[0:00] viewers of my stream know that I love
[0:03] creating fun special effects to spice
[0:06] things up a bit. Now, one of the
[0:08] fundamental building blocks of those
[0:10] effects is a high quality chroma key
[0:13] using a green screen. And I know that
[0:16] setting up a green screen and a chroma
[0:18] key can seem a little bit daunting. Not
[0:20] only do you need the screen, but do you
[0:22] need studio quality lighting and a
[0:24] really good camera? And what's up with
[0:26] all the dials that you have to adjust in
[0:28] OBS? Well, I'm here to tell you it's
[0:31] actually not that complicated. With a
[0:35] typical streamer lighting setup, a
[0:37] decent webcam, and a green screen, you
[0:41] too can have an amazing chroma key on
[0:43] which to build your effects. I'm Finite
[0:46] Singularity, and today I'm going to show
[0:49] you how to set up a green screen that'll
[0:51] leave your viewers scratching their
[0:53] heads. But stick around to the end
[0:56] because I'm going to share with you a
[0:57] cheat code that'll make it even easier.
[1:02] [Music]
[1:06] Now, let's start by talking about the
[1:08] screen itself. You could see my green
[1:11] screen behind me, which is a pull down
[1:14] green screen mounted to my ceiling. Now,
[1:17] as streamers, we typically like to do
[1:20] things as inexpensively as possible. And
[1:23] a lot of tutorials will claim a good way
[1:25] to cut corners is on the green screen
[1:28] itself. They'll say things like, "Just
[1:30] get yourself some green cloth and throw
[1:32] it up on the wall behind you." And while
[1:35] this can work, it causes two big
[1:38] problems. The first is setup and tear
[1:42] down. You have to figure out a way to
[1:44] mount it to the wall. And when you mount
[1:46] it, you have to figure out how to iron
[1:48] out all the wrinkles that will appear
[1:51] every single time you put it up.
[1:55] Speaking of those wrinkles, that's the
[1:57] second problem. I've never had much luck
[2:00] ironing out all those wrinkles. And a
[2:03] smooth green screen like this one is
[2:06] much easier to chroma key, and you'll
[2:08] get significantly better results. So, if
[2:11] you're serious about wanting to make
[2:13] these sorts of effects on your stream, I
[2:16] would recommend investing a little bit
[2:18] more in a quality green screen. Uh,
[2:21] something like a pull down green screen
[2:23] or maybe one of those Elgato pop-up
[2:25] green screens. They don't wrinkle. They
[2:28] have a nice quality green color, and
[2:31] they set up and they tear down quite
[2:34] easily. And you'll find that you
[2:35] actually use them.
[2:37] [Music]
[2:42] A flat green screen is fantastic, but if
[2:45] you don't have any lights, you're going
[2:48] to have a bad day trying to key it out.
[2:50] Now, if you've spent any time watching
[2:52] tutorials on green screens on YouTube,
[2:56] super boring, I know. You'll hear
[2:58] lighting, lighting, lighting. And then
[3:01] you'll see studio setups with expensive
[3:03] lights for the green screen and separate
[3:05] systems dedicated to the subject. and
[3:07] you'll see roomsized green screens that
[3:10] are far away. And I don't know about
[3:11] you, but I don't have the room nor the
[3:14] money in my streaming space for that. My
[3:16] screen placement, it breaks all the
[3:19] rules. It's way too close to me. I don't
[3:22] have dedicated lights, and I don't know
[3:24] if you noticed, but there's shadows.
[3:28] However, if we can keep those shadows
[3:30] diffuse and we can reasonably limit
[3:33] them, we can easily make up for that in
[3:36] software. So, how do I get lighting like
[3:38] this? Well, frankly, by following every
[3:41] lighting suggestion for streamers on the
[3:44] internet. To my left and up high, I have
[3:47] a bright LCD panel key light. And to my
[3:51] right, I have a dimmer LCD panel fill
[3:55] light. And that's it. I'll leave some
[3:58] links in the description for streaming
[4:00] lighting setup. And so if you can set up
[4:03] like a typical stream lighting setup
[4:05] like this and you have a flat green
[4:07] screen, you'll get a great chroma key.
[4:16] The last piece of hardware we need to
[4:17] consider is the camera. Now, any decent
[4:21] webcam will work, although you might
[4:23] start to struggle with one of those
[4:24] cheap $5 webcams that you got for free
[4:28] at some conference. As lower-end
[4:30] cameras, they tend to have lower color
[4:32] quality, less chroma information, and a
[4:34] lot more noise, which makes keying much
[4:37] more difficult. I've had good luck on a
[4:40] wide range of webcams and cameras,
[4:42] including the classic C920,
[4:45] the Elgato Face Cam, my iPhone. I've
[4:48] also used this on like high-end
[4:50] mirrorless cameras. So, it's really
[4:52] applicable to a wide range of cameras.
[4:55] And as long as you're not trying to use
[4:57] an actual potato, this method should
[5:00] work well. And with that, let's dive
[5:03] into OBS and start the fun part,
[5:06] removing our background.
[5:10] [Music]
[5:15] Here we are in OBS. I've set up a simple
[5:18] scene of just my camera as well as a
[5:21] background image that we want to have
[5:23] show through our key. Go ahead and click
[5:26] on the camera and then on filters to
[5:28] bring up the filters menu for that
[5:30] source. This is where we'll apply our
[5:33] chroma key. Uh click the plus button and
[5:36] select chroma key. Uh once you click
[5:39] okay, you should see something similar
[5:42] to this. uh you'll have a chroma key
[5:45] using the default values and it likely
[5:48] won't look very good. This is because
[5:50] the green of your green screen likely
[5:53] does not match the default green
[5:56] provided by the filter. Uh to fix this,
[6:00] we'll go ahead and select a custom color
[6:03] for our key color type. Uh before we
[6:06] actually select a color though, I want
[6:08] to talk briefly about these three
[6:10] sliders. Uh these are the three
[6:13] important sliders for setting up our key
[6:15] and what we're going to go over today.
