Tips for compositing greenscreen people?

[cgrant3d]

There are times when I'd really like to just composite a person into a 3d scene directly within After Effects. I've tried some of the tools for getting 3D cameras out of Max and into AE but haven't had any good results. Do any of you composite people directly into your comp or do you do it the tried and true way by just rendering another pass out of Max?

[percydaman]

Ive done both really. Just depends on the situation.

[dellis]

Chris...congrats on the promotion. And i saw you image in the vismasters email....i put a copy of it in my Inspirational folder!

[EricKlein]

It sounds like the people you want to comp weren't necessarily made for your specific shot? Because if everything is preplanned, comping is a no-brainer in AFterFX, or any compositor...when it's just a 'card in space', I still often do as you suggest and go through Max. I've had some luck in the past with combustion and .rpf's as well.

e.

[egz]

There are times when I'd really like to just composite a person into a 3d scene directly within After Effects. I've tried some of the tools for getting 3D cameras out of Max and into AE but haven't had any good results. Do any of you composite people directly into your comp or do you do it the tried and true way by just rendering another pass out of Max?

I use Max2AE for stuff like this. After exporting/importing the cameras, I usually export the position of a helper positioned on the ground where the feet of the people are supposed to be located. Then I change the anchor of the 3D layer in AfterEffects to so that this is located right below the feet in the footage as well. Then it is just a matter of adjusting the scale and orientation in AE to get pretty good results.

[cgrant3d]

It's been a while since I updated the thread so I thought I'd give a breakdown in case anybody else wants to integrate video people into a rendering in post...

I'm using the "maxFX scene" script - http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/maxfx-scene to get my camera / dummy data into AE. It's pretty easy to use you just select all your objects you want (pivot placement is what gets exported) and your camera and it exports to a javscript file that you run from AfterFX to recreate the environment.

1. Export objects / camera from Max to AE via steps above
2. In After Effects - File / Scripts / Run Script and run your exported file
3. Adjust AE camera FOV to match
4. Select all dummy objects and scale them down because they import as big ol distorted planes and all I wanted was a point for position
5a. Drag into AE your render
5b. Drag into AE your keyed footage of a person
6. Turn on the 3D layer button for your person footage
7. Copy / paste the position of a dummy to your person and presto you person is lined up and moves with the camera
8. Use the orientation property of your person layer to re-orient them to face the camera
9. Scale your person to fit
10. Render comp

More thoughts...
- I typically render tons of multimatte's / matid's / rendid's so I can do all my comping w/o tons of extra special matte passes. However in this case, I needed to comp a person behind 1 railing and in front of another railing. Unfortunately all the railing objects had the same material so I had to create a new matte. What I did was matte everything black, then create white boxes approx 6'x6'x2' in the area where I wanted a person so I could have some room to slide them around and still have a good matte. If this doesn't make sense I can attach a screenshot im somebody is interested...
- Motion blur / zdepth should be doable since it's a animated camera in AE but I haven't tried yet...
- Make sure to set your AE camera FOV or else nothing makes sense
- The more I do in post the more I realize AE isn't the best tool for this... Oh well it's the only one we've got for the time being and I have other things on the purchase list ...

[cgrant3d]

On a semi-related note I'm finding I'm happier with AE if I create several comp's that reference each other instead of working within 1 comp.

Say I have an aerial shot w/motion blur and zdepth and I'm comping in 3d people, a new background, trees and cars.

I'll set up each element as a comp for color correcting. Then I'll nest that comp into an FX comp I can apply motionblur/zdepth to then I'll nest that into a final comp per element.

For example:
Shot_color -> Shot_fx -> Shot_comp
Trees_color -> Trees_fx
Cars_color -> Cars_fx

Once most things are separated into different comp's I can just have one clean Shot_comp that nests in all the other comp's in their proper layer order. Of course there are some things that work better / worse this way but I find the "layer" methodology of AE to not work well with complicated comp's and by nesting things like this I feel like it's useful to our needs...

[cgrant3d]

Chris...congrats on the promotion. And i saw you image in the vismasters email....i put a copy of it in my Inspirational folder!

Thanks for the kind words Dwayne. I've been inspired by so many people on the forums over the years it's nice to know I've been able to pass along a little inspiration myself...