Green Screen: Keying Hair
- Posted on 07 August, 2020
- Fusion Hair Extensions
- By Anonymous
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King can definitely be tricky. God knows, we've had our struggles with keying over the years. I think we even had a crappy key on an episode that was about keying, which is you know, not great, but it is one of the things that has given me the most headaches over the years, though, as cameras and software get better and better. It'S gotten a lot easier to get a solid key. You don't have to jump through as many hoops nowadays, but it still can be tough when starting out. Of course, we've talked about working with green screens, a lot on the show which you can find links to a bunch of those episodes in the description. But hey the struggle continues, so the episodes continue so get off our back no seriously get off my back. No. For our first example, we're going to be working on a shot of this guy. Just look at him. Look at this handsome man is that a picture of me mm-hmm? No, it's not nothing. No, it is you're being way too nice. That'S definitely not me. It'S a picture of you. I mean it's a video, but it's a beauty, handsome man, okay, as you can see, we have a really smooth and even green screen behind our very talented man, which is the first thing to keep in mind with this process. Having the most evenly lit and smooth screen is gon na save you a lot of headaches, but even with this, we still have things at the edges of the frame here that we're gon na wan na get rid of so the first thing we're gon na do Is grab the pen tool and do a simple mask around our talent? It doesn't have to be too close. We do want to make sure that he never goes outside of the mask too, but we can fix that in a second as well we're gon na. Do this, so we can focus on keying. Only inside of this area, then we're gon na hit f to show the mask feather properties and feather it a bit in our shot. Here he does move so we'll press m on our keyboard to get the mask path and click the stopwatch to add a keyframe skim through the timeline and add keyframes to change the mask whenever your actor moves outside of it. Once that's done, we will do two separate keys, one for the body and one for the hair. This will let us retain more detail and avoid that gross blocky or cut in hair. Look so we'll draw a new mask for the hair. Then set this mask to subtract press f again and boost the feathering now duplicate the layer and set the second mask to intersect. You can see that we do have a bit of the feather gap between the two masks, so double click on the second mask drop down and boost up the expansion until you can no longer see a gap, and now this layer is just for his hair, we'll Key the body layer first so select that and go to effects keying then key light and select part of the green screen close to our subject right off the bat. That'S done a pretty good job, thanks to the green screen being evenly lit, but you can see right now. His coat is looking a bit noisy often times you can keep the screen balance at 50, but it's always good to dial it back and forth to see. If it helps the key in this instance, the key does get better when we dial it closer to 70, because the original color of the costume after that you can boost the screen gain if needed, to strengthen the key for screen pre-blur. We usually set it to around 1 just to slightly smooth out edges, clip black and clip white help dial in the contrast of the key, but to get a better idea of what's going on, we can click this drop down and change it to screen map. This view makes it a lot easier to see what is going on with our key check to see if you still have any of the background left in the key like we do here, and you can brighten up the comp exposure to see even clearer by using This slider tweak these clip settings until your subject is solid white and the background is solid. Black and remember anything outside of your mask won't be seen, so you don't need to adjust for that. Just bear in mind, though, that if you are keying something like hair or glass, you will want to see shades of gray for transparency. Then, once you have good contrast, you can change it back to your final result. Next, we're going to boost screen softness if you want a bit of feathering around the key but don't boost it too high or it's going to look unnatural. There are a few options for the replace method and it's always best to try each one and see. What'S looking best for your key, we can't actually see a difference with this footage, but we often go with either source or hard color. Now, click on the hair layer and we're going to do the same thing apply key light and select part of the green screen with hair. You still want to clip the blacks of the green screen, but not too much since we do want some of that. Nice hair detail, so we will skip the screen gain and balance boost the clip black slightly until the background is gone and lower the clip white to make sure he is solid, keeping an eye on the hair to not lose too much detail, then we'll change the Replace method to hard color so that it matches your body layer and if you play through, you might see that the hair key could have a bit of flicker, which usually means it's not a great key, but often with a background image behind it. The flicker actually isn't noticeable so we'll drag and drop. This background photo behind the keyed layers and you can now already see that when we play through it, the hair key looks much cleaner. Next we're gon na work on the background, but first, let's talk about where you can get some great backgrounds. I'Ve talked about art grid plenty over the years and we even did a walkthrough recently, which you can find in the notes below, but it's a really great place for stock footage stacked with incredibly cinematic hand-picked footage shot by actual filmmakers. It'S all nicely curated, making it easy to find exactly what you need and