{"id":5384,"date":"2023-08-31T19:53:30","date_gmt":"2023-08-31T14:53:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/?p=5384"},"modified":"2023-08-31T19:53:30","modified_gmt":"2023-08-31T14:53:30","slug":"exhausting-marketing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/2023\/08\/31\/exhausting-marketing\/","title":{"rendered":"Exhausting marketing"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_5386\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5386\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5386\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking-300x149.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking-300x149.png 300w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking-768x382.png 768w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking.png 794w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5386\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ugh &#8211; arms are aching<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>So &#8211; in my quest to create marketing materials &#8211; I create a LOT of work for myself. I&#8217;m currently working on a Team Fortress 2 styled &#8216;Meet the Team&#8217; videos, and if you haven&#8217;t seen them, they are an absolute gem:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Meet the Soldier\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/h42d0WHRSck?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Now, since my game isn&#8217;t as nearly violent or frenetic, I also figured the pace might be a bit slower. And since my &#8216;team&#8217; is my family, I need to reflect each a bit closer to their personalities. Hence, my &#8220;special musical guests&#8221; are my niece &amp; nephew and since the early days of my project, they&#8217;ve enthusiastically geeked to my work, I wanted to give them a bit more pizzazz on their videos, especially since my nephew like special effects.<\/p>\n<p>They had previously shot some footage for a &#8216;Meet the Playtester&#8217; video and had a nice stable video of my nephew being chased by a sword twirling niece. Which I thought I&#8217;d goose up by masking them and dropping the shot in a gritty city environment from some of the Blender experiments I&#8217;ve been working on (namely the <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/U1f6NDCttUY\">amazing Ian Hubert&#8217;s Lazy Tutorials<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>The biggest hurdle is the masking.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5386\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5386\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5386\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking-300x149.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"149\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking-300x149.png 300w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking-768x382.png 768w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Masking.png 794w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5386\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ugh &#8211; arms are aching<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>According to most Blender tutorials, it&#8217;s best to mask parts of the body instead of the whole thing &#8211; meaning I&#8217;d be going through the same 6 seconds of footage masking out arms, bodies, heads and legs on 2 people moving. A lot.<\/p>\n<p>And since they were running, the computer had a tough time interpolating keyframes on each node and I was going through all 186 frames, one at a time, to make adjustments.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5385\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5385\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5385\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/GreenySnc-300x134.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/GreenySnc-300x134.png 300w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/GreenySnc-1024x458.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/GreenySnc-768x343.png 768w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/GreenySnc.png 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5385\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Masking is a pain<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>I DID try the AI route using <a href=\"https:\/\/app.runwayml.com\/login\">RunwayML<\/a> and was massively impressed with how it did &#8211; you simply click areas you want masked and the AI did the rest. It did have trouble with the swords my niece was swinging, and it blanked a couple of frames, which I could never quite get right. Between that and the free version only outputting 720p I opted to do it by hand, the hard way. Until I either get funding or can justify the $150 subscription to upgrade.<\/p>\n<p>All told, it was a LOT of effort to get 6 seconds on what will eventually be a TikTok video &#8211; but the kids were impressed, and I like taking their creative efforts and combining it with my own.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m just gonna greenscreen them both next time and save myself the back ache.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_5390\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-5390\" style=\"width: 170px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-5390\" src=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/CityStreet-170x300.png\" alt=\"CGI back alley\" width=\"170\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/CityStreet-170x300.png 170w, https:\/\/www.fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/CityStreet.png 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 170px) 100vw, 170px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-5390\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Made with old photos I took in NYC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So &#8211; in my quest to create marketing materials &#8211; I create a LOT of work for myself. I&#8217;m currently working on a Team Fortress 2 styled &#8216;Meet the Team&#8217; videos, and if you haven&#8217;t seen them, they are an absolute gem: Now, since my game isn&#8217;t as nearly violent or frenetic, I also figured &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/2023\/08\/31\/exhausting-marketing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Exhausting marketing<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5385,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5384"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5391,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5384\/revisions\/5391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fletcherstudios.net\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}