These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

EVE General Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Greenscreening Coming to EVE Online

First post
Author
Previous Topic Next Topic
Morganta
The Greater Goon
#21 - 2012-06-29 12:34:53 UTC  |  Edited by: Morganta
you blogged about background color?

magic wand ftw
and the proper term is chroma key
Degren
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#22 - 2012-06-29 12:35:31 UTC
So basically...I'm getting a parrot.

Got it, thanks

Hello, hello again.
Sirinda
Ekchuah's Shrine Comporium
#23 - 2012-06-29 12:36:00 UTC
Oooh, sleeve tattoos! They aren't forgotten! =D
Bloodpetal
Tir Capital Management Group
#24 - 2012-06-29 12:50:41 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
I should add that this is just on my computer and has not been checked in or anything, or formally accepted "feature".
I really like the idea though (and CCP t0rfiFrans too), and I had some free time last night so I decided to try it out.

I hope we can add this, but it would never go in as a selectable background... you could never save your character with this ugly background, and it would be only available if you had some prefs flag set.


I have considered doing some stop motion style animation with the character editor and thought that I could use one of the more "solid" backgrounds to play around with, but I haven't had the time to sit down and figure out a workflow that would work and if any of the bg's were sutiable for keying... (although I thought a couple of the blue solid ones were really good options).

Where I am.
Natsett Amuinn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#25 - 2012-06-29 13:03:50 UTC
Simetraz wrote:
Natsett Amuinn wrote:
Poetic Stanziel wrote:
Natsett Amuinn wrote:
Can do this in photoshop in just a few seconds. Wouldn't help me any, but would be usefull for people who aren't that familliar with PS.
I find some of the gradient backgrounds don't remove cleanly, leaving artifacts at the character edges. Maybe I'm missing some extra option that allows Photoshop to go a step further. Either way, a solid "greenscreen" background should be beneficial to all, novice and pro.

Don't remove the background, remove the forground. It takes practice but once you get used to it you can cut very complex shapes from an imagine in PS.

Working in multiple layers I can have the background image laid, cut the forground character, drop it to the background layer, remove the original background layer. Once you have the hang of it you can do it all in PS in the same amount of time, and without any artifacts.

The green screen is cool though and would be great for a novice PS user.

It might be easier with paint shop.


You know instead of just being pathetic you could tell the OP to do something constructive like saving multi images with different lighting conditions so that is blends in better.

But no if that is the best you could come up with, not impressed.

Why would I do that to drop my character onto a different background?
Valeo Galaem
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#26 - 2012-06-29 13:20:25 UTC  |  Edited by: Valeo Galaem
Since portrait exports are rendered on the client (they are, right?) can't there be an option to export to PNG with the background as alpha?

A bit more work than just adding a solid green background image to the client, though.

Standalone Windows build of ccpgames/dae-to-red

https://github.com/Nu11u5/dae-to-red/releases
Morganta
The Greater Goon
#27 - 2012-06-29 13:29:06 UTC
Bloodpetal wrote:
CCP karkur wrote:
I should add that this is just on my computer and has not been checked in or anything, or formally accepted "feature".
I really like the idea though (and CCP t0rfiFrans too), and I had some free time last night so I decided to try it out.

I hope we can add this, but it would never go in as a selectable background... you could never save your character with this ugly background, and it would be only available if you had some prefs flag set.


I have considered doing some stop motion style animation with the character editor and thought that I could use one of the more "solid" backgrounds to play around with, but I haven't had the time to sit down and figure out a workflow that would work and if any of the bg's were sutiable for keying... (although I thought a couple of the blue solid ones were really good options).


dark BG and luma key?
Quaaid
Phoenix Foundry
#28 - 2012-06-29 13:57:16 UTC
This just reminded me to re-watch the 'You Suck at Photoshop" series on youtube.


Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_X5uR7VC4M

Hadley X
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#29 - 2012-06-29 15:35:47 UTC
Make the portrait background as uniform as possible using a color that is as far from from the colors used in the foreground. This distance is measured in the color space used as a distance function. Any variation of the background color is used as a range of the distance function.

This is the basics of Chroma Key. On most image software that has a color fill tool, that allows a range or sensitivity setting uses this as its basis. Small artifacts created at the foreground / background interface can create some problems if the range is too small or too large. Too small and you get some of the background bleeding into the foreground. too large and the foreground gets 'eaten'. This is mostly a problem with real pictures and a mostly uniform background. It should not be a problem within the context of EVE unless there is some anti-aliasing happening during the rendering of the image or the compression is too high causing the compression artifacts along the sharp edge of the foreground / background.

