ZS Dissection Lab #3 - Sims City Streets
Examining the street/traffic scenes from Nine Inch Nails: Only as an example of a heavily fabricated scene using compositing.
Intro music is “Impulse” by Processor, from their album “Are You For Real?”, available at Magnatune.com
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Really great dissection, Overman. The Croma-key technique can open up your filmmaking if used intelligently. Thanks for this!
Comment by Ricky Grove — May 9, 2008 @ 8:19 pm
Those shots really stuck out to me the first time I saw “Only.” So in total, four separate layers for the side-scrolling shot? The background, the priest, the foreground props, and the foreground moving cars? The way it comes together is so seamless and coherent that anyone who isn’t really familiar with The Sims (me for instance) would have no idea otherwise. Thanks! I look forward to seeing what you have in store for us next Friday!
Comment by kradproductions — May 9, 2008 @ 9:39 pm
@krad - I touched on those four layers in this video, but there was actually a fifth I skipped for sake of brevity because it was such a minor detail - the street lights on the other (closest) side of the street, blurred to give a bit of depth of field.
The perspective shot was a layer for each lane of the highway, plus one for the priest, plus one for the background w/ foot traffic.
Took me several days to film each of those overall shots, but I was really happy with the end result. About 99% happy. (there are a couple things that still aggravate me, an inevitability for me it seems)
Comment by Overman — May 9, 2008 @ 11:18 pm
Great job, both tutorial and movie. I could watch “making of” videos for hours, even for software I don’t use. Quite often there are more brain and drama in video tutorials then in most movies out there.
Just a little tip for Vegas users, something that many users are doing wrong:
Use “Chroma Blur” video effect BEFORE “Chroma Keyer”. When the “Chroma Keyer” dialog opens, select a medium blur to start.
When Vegas modifies video, it decompresses the video into a 4:4:4 color space.
The best way to think of it is that this gives color information to each pixel. The “Chroma Blur” smooths the colors in that space. Now instead of cutting out the object in big blocks, you can cut it out in smooth almost one pixel lines.
Next, when you click on the “Show mask only” (black and white view), the best results tend to come from adjusting the high threshold first and then the low threshold second.
It is something like golden rule that if you have to use any more mask blur than about .050 to look good, you might need to go back and increase the “Chroma Blur” or reset your thresholds.
Comment by Tom — May 10, 2008 @ 4:52 am
Ooo, nice tip about Chroma Blur, Tom. I’m looking forward to trying out that technique in about 10 minutes.
Comment by Overman — May 10, 2008 @ 9:33 pm