GreenScreen - I did it

Hello SketchUppers,

I have just made a video demo of the use of SketchUp and a green screen effect.

What???

A SketchUp animation + a nice background + green screen effect = nice presentation video.

A picture is worth a thousand words and a video a million... or soemthing like that.

http://www.smartsaga.net/

It took me a bout 10 minutes to figure out how to use the program and put the video together... another 2 min to render it.

Have a good one.

Hey, that's a cool idea. Last December, for Christmas cards I drew a Christmas tree lightbulb in SketchUp. I copied it a number of times and spread them around so they looked like they were scattered on the floor. Then I took a photograph of my infant son sitting on the floor and combined them to make it look like he was sitting in the midst of them. I didn't think it would fool anyone but several people asked how I kept him from picking up the bulbs.

Now I wonder if I could do something with him and SketchUp in a video. Hmmm..

By the way, if you want to see the picture I was talking about, it is here: http://www.woodshopphotos.com/albums/Dave-R1s-Album/Ian_and_Lights2.jpg [dead link]

That's really cool Antonio. It suggests lots of possibilities. It would be fun to see a sketchup car moving down a real street!

I had a similar idea back in 2002 (yikes!) that I experimented with but it related to static images rather than movies. I attach the example I first posted back in Dec.'02. Must have been SketchUp2 then??

Regards, Ross

*Great* card Dave! Little guy must be getting big. ~:^)

Regards, Ross

Ross. Cool shot with the rocks and cubes.

The little guy is indeed getting big and into everything. :) He had his first birthday on May 2. First ice cream headache that day as well. ;)

Joe, it's not my site. Another woodworker set it up as a free place for woodworkers to post pictures. Actually, I think he's interested in selling the whole thing. I can see if I still have the info if you're interested.

that's allright Dave, already have a site.

speaking about places to post pics .. I found this site

http://www.yousendit.com/

I'd like to see what Antonio is talking about but the site. smartSAGA.net, a forum from what I can see and is imposible to read as the text is very small and will not increase with my zoom function.

Any suggestions or links ?

Mike

Mike In internet explorer I have text size view set to medium and the text in question appears larger than the text here on the SketchUp forums. Maybe you have your screen resolution set so high it is fighting legibility.

Anyways this is what Antonio wrote:

"I just bought a video editor called Movie Edit Pro 10. This program was made by a company called MAGIX. This is my first video editor and I was just playing with it in combination with SketchUp, a program to "sketch" in 3D. SketchUp is a very powerful and yet easy to use 3D design program. You can make houses, little models, big buildings or entire cities with SketchUp.

Anyways, one of the things I would like to do with the animations I create with SketchUp is to be able to combine them with other animations or add nice backgrounds. Long story short, here is a test video I put toghether using a SkethUp animation with "green" background, a wallpaper with the theme of my website and the "Green Box" effect (Green Screen effect.)

The video is in AVI format, I used the DivX codec to compress it." The movie file Antonio links to is here: http://www.smartsaga.net/sketchup/chromatest.avi [dead link]

Regards, Ross

Small text?? Forums?? mmmm....

Well, my website is still under construction because I just redid the "theme," and I redid it to conform to accessibility standards. Now, the front page is for news only kind of thing, people can post comments for each news entry, just like a blog.

Thanks Ross for puting the info here. Good idea.

Have a good one.

try www.photobucket.com it's free but I found it worth the $25 fee to have folders so I could organize my photos.

Thanks for the info, lbuttery.

I've seen one that gives you some free space for picture hosting. This one has the option to create folders at no extra cost.

http://www.onfinite.com/

Have a good one.

So, where does one get the DixX codec for Windows Media Player?

Gary

Mike I got the page to enlarge by hitting Ctrl and my mouse wheel, zoomed it to a readable size.

Gary - I watch DixX encoded movies in a DivX movie player. You can find all the DivX 'stuff' here: <http://www.divxnetworks.com>

Regards, Ross

Right, any idea of some green screen applications for Macs? Just what did you do exactly? A tutorial would be fantastic...

Ooops, that should have said DivX. Clumsy fingers. ;)

Thanks, Ross.

Gary

I will be updating www.smartsaga.net to include links to the DivX codec, to include some info about some cool video players, and, of course, info on how I did it.

I posted two more examples on my website http://www.smartsaga.net and a little bit of info on how to do it. I will provide more detailed info on a tutorial. I know, none of the links at the top of my page work, I'll get to it as soon as I can. After all, I need to sleep once in a while ;).

Here is a quickie for the impatient:

1. Have your SU animation.

2. On the Model Info window set the color background to Solid and make it GREEN (on RGB it should be Red = 0 Green = 255 Blue = 0)

2a. Make sure all your pages have the green background.

3. Export animation (I used video at 800x600, you can use lower resolutions)

4. On you video editor (I used Magix Movie Edit Pro 10) add your a nice background to the project.

5. Add your SU video.

6. Add the GreenScreen effect (GreenBox in Movie Edit Pro) to the SU video you just added.

7. You are done creating the effect. Export to the desired format (AVI, MOV, Real Video, MPEG, etc)

Notes:

- The higher the resolution the more time it takes to render

- Transparent object my not render properly

Have a good one.

Well, I did this WINK tutorial really fast cause I won't have time until "maybe" the weekend... I know my self, I'll forget to do it, so here it is, a crappy, dirty and quick tutorial on the GreenScreen thing:

SU GreenScreen

For the tutorial I used SketchUp 4, Magix Movie Edit Pro 10, and Wink 1.5.

Have a good one.