I wrote one of the first photo I.D. software programs that did this in the early 1990's in DOS. I'm sure the technique has been improved since then, but the above is the core concept.
you can also use a static image of the background without the foreground as a key to separate the background from the foreground using the static image as a key. Again due to compression artifacts you will need to use a range function for this to work successfully but it can be done.

One day people are going to learn not to start stupid arguments with CCP Sreegs. --  White Tree
Lin-Young Borovskova
Doomheim
#30 - 2012-06-29 15:42:24 UTC
Poor girl with all that stuff at the beach... give her "tha" bikini !

Also: what is that new mod called Twitter and how does it works? -requires AWU V?

brb
Doctor Grugon
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#31 - 2012-06-29 15:45:33 UTC
Hadley X wrote:
Make the portrait background as uniform as possible using a color that is as far from from the colors used in the foreground. This distance is measured in the color space used as a distance function. Any variation of the background color is used as a range of the distance function.

This is the basics of Chroma Key. On most image software that has a color fill tool, that allows a range or sensitivity setting uses this as its basis. Small artifacts created at the foreground / background interface can create some problems if the range is too small or too large. Too small and you get some of the background bleeding into the foreground. too large and the foreground gets 'eaten'. This is mostly a problem with real pictures and a mostly uniform background. It should not be a problem within the context of EVE unless there is some anti-aliasing happening during the rendering of the image or the compression is too high causing the compression artifacts along the sharp edge of the foreground / background.

I wrote one of the first photo I.D. software programs that did this in the early 1990's in DOS. I'm sure the technique has been improved since then, but the above is the core concept.
you can also use a static image of the background without the foreground as a key to separate the background from the foreground using the static image as a key. Again due to compression artifacts you will need to use a range function for this to work successfully but it can be done.


Doh, thought I posted with my main...

Are you standing where you should be?
Simetraz
State War Academy
Caldari State
#32 - 2012-06-29 16:07:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Simetraz
Natsett Amuinn wrote:


Why would I do that to drop my character onto a different background?


Okay I will bite.
It is all about the details.
Some of the best photoshops are debunked because of lighting.

Pay attention to the shadows between the top and bottom pictures
Look at the lighting here
You can clearly see the direction of the sun
And here is one with the sun in the reverse direction

The above are just pictures (I haven't looked to see if they were touched up) but you can see how the lighting changes things even with the same subject.

Maybe I can find the actual photoshop picture I was actually looking for, it had a lot of issues but you could clearly see one person had their picture taken outside while the actual subject was inside.
Even if they had everything correct it still would have looked false.

EVERYBODY KNOWS
Solstice Project
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#33 - 2012-06-29 16:26:36 UTC  |  Edited by: Solstice Project
I'm sorry, but could i have, by chance,
a PAUSE-button or something in the main character creation window ?

One that allows me to pause the movement, so i can scroll up/down for shots ?

I know that perspective changes during scrolling, but that's less of an issue.

I have a hard time making more high resolution p**n. :)



edit: I have a hard time making more high resolution p**n. :)
now that reads really wrong ... xD
CCP karkur
C C P
C C P Alliance
#34 - 2012-06-29 18:05:58 UTC
Solstice Project wrote:
I'm sorry, but could i have, by chance,
a PAUSE-button or something in the main character creation window ?

One that allows me to pause the movement, so i can scroll up/down for shots ?

I know that perspective changes during scrolling, but that's less of an issue.

I have a hard time making more high resolution p**n. :)

edit: I have a hard time making more high resolution p**n. :)
now that reads really wrong ... xD

When we changed it so the character stops when you start sculpting, we considered making it so there was button to freeze it instead of freeze it when you start sculpting... is this something more people would be interested in?

CCP karkur | Programmer | Team Five 0 | @CCP_karkur
Morwen Lagann
Tyrathlion Interstellar
#35 - 2012-06-29 18:39:43 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
When we changed it so the character stops when you start sculpting, we considered making it so there was button to freeze it instead of freeze it when you start sculpting... is this something more people would be interested in?


Pause button would be nice. Given how the "idle" animation loops every so often, it might also be nice if we could get a slider that allowed us to pick certain spots in the animation.

Some of them make for pretty decent shots. :3

(Add in the ability to greenscreen the main customization screen and it'd be even better...)

