Can do this in photoshop in just a few seconds. Wouldn't help me any, but would be usefull for people who aren't that familliar with PS.

I find some of the gradient backgrounds don't remove cleanly, leaving artifacts at the character edges. Maybe I'm missing some extra option that allows Photoshop to go a step further. Either way, a solid "greenscreen" background should be beneficial to all, novice and pro.

I find some of the gradient backgrounds don't remove cleanly, leaving artifacts at the character edges. Maybe I'm missing some extra option that allows Photoshop to go a step further. Either way, a solid "greenscreen" background should be beneficial to all, novice and pro.

Don't remove the background, remove the forground. It takes practice but once you get used to it you can cut very complex shapes from an imagine in PS.

Working in multiple layers I can have the background image laid, cut the forground character, drop it to the background layer, remove the original background layer. Once you have the hang of it you can do it all in PS in the same amount of time, and without any artifacts.

The green screen is cool though and would be great for a novice PS user.

It might be easier with paint shop.

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

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

I ....snip...

I hope we can add this, but it would never go in as a selectable background... you could never save your character with this ugly background, and it would be only available if you had some prefs flag set.

Don't remove the background, remove the forground. It takes practice but once you get used to it you can cut very complex shapes from an imagine in PS.

Working in multiple layers I can have the background image laid, cut the forground character, drop it to the background layer, remove the original background layer. Once you have the hang of it you can do it all in PS in the same amount of time, and without any artifacts.

The green screen is cool though and would be great for a novice PS user.

It might be easier with paint shop.

(image) http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JaHTq41YnO8/T-0qw0WTIQI/AAAAAAAABnU/HYi1giI8XA8/s320/greenscreen_character_beach.jpg

I should add that this is just on my computer and has not been checked in or anything, or formally accepted "feature".
I really like the idea though (and CCP t0rfiFrans too), and I had some free time last night so I decided to try it out.

I hope we can add this, but it would never go in as a selectable background... you could never save your character with this ugly background, and it would be only available if you had some prefs flag set.

You know instead of just being pathetic you could tell the OP to do something constructive like saving multi images with different lighting conditions so that is blends in better.

But no if that is the best you could come up with, not impressed.

I have considered doing some stop motion style animation with the character editor and thought that I could use one of the more "solid" backgrounds to play around with, but I haven't had the time to sit down and figure out a workflow that would work and if any of the bg's were sutiable for keying... (although I thought a couple of the blue solid ones were really good options).

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?

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?

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?

So you fellows have time to do useless stuff like this but no time to fix Corporate role system, bring in treaties systems on alliances, etc...?

WTF are you devs doing in payed time? Starts to sound like agile methods are used to avoid things that really are hard and need fixing and do stuff thats useless and easy...

portrait, customization, identity and character preview will all have green backgrounds (I don't want to promise that this will be in the next release, but at least it has been checked in, so let's hope it all works so we can get it out to you)

Can't wait to play with this when you make it for sure :)

I think this is on Sisi now (I'm on vacation so I don't really know what's going on, but based on the discussion on new features in the Test section I'm guessing we have the new stuff on Sisi )

I think this is on Sisi now (I'm on vacation so I don't really know what's going on, but based on the discussion on new features in the Test section I'm guessing we have the new stuff on Sisi )

The only thing cooler than this is if CCP would one day turn its in house movie making kit over to the players. Not for me cause I'd have no clue. But for all the people like the gang at Clear Skies, so they could use EVE Avatars and more cinematic in space sequences.

I beg to differ that this is a useless feature; it was requested by players, well argued what the usage and benefit would be, and has the potential to facilitate player generated content.

CCP karkur was able to quickly implement this feature with some input from CCP t0rfifrans and testing from CCP RedDawn. The things you mention would require a larger team with game designers, server programmers and web developers, and would require more incubation time in dev blogs, forums discussions and testing on SiSi. They are on our radar for the future but why should that block us from working on these smaller items that provide value?

I beg to differ that this is a useless feature; it was requested by players, well argued what the usage and benefit would be, and has the potential to facilitate player generated content.

CCP karkur was able to quickly implement this feature with some input from CCP t0rfifrans and testing from CCP RedDawn. The things you mention would require a larger team with game designers, server programmers and web developers, and would require more incubation time in dev blogs, forums discussions and testing on SiSi. They are on our radar for the future but why should that block us from working on these smaller items that provide value?

Errm, how about expanding this to the ship renders too? perhaps an option on the image server to render with alpha or green. Would love to be able to get just the ship render without the similarly coloured and non-uniform background that makes extracting just the ship from the picture a game time stealing chore.

I feel a little bit sorry for her for wearing this at a beach

Yes me to....

So, since I could not sleep.....I figured I'de give her a bathing suit

Edit: Not perfect yet....few small in-perfections,,,,,but to tired now

I should add that this is just on my computer and has not been checked in or anything, or formally accepted "feature".
I really like the idea though (and CCP t0rfiFrans too), and I had some free time last night so I decided to try it out.

I hope we can add this, but it would never go in as a selectable background... you could never save your character with this ugly background, and it would be only available if you had some prefs flag set.