Comments on: Have a Very Furry Christmas!

Question: Have a Very Furry Christmas!

katyjack — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:27:25 -0800

I bought some stock video footage of a dog on a green background which I plan to chroma key out. Then I want to morph seamlessly into a graphic - still with the background masked out! And I want to do this all in Flash! For my Christmas Card! Not a total newbie at all of this - details inside.

OK, so I do know Flash and Photoshop pretty well and I've got the entire Adobe Suite to use but I've only used Premiere and After Effects a little bit. I've masked out the background from a video before so I think I can remember how to do that with a little difficulty, but what I'd like to do is to use After Effects (I guess) to take the last frame of the image, turn it into a gif or a png and get rid of the background all together so I can take the image into flash and - well - turn it into a talking dog. My lame attempts so far at this have looked far from seamless - my vision of my talking dog christmas card is far exceeding my ability unfortunately. Does anyone have any tips for me on how to best achieve my dream?

By: jade east

jade east — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:42:05 -0800

What part isn't seamless for you?

Pulling a still from the aftereffects comp is under composition>save frame as>file it will add it to your render queue.

By: katyjack

katyjack — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:59:37 -0800

When I save it - it comes over with the green background and when I mask that out in photoshop, it looks different from the video - more anti-aliased. Is there a way to save with the green background masked out so that the background is just transparent?

By: ostranenie

ostranenie — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:15:07 -0800

If you are using PSP7 or greater you can save it (transparency and all) as a PNG. Flash recognizes alpha channels in PNG files.

Even better - separate the jaw from the head and save a copy with just the head/body, and one with just the jaw. Import both and move the jaw around in Flash. Ruff! Ruff!