in a wide range of formats like hd, prores, dnxhr, 4k, 8k raw and lock. They have three pricing tiers to choose from each with the unlimited license. This gives you free usage for any private and commercial production for every platform worldwide. You have full access to everything in the art grid library and, of course, all the footage is royalty. Free new material is added daily, all the time from filmmakers, and it's all high quality cinematic work so check out the link below to sign up and get two months free added to your subscription. It really is a go-to site for us to create the show on a weekly basis, so again definitely check out that link below and get started, but jumping right back into working on this background. First thing that we're going to do is apply a camera lens. Blur effect to that background layer now you might not need to blur, depending on your green screen footage, but it does usually look a bit unnatural if the background is just as sharp or sharper than your subject, we'll just boost it by eye until it looks good, Then take repeat edge pixels to stop the edges from having an alpha blur. In our case, with this background image, these shelves are closer to this talented and lovely man, so they technically shouldn't be as out of focus as the rest of the background. So we can create a ramp map, go to layer, new, solid and make sure it's black then create a white solid. With the white solid selected, we'll use the rectangle mask tool and draw a box then boost the feathering. Any white areas will be blurred and any black will be in focus, so you can choose how much of the background you want to be blurred by adjusting your mask now, select both solid layers and go to layer, pre-compose and we'll name. This ramp and click. Ok hide the visibility of the ramp layer and click on the background image in the lens blur effect under blur map click, the layer drop down and select the ramp layer. You can see it's now using the ramp to control the areas of blur. Now we're just going to adjust the white solid, mask and feather to fine tune. The blur fall off the higher the feather. The more gradual that blur fall off is going to be next select the background image and ramp layer, then pre-compose them and we're going to call it vg then select both keyed layers and pre-compose. Those two we'll call those our handsome man red giant, also has a great plug-in as part of their keying suite called light wrap. This isn't a necessary step. If you don't have it, there are other plugins out there that are similar to this, but we've been using light wrap for years and love it. So it's just a part of our usual process for the background layer choose the background comp and you can see it now looks like the edges of our actor layer have shrunk a bit. What light wrap does is, essentially fade the pixels of a layer around the edges of another layer to look like light bleeds. If we boost this width up high, you can get a sense of what's going on light wrap works best when it isn't too strong. So we usually set the width up around 30 set the comp mode to over blend with original to around 50 and background blur to around 40., but each shot can vary and, of course it depends on the style you're going for if we toggle light wrap on And off you can see how it can be a subtle difference, but it helps blend your layers better. Next, we'll add another red giant effect called color matcher. This is basically the same as if you manually change your layer with color correction effects until the colors of the background and the foreground match, but this effect takes out the hassle of manually tweaking that color so select the background as the target layer and instantly you See that it's taking the overall color of our background and shifting it onto our keyed layer to match you can change the strength if you need to, but what we're going to do with this scene is actually apply. The same effect to the background so on the bg layer apply the color matcher effect and this time set the target layer to your foreground layer and we'll turn down the strength a bit. Now the overall scene matches a lot more. You can always go further using other color correction effects to fine-tune and match colors even more if needed, but, lastly, we'll add a grade overall and that's our first shot done. You do what he says: we're gon na have a real [, __ ] problem for this. Next shot, you've guessed it we've got this hunka hunk of man. What is happening to what? Why are you saying these things? Who what what is going on? I don't uh this time. We have more problematic. Hair hair can definitely be difficult to key and it's always better to get high resolution footage such as 4k, when filming things like longer hair on green screen. But for this we do just have 1080 resolution, so we're gon na be using a different plug-in to help key this hair. Firstly, you can see our green screen is almost directly between looking green and blue, which could affect our key, so something you can always do. Is alter the saturation and hue of your green screen before you key, so we're going to apply red giant's colors to four, but of course you could also just use something like hue and saturation or a similar plug-in under saturation. We'Re going to move the two blue color pins over toward the green until our green screen looks more, like you know, a green screen. Now we have this keying plugin called composite brush, which you can get on a scripts.com link for that in the notes below as well. But inside you have this window with a key hair option, so we'll click that to apply the effect. Then we will left mouse. Click on the area of the green screen to first select that then hold down alt and click in a few different areas of your subject. To tell it what you want to keep. You can see right now that the background is still quite noticeable, so you'll want to tweak the matte high level to crush the key of the background, but