If you’ve had a lot to do with keying, you probably know the term “light wrapping”. Light Wrapping as a concept is easy to understand, but in practice it can be quite difficult to get a perfect Light Wrap. In the following article we take a look at light wraps and examine a few simple methods to create them yourself. Light wrapping is often a important process in creating a 3D configurator.
What is Light Wrapping?
Light Wrapping is a compositing technique designed to fuse the green of the screen with a background plate. When done correctly, Light Wrapping can really help to add realism to your scene. If exaggerated, it can make your footage look soft and incredible.
Often, when using keying software, a light wrapping is automatically preformed. But as in photography, automatic wrapping doesn’t always mean it’s better.
Like you “light wrapping”.
Light wrapping works by softening the hard edges that appear when you key in a green screen film. By adding a feathered part of the background to the edges of the encoded subject, you can make your scene look more like a composition than a series of layers.
As you can see, light wrapping is a very subtle effect that, when well done, is not noticed by your audience. The light wrapping layer uses only the outlines of the encoded material to blur a small part of the background. Light wrapping is used to simulate the ambient light that is supposed to cast light on your subject in the scene. In some cases (e.g. under inaccurate lighting) it may be better to use a layer other than the background layer for the light wrap, but it all depends on your scene.
Light Wrap Tutorials.
Although Light Wrapping is a pretty simple concept, there are seemingly infinite ways to create a good Light Wrap. The following tutorials illustrate some of the ways to create a light wrap.
Easy Light Wrap from Mikey.
In this After Effects video tutorial, AE expert Mikey Borup shows us how to create a Light Wrap with just a few effects like Set Matte, Fast and Channel Blur:
Light Wrapping in After Effects.
This video by Marcos Salvi illustrates how Light Wrapping can be used to simulate lighting even when the background layer is not used:
Plugin solutions.
Many high-end keying applications integrate light wrapping, including keylight software shipped with Adobe After Effects. However, if you want to get stunning light wraps, take a look at some of our favorite plugins to create realistic light wraps:
Key Correct.
Key Correct is an industry standard when it comes to light wrapping, noise reduction, or other important features you can imagine. Key Correct includes 15 standalone plug-ins that help you clean up your greenscreen keys. The results are fantastic and you can even get a free trial on the Red Giant website.
Boris Continuum: Key and Blend.
As a small part of the larger Boris Continuum Complete, the Key and Blend Pack gives users of After Effects, Premiere, FCPX, Resolve, Nuke, Media Composer and even Scratch the ability to easily create realistic light wraps. The package includes 20 plug-ins and filters that support the compositing process. Boris also offers a free trial of Key and Blend for use today.
Do you have any helpful tips for light wrapping yourself? Then contact us.