Very Cool Program. Vegas does a great job with Chromakey/greenscreen and with V 5 and Satish's Wax plugin you can mask out whatever you need to. Those virtual sets however are designed to run within Ultra only. So it appears you will have to render out of Ultra and then bring it into Vegas. There are some other virtual sets available on the Web that I have seen that don't offer the motion control that Ultra incorporates but do have other angles I believe that you could use in Vegas. Do a google search on Virtual Sets and see what you get.
I think Ultra would be cool if you could modify the Virtual sets. Like a level editor for a PC game. That way you could build an unending supply. Of coulrse if you want to take some time and use Lightwave or 3dsMax or Maya or any ot that stuff you can do it too but now we are in a different neighborhood altogether.

I am not a user of this but I have (am) considering it. I am sure that it <is> compatible with Vegas in the sense that you can render a compatible AVI from it and use it in a Vegas project.

I remember last year at NAB, seeing this product for the first time. The key they were pulling live was pretty impressive. This year I stopped to look at their new DV Rack capture software.

Considering that a Chromatte solution starts around $2500, the $800 or so they're asking for UltraKey seems really reasonable. I think it provides a much better key too.

I'd be interested if anyone has used it even aside from Vegas. It's not Ultimatte but it looks pretty darn good to my eyes.

mike

Ive never used ultra key, would like to, but the price is cost prohibitive on the amount of greenscreening i do. But i do use a program that is very pwerfull and very inexspensive. can create great composites Very Quick. it id called chromonater at www.fxhome.com. The sight looks cheasy, but look at the tutorials and you can see the power of this inexspensive program

I tried the Demo of the new version of Chromanator and frankly Vegas 5 did as good a job and the timeline of Chromanator is a little hard to work with compared to Vegas. I was initially drawn to Chromanator because of its garbage matte ability and now Vegas 5 has an even better implementation of it with the bezier masks. At the same time ,Satish is improving the Rotomate plugin for Wax 2.0 (new version probably c --watch for it, he is amazing!!!). This lets you use default shapes such as rectangles and boxes to quickly mask out stuff. That is where V5 is different --bezier only. Sure you can use a cookie cutter and do a rectangle but I am talking about having all the tools in one spot to be used fairly quickly. If Chromanator was a plugin for Vegas it would be a good add-on because it does have a few extra tools such as spill suppression that help you clean up the key and get good contrast. Chromanator is only $99 U.S. so for some, it is worth buying to just play around. But I am going to upgrade to V5 instead. Then I might save my money for Ultra.

I am still watching the fxhome site for AlamDV3. That would be potentially more interesting to me than Chromanator. I bought the Flexdrop greenscreen/bluescreen and now I want to paint the town green as it were. Since I have gotten some decent greenscreen shots with Vegas I want to go crazy. That is where it would be nice to have the virtual sets. Much more interesting than my gararge or basement.

thanks all -- that chromakeying makes it look great...

eg digitaljuice.com 's jumpbacks.. (get em at ulead.com for 85/ea)

and ultrakey's virtual world stuff looks terrific...

I went ahead and took the plunge, bought the combo pack directly from them for 1195 (ouch!), but will make it up with new video sales.. the panning/zooming is what sold me on it, and moving sets etc.. very slick stuff.

take a look at this:
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http://www.seriousmagic.com/MSL2-Demo.wmv

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I watched that clip all day yesterday :p


ken

FYI, www.elitevideo.com has a decent selection of virtual sets.

thx re elitevideo, will check..
ken

I finally got to try out Ultra and it is awesome. There is not a demo but if you contact Serious Magic they will work with you on setting something up. I will say it blows CSB's Chromanator out of the water, no matter what they claim in reguards to "It does the same thing for less".

Ultra is so easy to use it sort of freaked me out at first. On of the cool features is that when you do a screen if you shoot some clean screen all you have to do is load that up first and Ultra will auto read it/pre read it. But even if you don't do that it is so easy to get a good screen. I dumped a test shot in and clicked near the head, near the shoulders and near the side and *poof* - damn near perfect matte. I didn't have to fuss -n- muss over clicking here and right click+ctrl-ing there or adjusting contrats there. It is just so easy to use.

Also it allows for 'real time' preview via firewire so if you had it on, say, a lapttop you could bring it to the set and see the lighting/screen/color correction and so on real time.

nice to see all the enthusiasm! I just ordered a green screen from an ebay seller (jandkgroup), who has a lot of lighting etc for dv..

Any tips for Chromakeying in Vegas 4?

Lessons learned? Things to make sure to do, re clean alphas and minimizing spillover and artifacts etc?

Suggestions for best lighting for pro keys?


Ken