try and keep as much hair detail as possible. Remember you can always use a mask as well to get rid of parts of the background which might still be visible. This effect works best when you still have a lot of detail around the edge of the hair, and what we could do to get rid of. The remaining green is to go to effects keying advanced spill suppressor, which will knock out any green pixels in the layer. Now ours is looking a bit too blue, so we can apply the effect again to tame down that blue, but here's the before and after of using the advanced spill suppressor. It really is a useful plug-in for remaining chroma edges. Now, with the white solid behind the actor, we can see how much detail the hair is still in the key. So we'll drag and drop a background below this magical man and apply a color matcher effect to help him match. With the background, more next we'll add an adjustment layer with a curves effect to grade the scene, then a glow effect to bloom. The background image lights over the top of our actor, and now we have this nicely keyed hair with a lot of detail in that key. Look at that. You know what the best part about that shot is josh. I don't i'm so uncomfortable by what's happening. I know you're up to something i just don't know what it is. I think you're great, so that's it for today, but before we go make sure you check out our new website. We have new blogs coming out twice a week and they're badass and while you're there check out our podcast of course also go. Follow our vfx artist ryan thompson on twitter because he is responsible for all the amazing vfx, goodness that you have been seeing lately, including all the tips behind this episode, and you know what follow josh too, because he's great and that's it for today till next time. Don'T forget to write shoot edit repeat, i did i do something you man there. It is welcome back man, foreign
Comments
AFXGuru: Even after almost 20years of keying - we're still learning. Gladly the guy we key all the time is bald so a lot less hassle :)
Film Crow Studios: I’ve always found hair problematic when it came to keying, so this was good information to keep in mind, Thank you.
Atli Thor Einarsson: Great video as always! One thing I want to mention - I'd recommend Key Cleaner that's built into After Effects for hair. Use Keylight and turn on Intermediate Results, use Key Cleaner and then Advance Spill Suppressor. Works wonders - even on 4:2:0 8bit footage.
CZsWorld: I'd actually be interested to see you do a tutorial on lighting the greenscreen. What do you use and how to you set it up?
shadai perez: Hey Ryan love that you guys are still making tutorials like this. Some things that really help me out that I feel are always been left out with Keying tutorials. Use false color on a monitor to make sure you have even light throughout the green screen (false-color won't work accurately if you're not in a rec 709 monitoring color space) the softer the light the better it will be evenly spread without Shadows. Make sure the subject is being lit with the correct environment in mind for the final result. use a fast shutter speed to eliminate motion blur. You can add motion blur later. Always grad your image or at least convert to rec709 before Keying. If you're having trouble use hsl select the green with the color dropper and isolate the color turn up the saturation. Hope it helps someone:)
A2002: Can't me more proud that I'm subscribed to this channel and have been watching their videos since 2017. The amount of film stuff Ryan has taught me and how Josh has made me laugh everytime is immense. This is the only channel I'll stick to for learning stuff forever....
Left Earth: Using diffusers and controlling the direction of your lights is instrumental to filmmaking. It applies here too. ✨
Jace Kreller: Hey Film riot. I just want to let you know that ur one of the most helpful movie making YouTube channel. Thanks so much for the tutorials and tips.
Mahdi Manar: I started watching you guy's when I was 12 and here I am... 9 whole years later, watching your latest video whilst working on feature films. Didn't get a degree. Didn't even finish school, but the information and inspiration I found here was all I needed to obtain my dream job. From the bottom of my heart, thank you film riot. Couldn't have done it with out you guys <3
Mauri TV: For fine hair details, I use IBK (image base keyers) and it works perfect! Great tip to create the ramp for the Lens Blur! Loved that! Thanks Ryan!
Rumle Kjaer: Really loving the visual effect content lately, some really great techniques!! Thank you so much
Austin Thomas Films: The technique at 6:41 is so clever! Will definitely be using that from now on.
ksspang: Since we've started using Primatte from RG and doing some pre-cleanup with Neatvideo, our keying of hair has gotten much better and quicker. We also do the two-layer method so we can do the color separate from the key and we've been so happy with the results. Neatvideo and Primatte are both so fast, too, it's amazing our render times are like half the time or better. Chris Zwar also did a great super in-depth keying series on provideocoalition if you wanna check it out it's amazing.
Eric Zaman: That ramp blur technique is brilliant and will definitely help me on my next project.
風間愛: I like you insert funny clips in between your explanations to keep us attentive, great job man, makes me not only try it but also respect more other content creators who edit with this level of detail, keep up the great work!.
Adi: I’ve always loved this small sketches you and josh do, so wholesome
Brad Thomson: These are legitimately helpful, thanks again you guys!
Potato Face: Excellent timing for this video im constantly keying 4k/6k .braw and lately filming more female talent with lots of hair
Rokk Films: Awesome tips again guys! Keying hair is something I tried to avoid in the past, but not I can see it's not that difficult after all. Thanks!
