Help on how to place grass in front of a clip

[Round Trip]

Hello fellow threaders:

As a newbie I need help on a very specific problem. I am using Vegas 6 to work on a clip of an actor sleeping in a dense jungle-like area. Does anyone know how to isolate tall jungle grass (vines, bamboo, trees) to paste them on top of another clip. (I filmed the actor in a somewhat dense tropical area but not dense enough) The green or blue screen does not seem to work for jungles. In other words I just want to cut and paste a forest on top of my subject.

Thanks in advance.

RT

[jel]

hi Round Trip and welcome to the forum!

to be honest i doubt many of the users that post in the newbie forum will have much experience in such a specific video editing request, so i will move this thread to the NLE sub-forum, where hopefully one of the gurus there can help you out.

good luck!

j

[Zarxrax]

That sounds like a very tough problem.
I can see a couple of options here:
1. Try making some CG grass and stuff in a 3d application.
2. Maybe you could get ahold of a couple small trees and some tall grass, and film them on top of the blue screen, then composite them on top of your footage.
3. Maybe you can duplicate your video layer, shift it around a bit, mask some stuff out, composite it over the original video, and make it look like its more dense than it really is.
4. There is a program called particle illusion that can make grass and things. It doesn't look terribly realistic, but with some tweaking you might be able to get it looking ok. Here's a shot from a video I made where I used the grass. The program is pretty expensive though, but I think the demo version includes the grass preset, but it might not. The demo version also puts a watermark on the video, but those are usually pretty easy to work around if you are determined enough.
5. Google image search

[Round Trip]

Thanks for the reply:

I will try to follow option number three tonite.
Option number one may give an artificial looking foreground. What is CG? A 3D application? Does Adobe photoshop count? I also have Z-brush.
Option number two sounds like fun too except we will not have tall grass around here for another 2-three months. The trees around here do not look tropical enough.
Google search sounds like a good option too. I'll check it out and see if I can cut and paste some copyright free image.
I have not had a chance to look at your video yet but I'll send you a report later on

RT

[Round Trip]

I checked the particle emitter site. Looks like a cool program but rather expensive. I also checked your illustration and looks cool but what I am after is a forest in motion with leaves moving and a slight shift in the viewing angle. I will try using video layers...

[liquid217]

You may want to look into WAX which will incorporate into Vegas very easily. It includes a particle generator, although, i am not sure how that would work for trying to simulate grass. WAX also has a 3D object renderer, so if you created a CG (computer generated) 3d object, you could render it with WAX. Although I have never done anything with CG, the application 'Blender' looks very good.

http://www.debugmode.com/wax/

http://www.blender.org/

[Mug Funky]

if green/blue screening isn't working (no surprise there - jungles are green after all, and blue is not dissimilar to green when looking at the YUV values a chroma-key is likely to work with), try a magenta screen. it's the chromatic opposite of green, so you'll be able to get a good mask out of it. just hope you don't get fringing, cause that'd be ugleeeeeee.

[Round Trip]

Fringing??

Thanks for the input. I was trying to think what Do I have that is magenta and that would be my bed sheets. Maybe I can have my kids stretching it behind the tropical section of the local nursery. I know to have well lit and without wrinkles. Are there any pointers on background screen making?
I will also check the WAX program. Thanks

[Zarxrax]

The most important thing is to have it evenly lit so it appears as "solid" as possible. Movement of the screen would also be bad, so i dunno if having kids hold it would work too well, especially if there is maybe some wind blowing or something. If you have a good keying/masking program though (im not sure how the one in Vegas is), then you shouldnt have too much problem.

[uliudo]

It wouldn't be too difficult to stretch the bedsheets across a cheaply built wooden frame. This would keep it wrinkle free and motionless.
Imagine screen printing if that helps...and the wood can be scrap from your local home improvement place-29 cents a piece for a $2 total project that could easily be reused without damaging your sheets.