Best way to KEY out Slugs & snails ?? Is Green background a bad idea?

S

Stefanos

Active member
Hi eveyone. I would really appreciate it if any users could help me out with my rather bizarre dilemma.

I want to do a big amount of keying for a film I'm starting soon. I'm intending on keying lots of slugs and snails from different angles etc. Now normally I know we use ofcourse a green or blue background to key out most stuff and since it's the best when keying peoples' skintones as it's the most opposite color. Now in my situation where the subject (Slugs+Snails) has no skintones and is predominantly greenish+brownish , my logic tells me that After Effects CS5 and Keylight 1.2 will struggle a lot if I use a green background against greenish subjects, especially since I can only capture in 8 bit 4:2:0. Am I correct? Would a wild color like purple or red make things easier or worse? Although I am very after effects savvy , I don't really have proper knowledge in keying, so I could really do with some advice.

thank you in advance.

Stefanos
 
If they are green, then yeah, greenscreen would be a bad idea :)

Keylight doesn't work on other colors, only blue and green. Primatte can work with other colors
 
I've keyed off red with keylight, you can do any color

edit: for slugs and snails with brown skin I think a blue chroma key might work best
 
Last edited:
thanks guys, so blue might be a good choice. Also, another thought I had was maybe it'd be good to take picture of exact slug and then using a color wheel or picker determine the most opposite color and see if it's closer to sth like blue or red?
 
Sorry, my bad, I guess Keylight does work with other colors.

I think that's a good idea to pick an "opposite color"

One potential problem with blue is it's usually the noisiest channel in cameras, but red might overlap too much with the "brown" in your snails
 
Why dont you shoot a test with a few variables then do some post work tests!

FWIW . I think you are going to have issues with the proximity of the "small" subects to whatever BG screen.... if they are actually placed on to it.

I would be testing by having the slugs and snails on optical glass and separating the bg.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top