Justin Roman: I love all of film riots content! The video you guys create plus the small comedy you guys include in your tutorial videos crack me up
Samson Kipp: what i also think is very important to sell the effect is that the background is shot with the same focal length as the talent/ foreground. something is very off if the bg is shot with eg 35mm and the talent with 85mm. also the height off the camera is important so the horizon and perspective are correct. really nice vid as always
Ranger 7 Studios: Also, leaving the key on intermediate result will do away with any additional artifacing on your subject. :) Great episode! I could have use it last week on a project. Maybe I'll have to do a directors/enhanced VFX cut now. :)
Story Master Films: Ryan’s response at 9:38 had me dead you guys are so good at comedy!
Cinecom.net: Damn the tips in this video are gold! Thanks guys :-) PS: You should sell big head Josh dolls for on the dashboard of your car!
Kristof Vde: Should have probably watched this video BEFORE I did a project where every shot is green screen and/or a composite of green screen shots. Great video. Maybe one thing I miss here: when there is too much of a green cast on the hair or face a hue vs hue tweak in the yellow/green range can do wonders.
Kody Lukens: No matter what video issues I have, you guys always have the solution. Really saved my bacon with the hair keying tips here :)
Olórin: Josh is pretty great. Amazing man. I'd love to buy him an ice cold cola sometime.
Jason Sipma: Another great tutorial! The new Hitfilm software is my new go to for this. Their features make it super easy,it's wonderful.
Smart Guys Entertainment: Thank You Film riot crew Your tips and hacks will help me in my short films thank you so much
Vfx Star: I've recently started using Virtual production. I think that option is best for me because I can already see and change the lighting according to what I want it to look like. And I'm not the best with lighting. At least when I buy a decent green screen
Marshall Walker: I love FILM RIOT!!! You guys are the BEST! Really helpful tutorials!!
Brian M: Whats the best method of keying a standup that is really long? Ive been using ultra keyer in Premiere with not a lot of success. I could key in AE and render out an alpha but that would be super big file. I could also do dynamic linking but that is slow too. I would love Keylight in Premiere.
Greg Jones: Not only have cameras and software gotten better and better, but Film Riots gotten better and better! Much ♥ to y'all!!
dieeser: You can apply key color so you don't have to mask the subject, it creates a shape around him automatically.
Downtime Media: Man you guys are still so cringe even after all of these years, but I cannot lie, you guys have always made great content and I appreciate it
Activemotionpictures: I thought they discontinued light-wrap as an individual addon. RG supercomp has it but setting it up is not as easy as this version (which we are all used to)
JCF Films: VERY, VERY, VERY GOOD!!! Muito obrigado galera! ( thank you so much guys!)
PRODUCCIONES VICO: Perfect timing, I was keying and wondering how to key the hair when I received the notification of this video
Pataganja: I was subbed to you guys way back like 10 years ago I got a 3 pack of your tee shirts when I was in about 5th grade one was a directors chair that said like a boss or something lol. I’m in film school now just came across your channel again.
MyVanguardo: Your vid helped me so much Ty. I never thought that as small as a problem as the hairs not showing gray would be the entire cause of my greenscreen hair issue XD.
Lineworks: It's painful how underrrated this channel is..... You guys would be better off making a gaming channel using the amazing humor and production value you can put into it ! i would definitely watch it! ❤ Do give it a thought... as a side project maybe?
Julian Dean: Can you do an episode on cinematography, and when to use certain shots?
Andrew Simon: Why are you guys so good. Like really, if y’all never existed, I don’t think my career would as well. I have been subscribed for so so long and I will never unsubscribe.
Brett Morry: Another great video! I have a question though and that is if you can't pay for adobe premiere or after effects are there any other editing softwares you suggest?
Anakin the War Criminal: I was just about to start looking for good stock footage for a client's business video when you kindly reminded me about Artgrid. Thanks!
CTO LARSSON TECH: Super useful tips thank you!
VFX Hut: Great videos! - What camera is best for heavy greenscreen vfx work, and what is your go to. (these clips actually turned out good too)
liquidcactus: Soo good, ive been trying to key crazy hair lately then this drops, ooh yeah
TVperson1: Guys you have to separate your RGB path from your Alpha path. This way your keyer doesn't interfere with your RGB channels.
Athan Monk: You two need to make a comedy movie together. Haha. Seriously.
Climax: Been waiting for this video. Your tuts is real solutions with needed details. You just killed the other guys.
