Im looking for a way to remove a character (make invisible) from a video but leave the character's shadow.  The shot is static front facing so green sceening the character out would leave a pretty big gap in the footage.  Any thoughts?

Quite a challenge set here biz, (and I've not had much sleep these last few days). But what about turning the camera up 90 degrees so you are looking down onto the characters shadow? No props, terrain, etc. just a 2d background colour so you could then greenscreen it or (and I haven't thought this through yet), pop video it.

:cool: gizmo

Yea, thats the only solution I can figure as well but I would really like to leave the camera facing where it is if possible.  Heres a screen.  The idea is for the mans shadow to stand up and perform an action while he remains sitting.  So I would shoot the man without a shadow and then the shadow without the man..so to speak.

Oooohhh.....that would be a cool effect....you could almost replicate something like what was seen in Coppola's version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with Drac doing one thing, and the shadow doing something else.

Hmmmmm....I tried monkeying around with straight up opacity set to 1. Didn't work.
I tried making a "plane" photograph of the character (with accompanying opacity shot to eliminate background on the plane) and then tried to reduce the plane image to 1. That didn't work either.

The shadows seem to terminate once the character/object reaches a certain opacity setting. Shadows do not even fade commensurately with the opacity of the character/object. It's either there, or it isn't.

I based this experiment on what I do sometimes with things like "engine glow" on my starship models, where I can actually bring the physical object down to an opacity of 1, (where the glow cone/disc is very much invisible) while still being able to maintain the full glow effect. Sadly, this effect does not work with shadows.

Sorry I couldn't come up with any favorable results.

Anyone else? :)



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

Ok. So why not work two characters? Turn the first characters shadow option off (actually make that both characters), and make a second replica character, diffuse in grey, opacity down, or whatever works, and use that for the shadow.

Edit: Sorry wrote this without looking at your screen first, but it still could work depending on your specific needs.

:cool: gizmo

You can just in your case, if I understand correctly what you are looking to do, just paint the character Black and use them as a shadow....


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTrNGf6Ak0g

In this Clip you will see "Jana" during a morning workout, "Shadow Boxing".

1. She was first turned completely Black(Skin, Hair, Clothing, Etc.), then Exported as a Widget.

2. Re-imported as a Widget and placed on a Flat Plane, then Flipped 180 deg. and placed against the wall.

The Original Characters Clothing and Skin was returned to Normal so she could "Shadow Box" with the light from behind her casting a shadow of her on the wall...(Not really of course).

The Lamp sitting behind her is there to perpetuate the lie that she is in fact "Shadow Boxing" It has a Glowing Ball placed on the front to simulate it is on.

Without putting the character on a Flat Plane as a Widget it would not have given you the Reversed and Mirrored image. Just reversing the motion will not do. You have to apply it, then flip it.

Oh yeah, the motion you export as a widget must match exactly as the character and be timed the same "Frames Per Second" when creating the Widget.

This has been a short "Widget" learning experience...try and see if you can do it. It's easier than it looks.

P.S. Substitute the word popVideo for WIDGET as the widget was the only thing available when it was produced, but the same principle applies to using a popVideo on a Flat Plane



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" If I had Alzheimer's (Old Timers), would I know it? "

I'm afraid you can not remove the character but leave its shadow.
But you can do something like this (very rough and fast test). If you're interested, I can tell you more about how it was done.

--------
Igor

Biz,
You can probably make use of the other ideas...this is what I got when I tried to make the Avatar invisible and retain the shadow. This is what Martok discovered I'm guessin'.

You might be able to make it work in some way with clever backgrounds, props and lighting but it ain't 100% that's for sure... there's still a "ghost" present ;) This is still kinda cool for an "Invisible Man/Frodo and the Ring" effect though ;)

Now if we could "throw a pattern" with a light source like in Lightwave 3D then we'd have something :D







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or you can probably do this with the editing tricks the faux ghost hunters use

basically you make 2 identical films, 1 with the character ..no shadow, and the 2nd with the character creating whatever shadow movement you want .....

then you overlay the videos on each other so the left of the screen has the character and the right of the screen has the film with just the shadow.

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That might work in some cases too...maybe more than one way to crack an egg :D


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