Hi. I am making a film where there will be lots of interaction between real people and poser models. I have done all of my animation and everything renders very well. But something is still missing. The film was shot on digital video, making it slightly bitty and grainy - but the poser models are clean and perfect. This difference is very obvious and makes the poser model's interaction with the real world less believable. I have included a screen shot from some early test footage i shot before the film. Can anybody hep me to achieve a slightly grainy effect on the werewolf in this picture ? Thanks. lloyd.

use the filters in premiere or whatever video editing software you have. imovie does this if your on mac.

I think your main problem is the lighting of your model, it's too harsh and white compared to the light in the real scene. There are large areas of the model that appear to be totally black, and you never get total black in a photograph. If you look around the edges of the figure you'll see they look far better against the background where there are subtle tones in there, very unrealistic where they are black.

John

Ah, i see what you mean about the lighting - its an area i dont know much about. I tried lighting it with some blue, even though you cant really see the blue, the detail on the figure is greatly enhanced and it mixes with the scene more fluidly. Thankyou.

Light the model with a fake GI set in Poser, or real GI in a 3D renderer. Use blur filters in your video editor.

Used the original image as a background in Poser and added lo-res Vicki - she's just woken up from sunbathing and come to get her shoes back off the shed roof - and five lights. One bright orange/yellow from above left, mimics what the sun is doing on the brickwork behind, the other four are greenish and shining up from the grass.

Most of Vicki blends in reasonably I think, though there's a big problem where her feet (don't) meet the ground, but that's so difficult to overcome in an animation (easy in a single frame) that you're best off planning your shots to avoid that problem.

Sorry about the excessive jpeg artifacts, had about five attempts at getting rid of them, hope you can see what I'm getting at with the lights though.

John

Thanks very much John, By the way, do you have any idea on how I can find out how to make the feet appear as though they are touching the ground ? The only thing ive been using thus far is the 'Drop to floor' option. Thanks. Lloyd.

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The lights as posted by jwhitham are a good start. Then play with the "Levels" in Photoshop (or a similar app) to match the overall brightness from the footage. Also, have an eye on the color temperature. Also, try the shader I linked to in order to get shadows for your rendered figure.

Lloyd, after playing with the lights, why don't you take the textures into Photoshop and sort of fade them out and add some graininess before reanimating.

Good idea PapaBlueMarlin, Ill try that - thanks to everyone else who has replied too. Lloyd.