Body mask effect

[Anonymous]

I'm using live action footage of an actor on a green screen and I need to mask her body in post.

I'll set the scene for the effect.

My character is in an infinite white space and her body is covered in black. She goes onto the floor and rolls until all the black peels off her body. The black seeps into the floor and spreads, like an ink blot. She rolls until all the black is off her body and she is naked. The space goes from white to black.

The animation programs I have are 3DS Max, After Effects and Maya. I tried to create this effect in After Effects but it came out very sloppy. What animation program would be best to create this effect? If not a program in this list, what program would you recommend?

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous and welcome to the community,

Tough question.  I suppose we need to break this down into the smaller components and diagnose. 

1) Removing the clothing as she writhes around.

2) Leaving an imprint/mask behind where her body touches the floor so that the ink can be generated.

3) Lining up a clothed body somehow with a nude body so that parts of the black clothing can be removed exposing what is underneath.

4) The spread of the paint as it hits the floor/world.

Now my question sort of starts at 3.  How you handle 3 sort of drives the rest of it.  How are you going to line up a clothed model with a nude one with footage?  Or, is there more to this that I am not understanding? 

Best Regards,

[Anonymous]

I don't have footage of my actress with the black clothing, just nude. I imagined adding all of that in post. I should add that the photos attached are from an earlier shoot which I've now got rid of. I reshot the scene and now the actress is wearing this:

And this is how she looks when nude and the black is spreading to the rest of the space:

[Alfred.DeFlaminis]

Hello @Anonymous,

It's not an impossible task but this is not something simple either.  You'd have to create a dummy character to don the clothes, rig and skin it, animate it with camera tracking if the camera moves and match her movements, matching FOV of the camera, and simulate clothing, and all that is just for step 3.  (This is my experience but someone may have a better method.)  Then there is the problem of rendering the body parts that are currently covered into the scene, that will also be tricky.  

I'm concerned that this won't be possible for a novice user to 3D and compositing. I would give yourself a lot of time to do this, but you'll clearly need a rigged and animated 3d model to put the clothes onto so that is a good place to start.  It would need to match the model pretty closely if you need to render those covered body parts.  I have no idea how to matte her hair on top of the clothing in this case, that will be very difficult to do well.  

Is your plan to do this all yourself or do you have a crew?  How long is this footage?  

Best Regards