Chroma key - Main Image Adjust

V1.87 of Stop MotionMaker Advance brings a powerful new function that enables the interaction of live video and a stop motion figure.  Now this is not new, but normally requires the painstaking mapping of where the stop motion character was going to be and often would take many different processes and the use of different software for each.  

In this tutorial we are going to use a quickly made video as our chromakey background to animate our stop motion character against.    To show what is possible, we are only using a simple Web Cam (Logitec 4000) as our live video stop motion production camera.  The optics of a better video camera will give  better results then what is shown here.

Zoom adjustment> Note. The ‘Zoom’ Adjustment on V1.95 will only adjust the size of the chromakey/rotoscope video preview.

Step 1 - Setup up camera and software.

Plug in your video camera (in this case a Logtec 4000) and then open up the Stop MotionMaker Advance application.

Set the video size (dependent on camera)
Select ‘Enable Frame Averaging’ (set to 5).
Set the ‘Frames Per Shot’ to ‘1’ for a more realistic result or ‘2’ for a more stop motion look.

Step 2 - Take one frame to enable Chromakey system.

Take one frame to give the application some thing to key against.  This can be deleted once more frames have been taken.

Step 3 - Open the Background Chromakey Viewer.

Select Functions/B/Chromakey to open the Background Chromakey Viewer.

Step 4 - Import a Video AVI

Import a AVI video into the Background Chromakey viewer by selecting ‘Open Video’ and selecting a video from the ‘Open’ window.

Step 4 - Open the Background Chromakey Viewer.

Chromakey the object to the first frame by following the procedure layed out in the ‘Chromakey with Video’ tutorial.  Note: As the image will be reduced in size the quality of the chromakey can be less then normal.

Step 5 - Adjusting Chromakey Controls.

The Image has now been chromakeyed as shown below and is now ready to be digitally reduced in size and move to the desired location within the chromakey image.

Step 6 - Finding Start Image from Video.

Once the chromakey setup is completed, display the required first frame from the video with the slider and update the displayed image to the main video window if required (image should automatically be updated).

Step 7 - Reducing and adjusting the live image. 

Now adjust the ‘Reduce’, ‘Move Up/Down’ and ‘Move Left/Right’ controls until the live image is were it is required.

Step 8 - Adjust figure as required. 

Adjust live image figure as required for this first shot.

Step 9 - Mask out if Required.

Mask out areas if required using the ‘Add Chroma Mat’ (forces selected pixels to the Chroma Image), or Subtract Chroma Mat’ (forces selected pixels to the live image). In the example the ‘Add Chroma Mat’ check box is selected in the ‘Chromkey Controls’ page and the mouse cursor used to draw around the arm area and reveal the face. See the SMMAdv ‘Chromkey Video’ tutorial for more information.

Step 10 - Take shot.

The image is now ready and the shot can be taken (select the default ‘Enter’ Key or the button with a camera icon). Reposition the live image character and continue.