SLIMMING EFFECTS ???

I'm a big fan and user of Beauty Box.

Crazy question, but, is there anything like that for slimming down a heavy person on screen?

If not, I would love to hear your techniques if you've ever attempted to make a heavy person look thinner.

Thanks,

Eric

Seriously...?


www.derekmok.com

You could always use this. [www.ilm.com] Bit spendy though.

I think you can do this in Photoshop. Certainly can with stills as they do it all the time, not sure with video, but check out Photoshop CS6 video capabilites

Michael Horton
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I don't even know where to start...

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I know. I know. I know. lol

They do this all the time in music videos...make the talent (typically females) a little thinner. But you know what they do it with? A Flame. not fire...but the hugely expensive compositing and effects system. And it takes a talented artist days to do this. There is no easy Slim Fast button.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

this is hilarious

It is easier to do on chroma keyed image. You just distore the image a little bit.

God Bless,

Douglas Villalba
director/cinematographer/editor
Miami, Florida

[www.DouglasVillalba.info]
[www.youtube.com]
[vimeo.com]

Problem with obesity isnt that they are just a bit wider than long, but they have underarm fatty deposits, double chin, pot belly, thunder thighs... So stretching the image doesn't get rid of all of that. The fix is usually a good diet and liposuction, or lots of Photoshop and roto.



www.strypesinpost.com

It's probably doable in any compositing app... AE, Nuke, whatever. However you're going to need to isolate the talent from the background. So if they're shot on a greenscreen it's going to be easier. Otherwise you're rotoscoping them out of the entire shot and then compositing them back in. Not fun. Either way, you're still going to have to go frame by frame to make sure whatever warping tool you're using looks consistent.

I agree that if the talent is actually obese then it's much more difficult, but if you're just trying to take a few pounds off the hips then it should be doable.

Unfortunately there's no easy way of doing this automatically in software, even with a keyed subject. There's too many variables and any time the subject moved whatever warping you applied is going to look unnatural. A lot of the cheats you'd use on a still image don't work for video.

You guys will be the first to know if we figure out a way to do it. ;-) Maybe we can call it Slimming Box... or Sweat Box?

We did incorporate something into Beauty Box 2.0 that we had a surprising number of requests for... making people look worse. I call it the Ugly Box effect... take the Skin Detail Smoothing parameter and set it to -400. Instant ugly. :-)

cheers,
Jim Tierney
Digital Anarchy
www.digitalanarchy.com

Quote
take the Skin Detail Smoothing parameter and set it to -400. Instant ugly. :-)

Damn. I LOVE that. Will be huge!

Michael Horton
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I can see that "Ugly" effect used on a ton of Wedding videos...

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

You could do it the long and drawn out way. And i mean long.

1. export the clips with that actor in them

2. open those clops into AE.

3. With AE CS5 (and i hope you do have that version or higher or its hell to pay). In Ae roto-brush the actor and slightly feather the mask. LOTS OF TIME SPENT HERE.

4. export a tiff or jpeg sequence for the actor mask you just created.

5. Open the photo sequence in PS and use your tool of choice to slim him down.

6. export that out of PS.

7. go back to the AE project for those same clips and invert the mask and export those as tiff seq. also.

8. Open them in PS. There should be a hole in the footage where the actor once was. Use the stamp, warp or a form of section and content aware features to semi fill the hole. it will be just fine to not completely fill the hole.
i.e you have a 4x4 box that you roto out and the you shrink it (using this process) to 3x3. Your fill then can create a hole thats 2.5x2.5 which is fine.

9. import the slimmer actor as a seq in AE and the background as a seq. Place the actor on top, Clean as needed and export the clip .

10. Take the clip back into your nle and drop it where it was.


There is a lot of trial and error in PS with this. It possible that in one clip the actor is slightly slimmer than others so you will have to match that up.
Depending on how complex the bg is this may not work.

I have done this but it was a green screened subject.

""" What you do with what you have, is more important than what you could do, with what you don't have."

> > > Knowledge + Action = Wisdom - J. Corbett 1992 """"

I can't believe I am saying this...

Thinking about this a bit...if it's not a tremendously high-end project you might "get away with" using After Effects and the plug-in "Mesh Warp" (included in the package). You can selectively add columns & rows to the mesh, manipulate the points (this distorts the clip beneath it) and keyframe the mesh. I would not use this technique if there is prolonged exposure to the effect as it will look fake when you take a really long look at.

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

I love that this thread started with chuckles, and then people started going: Well, you could....

Which makes this thread dovetail a little into the "creative rant" thread that is also running. Whenever I hear myself say no, I try and think "why not."

A lot of our creative work is in the filigree, and requires balancing time with clients budget. Sometimes we get to be collaborators and other times we are just operators, that are supposed to be mind readers. (my last job) OUCH.