Add dappled lighting to green screen talent?

Ok - I've made some changes:

The particles "fade on/off" over Life — and so this reduces the color choices from 2 to 1.

My recommendation is to adjust Brightness of color for mixing with background. For blend modes like Add, Lighten, etc. to Linear Dodge, adjust color brightness to below 50%. Adjust Opacity as well. I think "subtlety" will go a long way.

I added Random Motion to the "Breeze" effect (parameters set to an "easy" default). (This is separate, so if Breeze is 0, Random Motion can still be applied separately.)

I added a Bump Map. Defaults are Horizontal and Vertical Scale: 0 (horiz) and 0.3 (vert). [Direction and Angle are Options if you prefer.]

There is an option to Show Bump Map Luma so you can adjust the greyscale Levels (visually) for better effect. It is not recommended to *crush* shadows or highlights - go for a relative "even" greyscale.

There is a Refraction Amount that adds a little more distortion to the particles. Gaussian Blur will have an effect on how "obvious" refraction will be.

Same link (different effect name: Dappled Lighting 2B).

https://fcpxtemplates.com/sdm_downloads/dappled-lighting-effect/

The best you can hope for is the *illusion* of being outdoors *under* trees since the lighting is applied on a 2D image from your point of view and not the light shining down from above. This is an Effect, so keep in mind the Effects Masks you have available. Consider masking a face under a hat and lower extremities that are more likely to be shaded. It is also possible to add more than one of these effects to any clip... for whatever reason (and depending on masking requirements).

I also recommend not overdoing it.

Hope this helps!

That is much harder than it appears. Momentarily forgetting the dappled sunlight, to visually "sell" a chroma-keyed actor requires matching the lighting angle, diffusion and color temp. When shooting the actor in front of the green screen, you would already need the background shot to reference, ideally with a person doing the same motions.

After that person walks through the shot, you'd actually use the portion without the actor for the background. But having the light on the person as a reference gives you a chance to match the basic lighting on the actor when shooting the green screen part.

The simplest way to handle the dappled lighting is using a "breakup gobo" in front of a directional light. You can Google that. You'd reference the shot of the actor or stand-in walking through the wooded scene, then manipulate the light and gobo on the green screen shoot to roughly mimic that.

You would not plan a medium or wide shot because it's harder to make that believable, also it requires a larger green screen, possibly multi-sided. Using a brief duration tight shot, maybe even tighter than the one you posted, could help.

The higher-end way would be to capture a "shadow map" pass on a stand-in or mannequin being moved through the wooded area. Then it would require multiple steps with Nuke and After Effects to process and composite that shadow map on the actor.

Possibly the best way is to side-step the entire issue. If you have a camera with low-light ability, such as a DSLR or mirrorless camera with (say) a 35 or 50 mm f/1.4 or f/1.8 lens, it might be better to rewrite the scene and shoot it at night with the actor and props. This allows for live-captured shadowed patterns through tree branches on the actor. It would avoid the need for green screen and compositing, and would potentially avoid spectators. Properly done night shots can be compelling.

Hi Ian,

You can give this a try:

https://fcpxtemplates.com/sdm_downloads/dappled-lighting-effect/

It is a *work in progress* but you might be able to make use of it now.

There are quite a few parameters available to give it more flexibility than shown here — it's basically an emitter.

What isn't shown is there is a built in optional animation that will move the spots back and forth as if there was a breeze. (Parameters will be obvious.)

I've set it up with "recommended settings", but you will probably want to push it further (especially with the Initial Number parameter (it can be ramped up into the 1000's).

If you have any questions — I'll try to help (as I said: work in progress ;)

I've done this from time to time over the years. But I go into Motion (or Pixelmator Pro or whatever) and make a black and white image. White areas being what I want to be lighter, black areas what I want to be darker. Place the green screen shot in a Compound. Lay your new image over that, change the Blend Mode and/or opacity to something that look right.

Just put a couple of small flags in the lighting path to your on-camera talent to create the subtle shadows you're looking for.

Here's a YouTube video that illustrates the process of using "flags" in video lighting.

https://youtu.be/nLJffQeDqRI

I've only used it in Motion and there you apply a source image as the map.

I've never had any luck with the FCP version which doesn't have that ability.

I applied one to a custom Title Template so I had full functions in FCP.

In Motion, in the Distortion collection of filters, is a Bump Map filter that could handle that for you.

You can use the same link to access Dappled Effect 2.

I added (and set up) Life and Life Randomness to create a flickering effect. Again, start modifying parameter adjustments to achieve the effect you need.

The effect should work — however, I did *not* rename it Dappled Lighting 2, that was just the name of the updated page and the ZIP file I made. It should be installed by *replacing* the original (as: Dappled Lighting).

It can't be opened in Motion because I've locked it because it uses a technique for the template (not related to the emitter) which I'm keeping to myself at present. I tested the locked version and it is working in 10.4.10 — it should continue to work in all later versions.

I downloaded it and it doesn't show up in FCP effects. If I try to open it from the Finder inot Motion it states it is locked by the creator.

I'll check into it and get back