Douglas Zambon: 8:13 Was the best moment on my day, thanks!
bakonfreek: As an individual with long and insanely messy hair, I appreciate this XD
IX Productions: I've tried on multiple different clips to get the Ramp for the Camera Lens Blur effect to work and I've never gotten it to work. Any advice? I make the solids the same way, then pre-compos, then turn off visibility of the "Ramp" layer and finally change the Blur Map to the Ramp and see no change to the blur of my bg layer.
Adam French: +100000 for Composite Brush. That plugin has saved me more times than not.
Treestan Vera: 1 minute into the video and I already love you and the content bro!!! AMAZING! haha
Mark Benjo Tenorio: Some Film Rioty that Josh in the back ground always react to what's Ryan's doing. Is always Gold moment!.
Nik Linenberger: Josh in the second shot looks like he's cosplaying Edgar Wright.
AyBee: Damn. Just two masks and two keys and that`s it. Great, thanks a lot!!
Moataz Billeh Mednini: @Rayan The only problem I see with this is that the medium focal length of “the handsome man” does not visually match the ultra wide focal length of the background. Aren’t they supposed to match ? It still feels a bit fake although the work you did was on point.
Innocent Bakuli Mmeto: I miss this, Ryan in talking to Josh off cam, it was hilarious on that episode when Josh went too far and kidnapped you into the back of the car
Junaid Asif Tube: Amazing video...so much VALUE
eight10media: ..lmao.. you guys should do a stand up comedy duo.. hilarious!.. crack me up.. hehe
Eve Harlowe: I need to see a full video of you singing that song!!!!OMG! so good!
DGP Kira: Big headed dancing and singing Josh is the most disturbing thing that I never knew that I needed in my life...
alien 11: I need this tutorial for a long time
Reece Mulley: Gotta say, I was a little worried when I saw the shot with the tracking marker going behind the hair. That wouldn't be fun at all
RJD channel: I love this channel SO much!!
SprocketSlip: Question. ! “ What is better green screen or working with projection backgrounds” ?
Panos: something tells me that in this episode ryan is also in front of a green screen...maybe a little easter egg?
Victory Chinedu: "Life is like Photoshop, you never Really learn it." Best merch
Heiko Maiwand: Dammit, you guys did it again... I got J-U-I-C-Y stuck in my head for the foreseeable future
Hana & Goku: 8:28 I am addicted to the combination of those moves and music!
david paquette: nice effort to bring Josh more upfront... Now we need Emily !
Robert Wilde: Josh the bobble head, love it. Almost iconic as “BAMIEWHAM”, witch is still the message notifier on my phone. #LoveYourWork
Reesa Myers: Oh my god!!! YOU ARE MY HERO!!!! I could never figure out the hair!!!!
Jackson Chamblee: This is much better than the keying in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation
TakingThePixels: PLEASE do a tut for the tracked GS at 0:36, I NEED IT in my life
Logan & Blake: Love that the background conversations are back!!!! hahaha
Theo B. E.: that'd be awesome if you did a video about this but for moving shots like the one at 0:39
William Navas: I was looking for a video about this right now!!! That’s sick!!!...
Антон Лагутин: Where did you get the key correct plugin?
Hiiro Productions: Gaddddd Dammm ! ! ! ! this channel gets better and better --- it's ryan lives inside my head
cv: Love it!
Vaibhav Soni: Ultimate video... Thanks a lot
Dam55ian: this is all pretty cool but after the resolve episode about why its really good i kinda wish this was in resolve
Igor Doval: Great info as always!
MattN: EXACTLY what I needed
PRO FV: Tnx guys :D very matte tutorial
NativeDaemoN: Josh Connolly. The epitome of manliness. Haha
MarvelFox Morty: FilmRiot has done so many tutorials on Green Screen but it has an advance ideas from time to time, I like it!, a F**k You version of Ryan is the OG Ryan Connolly in the FilmRiot series
KingKhanAbz - Abdin Khan [Actor]: 0:54 Ryan on Josh's back. This is the bromance I asked for
Asteroid Tracker: I love this stuff
Kasper: This solution involves paying more money than one would earn from a typical green screen gig. Could you make a similar video where we don't need to sell our kidney to get half-decent results?
FamilyFirstJ: Love this
Fun Film: Rumor has it that Film Riot will send me the new Sony A7Siii to do great things with.
KID BOO : thankkkss, this is what i needed
Pedro Valente: Where do I get a Josh for my green screens?
Green Screen HD: thank bro ❤ I also make green screen videos thank you to those who will see❤
See-Thru Multimedia LLC: Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you so much!!!