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.

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

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?

The answer came within the hour from Erlendur, CCP Karkur, and Torfi Frans Olafsson.

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?

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.

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?

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.

Just a quick note that these other two dudes are CCP Explorer and CCP t0rfifrans, to link our Twitter identities to our dev characters.

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?

We just need to make sure this is also implemented in the character viewer in-game. So that we can do nice group stuff with various characters.

/c

If someone would implement this, would you want the shadow on the floor gone too?

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?

would lead to some bad back grounds if people were able to do this.....

If someone would implement this, would you want the shadow on the floor gone too?

I'd say yes removed when greenscreen is activated, but hey why not a checkbox so you can chose?

Keep up the good work!

/c

OK, to keep it simple, the floor shadow will not be visible when in greenscreen mode.

This is a very good idea. I've made a few wallpapers with my toons and have experienced the same problem you describe.

+1

OK, to keep it simple, the floor shadow will not be visible when in greenscreen mode.

Here is a wild idea, how about you make it to the character models are easily exported to something like Maya so that people can make their own fantasy encounters with other eve players?

in reference to Chribba's idea, what about having the portrait taker also do a full body image when your posed?- that way when people invaribly make the group shots, they can have people full body poses as well as the "standard" model..

and if this does get the go ahead, I wonder how long it would be until someone made one with EVERY avatar in it (or failing that a lucky 100)

The portrait editor needs the green screen tool... Otherwise we can't control expressions in the main editor. Meaning that if I wanted to do expression based animation (perhaps even try to do talking avatars), it's not going to happen.

As morganta said... yes, Green Screening should directed towards video and animation based stuff.

I have plans to do a stop motion with the portrait editor (and have had for about 6 months now) one of my first challenges in the workflow was to find a portrait background that let me easily key out the backgrounds.

really though people, chromakey (eg: bluescreen greenscreen) is a technology more conducive to video, not still images.

its fishing with dynamite, you learn a lot and its fun, but its way overkill for what you are trying to accomplish.

rototools and magic wands are a much better and less intensive route than trying to key a static image.

not saying it wont work, but do you jack up your car with a jack or a construction crane when you have a flat?