Morwen Lagann

CEO, Tyrathlion Interstellar

Coordinator, Arataka Research Consortium

Owner, The Golden Masque
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#36 - 2012-06-29 19:59:27 UTC
Poetic Stanziel wrote:
The answer came within the hour from Erlendur, CCP Karkur, and Torfi Frans Olafsson.
Just a quick note that these other two dudes are CCP Explorer and CCP t0rfifrans, to link our Twitter identities to our dev characters.

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
CCP Explorer
C C P
C C P Alliance
#37 - 2012-06-29 20:39:43 UTC
Cryten Jones wrote:
CCP karkur wrote:
I hope we can add this, but it would never go in as a selectable background... you could never save your character with this ugly background, and it would be only available if you had some prefs flag set.
How about having the rendering server that does the hi detail portraits just generate a green screen one that can be downloaded from eve gate or account management?
I'm not so sure that would be useful. For performance reasons then we only render an hour later after you take a new portrait. This is to allow people to change their minds and retake the portrait before we finally re-render. For green-screening / blue-screening purposes I'm assuming that people need an immediate turn-around loop.

The export to PNG with the background as alpha idea is more interesting, except we render the images as JPGs and I don't know how deep into the rendering pipe we would have to go to be able to do that.

On this subject: What are good green/blue-screening values (if statically chosen)? Based on some quick searching for green then 25, 130, 10 ("Japanese Laurel") and for blue then 30, 70, 160 ("Fun Blue") came up. What is your experience?

Erlendur S. Thorsteinsson | Senior Development Director | EVE Online // CCP Games | @CCP_Explorer
Natsett Amuinn
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#38 - 2012-06-29 21:06:21 UTC
Simetraz wrote:
Natsett Amuinn wrote:


Why would I do that to drop my character onto a different background?


Okay I will bite.
It is all about the details.
Some of the best photoshops are debunked because of lighting.

Pay attention to the shadows between the top and bottom pictures
Look at the lighting here
You can clearly see the direction of the sun
And here is one with the sun in the reverse direction

The above are just pictures (I haven't looked to see if they were touched up) but you can see how the lighting changes things even with the same subject.

Maybe I can find the actual photoshop picture I was actually looking for, it had a lot of issues but you could clearly see one person had their picture taken outside while the actual subject was inside.
Even if they had everything correct it still would have looked false.


That's getting a little to complex for most people who just want to take the character and put it on a custom background.

I was only trying to make the point that someone who isn't a novice using a coral product will be able to do the same thing without needing the greenscreen effect; almost as fast, and that the greenscreen would be very good for people who only have a really basic understanding of the tools available to them in applications like Photo and Paint shop.

I'm not downing the OP in any way. I think it's actually really neat.

I also don't get why I would ever take multiple pictures using different lighting, when the entire idea is to just be able to change the background. It's not really photomanipulation, it's just a screenshot, and much less complex then working with a photograph.

The cutting tool in coral suits are extremely powerful and when done right won't leave behind any noticable artifacts. Proffesional photographers and artists have been doing exactly this for many years now.

I apologize to the OP if I came across as "pathetic" or being a douche. Arts been my life for the past 30 years. I'm all about people being creative and anything anyone can do that allows more people to be creative, I say go for.
Tlat Ij
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#39 - 2012-06-29 22:03:43 UTC
CCP karkur wrote:
Solstice Project wrote:
I'm sorry, but could i have, by chance,
a PAUSE-button or something in the main character creation window ?

One that allows me to pause the movement, so i can scroll up/down for shots ?

I know that perspective changes during scrolling, but that's less of an issue.

I have a hard time making more high resolution p**n. :)

edit: I have a hard time making more high resolution p**n. :)
now that reads really wrong ... xD

When we changed it so the character stops when you start sculpting, we considered making it so there was button to freeze it instead of freeze it when you start sculpting... is this something more people would be interested in?

That would be a ridiculously awesome thing. The fact that would avatars are physically unable to sit/stand still is immensely annoying.

P.S. When do I get arm tattoos? I want.
Poetic Stanziel
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#40 - 2012-06-29 22:17:08 UTC
Natsett Amuinn wrote:
I apologize to the OP if I came across as "pathetic" or being a douche. Arts been my life for the past 30 years. I'm all about people being creative and anything anyone can do that allows more people to be creative, I say go for.

I didn't take offense. Obviously you're really adept at Photoshop and do things in a way that works best and quickest for you. I, personally, would really benefit with a chroma key (did I use that correctly, Morganta?) background.