Gamerz Theatre

How put a real pilot in a cockpit (IL-2) filght sim.

Here's what I got:

Here's how I did it:

1. First, Frap the aircraft (a Spitfire MkIX in this case) in flight with a steady camera view. Note the angle of the pilot in relation to the camera and the light source (the sun).




2. Then, set up your camera for the human pilot. I didn't spend a lot of time on this as I knew the end result was going to be very low res. If you want a larger image you will need to pay a lot more attention to the lighting and use an even coloured backdrop. Heck, you might even want to iron the sheet you use to get rid of the creases, lol.

I just used my Kodak Easyshare C875 which does a not too bad job at 30fps sVGA. Sufficient for this experiment.




3. You then need to replace the blue screen (erm, well, slightly wrinkled turquoise sheet) with an empty cockpit. Use a stationary Spitfire IX clip. Again, the setup is not too important as the cockpit shot is going to be very low res, just as long as it looks pretty close.




4. Composite these two videos in Vegas using the Chroma Keyer. Sony's Chromo Keyer is very flexible and you can hide a multitude of sins in the raw footage by adjusting the settings. Once the background disappears, adjust the crop and rotation until the pilot looks the right size in the right place.

Adjust the Saturation (HSL filter) and Brightness and Contrast to match the pilot video with the game footage and render this out.

5. Now, you have to replace the cockpit in the actual Spitfire shot with green. This gets a little tricky, so bear with me. First, take a screenshot of the Spitfire in flight and copy it into Paint Shop Pro (or whatever graphics program you use). Colour in the inside with green, and outside the cockpit frame with blue.



6. Composite this image with the original Spitfire shot. This time, Chroma Key out the blue, and render out the video clip.

7. Almost there! Now composite the clip you just made with the clip you made in step 4, this time chroma keying out the green. Play around with the size and position and bob’s your auntie!

 


8. Here's a still from the video, a little closer than I would have liked for quality. Adding the final filters to the movie and some camera shake again disguises some minor blips. SFX and music are the final distractions so the viewer doesn't look too close! It's all sleight of hand, lol.

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MANIAC~VVV~  - Pilot in Cockpit   |2008-02-07 10:36:35 Outstanding! Very nicely done, fine work in Vegas. Thanks for sharing your process with others... great work bro B) You can skip alot of the above steps if you have a compositing program like AE or Combustion that includes a "Tracker" You can then simply mask out the cockpit and replace it with your keyed footage, the tracker will keep the mask and the keyed footage perfect even with a high motion shot.

sarg86   |2008-02-07 17:10:16 that was a show of awesome work and talent enjoyed it alot and of good information on how you did it

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