I need to watch and stop every 3 seconds to follow along :-) dense info

Kathleen Judge

*cries in after effects*

Blake Rizzo

Well, fundamentally everything in Unreal is designed around real-time applications. They might have expanded beyond that, they're certainly trying to get into the animation market as well, but that means the workflow of the program isn't really designed with VFX in mind. Sure, you can import cameras, export renders... If your only experience is with Unreal, and you want to use it instead of trying to learn a new program, you could certainly make it work and get it done! But if you're looking at the programs in the abstract, Unreal is, like I said, still fundamentally built for real-time workflows, and if you're aiming for photorealism, as in most VFX, you're never going to get as close with a real-time engine—which is built around cheats and cut corners and optimizations—as you are with a proper rendering engine. That’s just my two cents, though!

Carter Burr-Kirven

This is wonderful. As a compositor, I've been waiting for a greenscreen tutorial in Blender. Thank you.

Amazing as always! Out of curiosity, would you (or anyone else) use the Unreal Engine for VFX work? Apart from live VFX and being able to easily build large worlds I'm wondering where its strengths/advantages are compared to Blender.

Ian. This stuff is brilliant! I am getting too old and my mind is weak. I think at this point I'd be better off just hiring you to make all of my CG movie thingies! :-)

Erich Stenzel

Grats on another absolute slamdunk of a video, king

it's that guy!

This is great, i need to learn it. I'd be lying if I understood even 20% of what you went over though, I'll have to watch it quite a few times :D

Karribu

thank you so much for this, we're working on a project like this as we speak so your timing is impeccable. thanks for helping us make apeshit movies!

Holy. Cow. Balls. Of. Cheese! THIS WAS EPIC!

Fes

Very, very neat.

Kai Christensen

Like the few questions I still had concerning the whole "process" have been answered now.

Kai Christensen

THIS IS SO COOL

Kai Christensen

Awesome! Thank you!

Dyrgrip FX

THIS is AMAZING

Kai Christensen

I love seeing the new blender badge! So cool what the blender community is doing

Robert Gyurko