Topic: PHOTO NOVELISTS LOUNGE -

[hangarbay94]

CC, I've used Pinnicle Studio Plus, and it worked pretty well. If you are going to use models then things get a bit tougher. I found that there tends to be a lot of colour bleed which affects the quality of the effect, so I tended to use photoshop to cut out the images I needed, then I'd have to save everything as a transparent .png file then use layers to get the effects I needed.

Suffice it to say I burned out making movies, they take forever, software crashes happen way too often causing hours of work to be lost, and there seems to be no consistency among programs, they all seem to work with different file formats and installing all of the different codecs can play havoc with a PC.

[hangarbay94]

Kualan,

Thanks so much for that, I seem to have figured it all out. Now I'm going to check out some of the custom maps and have a bit of a play.

I'm finding that some of the map textures within buildings are not displaying. I'm seeing white wireframe squares. Must be my graphics card. I've got an old PC running XP, I'll give it a try on that one.

Cheers,

HB

[CloneCrazy]

CC, I've used Pinnicle Studio Plus, and it worked pretty well. If you are going to use models then things get a bit tougher. I found that there tends to be a lot of colour bleed which affects the quality of the effect, so I tended to use photoshop to cut out the images I needed, then I'd have to save everything as a transparent .png file then use layers to get the effects I needed.

Suffice it to say I burned out making movies, they take forever, software crashes happen way too often causing hours of work to be lost, and there seems to be no consistency among programs, they all seem to work with different file formats and installing all of the different codecs can play havoc with a PC.

Thanks HB, I'll have to look into that program. Does it work on both pictures and videos?

[hangarbay94]

Yes, I used it to create XWA chapter 18, I had to use another program to add the special effects, which was the hard part as both programs used different file formats and CODEC's.

Here's a link the the video I created using a mix of in-game footage that I blue screened into other backgrounds and images. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb60YVnijOQ&feature=player_embedded#!

Unfortunately it seems the soundtrack has been removed by YouTube, another reason why I won't be making any new videos.

[Kualan]

Which maps are you having trouble with, HB?

[John Caliber]

OT, but I did buy a large muslin greenscreen for the purposes of photographing action figure stories against. I soon found it quite depressing, as green is not my favourite colour other than on leaves and plants, and it darkened my studio quite a bit. It didn't take much more time to isolate the figures against the magnolia-painted studio wall using Photoshop, so I only use the greenscreen for forest diorama flooring now

[hangarbay94]

I also found GreenScreen difficult to use with figures as the green colour reflected onto the paintwork on the figures.

I used to make backdrops and sets using mountboard and keep them out of focus to create movement in the shots.

[John Caliber]

A good idea.

I found that the greenscreen tended to become patchy when trying to isolate it in Photoshop - it became mottled with some blue areas; took about the same time to manually outline toy silhouettes and feather them with a pale background (the wall), and as you say, the green reflects back on the toys to a degree, making them look sickly.