virtual sets and the talent

[zadgroup]

Hi

I have a tricaster tcdx300 + 3 sony ex3 camcorders.

I need to let my talent put his/her hands on the virtual sets tables.

I used blue table (chroma keyed) , black and glass tables but the result wasn't good.

any trick to do that?

thanks

[bbailey]

Problem with the tables is they are 2D and are a cutoff point for the talent. The talent can't "reach over" the 2D table. I don't see a fix for this. If the talent's hands went up higher than the cutoff point of the table you'll see the reflection of the hands in the table but they won't be able to cross the plane of the table's back edge without falling behind the table.

Now, if you don't use a virtual set but instead, use a background and a real desk with reflective surface, You'd get the talent's reflection in the real table but you loose the camera angles the virtual set has and the background would not reflect in the surface of the table.

The virtual sets have such a unique way of being useful. If it can work for you to have the talent NOT try to break the plane with their hands, you'll have a very nice way to easily produce a multicamera shoot.

[SBowie]

This is a tricky issue, and one that I've given some thought to but not had time to experiment with. The stock LiveSets generally circumvent the matter by obscuring the actual desk completely, whether by the camera angle or the design of the virtual desk itself.

The TCXD300 version of LiveMatte is good enough that, if you had a suitable 'green desk', an ideal lighting solution, and matching keyer settings, you could notionally replace a physical desktop with a virtual one, with 'reflections'. The thing is, the reflections of the hands can't ever be perfect (the camera can't peer into the underside of the shot to show the palms, for example). You might get away with it with a little blur and some transparency if you held to a glancing angle - haven't really played with this, though.

Other options include the obvious one - use a real desk in a virtual environment, or carefully align a real desk so that only it's top shows behind the virtual desk front (you'd probably want to do this with a bit of a riser on the virtual desk front to mask the seam). Since the latter would require very careful alignment of the virtual and real desks, the stock sets don't attempt this approach. It might be ok in a more permanent or locked down installation.

Hope this helps a bit.

[ted]

We played with this too when a client requested the same thing. We never got a pretty solution.

So for now my response to a client asking this is...."if you want a coffee cup or script to be set on the desk, spend $50,000 and a month to design and build the set!" :D
Just kidding, sort of. But you gotta draw the line at some point.

[zadgroup]

thanks alot i'll try and give you my feedback

[YourSolution]

We have the same problem - the solution is puting black plexi or glass on table.

We are using black table with black plexi on top.

You can see how it works the on the pictures below.

[SBowie]

You can see how it works the on the pictures below.That's pretty much exactly what I meant by "carefully align a real desk so that only it's top shows behind the virtual desk front (you'd probably want to do this with a bit of a riser on the virtual desk front to mask the seam)". Thanks for sharing. :thumbsup:

[ted]

Nice.

[zadgroup]

I'm on it, will try and send you the result

[zadgroup]

Hi

I tried the plexi and it gave me an important advance, but still need to make the real desk fit over the virtual one.
How did you make it?

thanks we're doing well up til now.

[J|L]

give us some screen grab of your work... then we try to help you.....
cheers