How To Achieve The Perfect Real-Time Key

Produce fantastic results with the Notch Chroma Keyer with this easy step-by-step guide

- Armin Kazlauskas

Green/blue screen keying has always been tricky to get right. Freshly ironed backdrops, even lighting and the patience of a saint have always been pre-requisites of the artform. Notch has taken an entirely new approach to chromakeying, creating a clean plate generation tool that produces fantastic results with almost no setup or tweaking required. Paradigm shift! Your source footage does not need to be perfect to key effectively.

The Notch Chroma Keyer is GPU powered so it has the speed and functionality of dedicated hardware solutions, and this is packed into an incredibly awesome 3D real-time modelling tool. The Chroma Keyer provides all the features you would expect (and some that you wouldn’t), including handling of transparency, high detail/thin objects (such as hair), liquids, global and reflection spill suppression, garbage and hold-up mattes and more. And all of it running in real-time – we’re talking 4K at 60 FPS without breaking a sweat.

Step-by-step, we will explore the Chroma Keyer node and create a believable virtual environment. In step one, we will key our footage. We will explain how to make adjustments to achieve the perfect key when working with the jankiest footage. Once we’ve got that key, we will generate a 3D environment to composite our keyed footage and use raytraced shadows and reflections in order to really sell our composition.

So if you’re dead bored of endless fiddling with key adjustments or you fancy surprising your friends at the next Zoom party, this tutorial is for you. Let’s get started!

01 KEY IN THREE CLICKS