[6:17] Uh the first is similarity. Similarity
[6:20] is the range of green that you'll be
[6:24] able to key out. Higher values mean
[6:26] you're going to key out more light and
[6:28] more dark, a larger range. Smaller
[6:30] values mean you're going to focus in on
[6:32] very specific colors of green. If you
[6:34] had an absolutely perfect chroma key,
[6:36] you could set this value way, way down.
[6:39] But again, as streamers, we don't have
[6:41] the space. So, we cast shadows. We don't
[6:43] have professional lighting. We don't
[6:45] have dedicated lighting for our green
[6:46] screens. And so, we are going to have
[6:49] variance in that color. And so, we are
[6:51] going to need to have a similarity value
[6:54] that isn't one or two. That leads us to
[6:58] our smoothness value. One of the side
[7:00] effects of a chroma key is the edges of
[7:03] your subject can look rough or unnatural
[7:07] or noisy. Uh the smoothness slider,
[7:10] well, it smooths those out and allows
[7:13] the subject to blend a little bit more
[7:15] nicely into the background and look more
[7:18] natural. Now, smoothness and similarity
[7:21] are linked. Uh the general rule of thumb
[7:23] is the lower you can get your similarity
[7:26] value, the more range you have to play
[7:29] with your smoothness value. So if you
[7:32] can get that similarity value down low,
[7:34] it means you've got more ability to make
[7:37] your key look natural. Finally, we have
[7:41] key color spill reduction. One other
[7:44] thing that green screens do is they put
[7:46] a green cast on the subject. You'll
[7:50] notice this a lot of times in the
[7:51] shoulders, in the hair. You'll see like
[7:53] that green around someone when it's a
[7:56] pretty bad chroma key. Uh, spill
[7:58] reduction helps to fix this. It'll
[8:00] desaturate those greens around the
[8:03] edges. However, if you set it too high,
[8:06] it's going to desaturate your skin tones
[8:08] and it's not going to look real good.
[8:10] So, I found for spill reduction, I keep
[8:13] it under 100. Usually, I set it around
[8:15] 50. Uh, for my smoothness, I'm usually
[8:18] shooting for something around 15 to 25.
[8:22] And similarity, I find getting a key
[8:25] with a similarity under 80 can give a
[8:28] very nice key. Our first step now is
[8:30] we're going to select our key color. So,
[8:34] start by dialing these all down to one
[8:37] so that you can see your original
[8:39] background here. And go ahead and click
[8:42] select color. Move your color picker
[8:46] here off to the side a little bit
[8:47] because you need to be able to see. And
[8:48] click pick screen color. And this is
[8:51] somewhere where a lot of people mess up.
[8:54] Uh when they go to pick a color, you're
[8:56] going to just click on any green in your
[8:58] background. Here you can see the value
[9:00] changing. A lot of people zero in on
[9:02] like this really nice chroma green here,
[9:04] thinking, "Okay, I'm going to get that
[9:05] great chroma green, and that's what
[9:07] we're going to filter out." Other people
[9:09] might pick stuff like really close to
[9:11] their subject to try to get rid of that
[9:12] that haze around their subject. Other
[9:15] people might choose the darkest color.
[9:18] In fact, the best green to pick is, as
[9:21] the kids say, the mid green. You're
[9:24] looking for that green that's smack dab
[9:26] in the middle. So that when we expand
[9:28] that range, we're expanding from the
[9:31] middle to the outside versus having to
[9:33] expand from one side, you know, out. you
[9:36] you want to keep that value as low as
[9:38] possible. Uh so we're going to try to
[9:40] find sort of the middle shadow color
[9:42] here. I'm going to pick something about
[9:44] here. So I'm going to click there and
[9:46] then in my color picker here, click
[9:48] okay. You can kind of see some of the
[9:50] stuff that's getting filtered out cuz my
[9:51] similarity is low. Now the way we know
[9:53] we picked a good color, we'll start to
[9:56] increase similarity. And the goal is to
[9:58] have the lightest part, which is above
[9:59] my head here, disappear at the same time
[10:02] as the darkest part, which is down here.
[10:04] So clearly I picked a color that is
[10:07] quite a bit too light. You can see my
[10:10] similarities around 70. Uh so we're
[10:12] going to rinse and repeat here. I'm
[10:14] going to click select color. Uh we'll
[10:16] move this off to the side again. Pick
[10:18] screen color. And I'll pick a little bit
[10:20] darker green here. And we'll click okay.
[10:24] And again we'll try that. And now you
[10:27] see it's not perfect, but we're a lot
[10:30] closer. And our similarity value is down
[10:32] around 50 52. We we'll set it to about
[10:35] 55 here. Gives us a little bit extra
[10:38] room to work with. And if I move this
[10:40] out of the way, you can see we have a
[10:42] pretty good key without even doing any
[10:44] smoothness here. That picking that
[10:46] middle color makes a huge huge
[10:48] difference. I'm going to go ahead with
[10:51] my smoothness value. I'm going to bump
[10:53] that up to around I don't know 14 or so.
[10:56] And uh you know, you can see that it
[10:58] smooths out the edges just a little bit.
[11:00] If you do it too much, you'll find that
[11:02] you'll start to disappear. You'll start
[11:04] to turn into a ghost. Uh so yeah,
[11:07] something around 14 seems to work pretty
[11:09] well there. And even though I don't have
[11:11] much green cast on me right now, I
[11:14] always set my spill reduction to 50. I
[11:17] find some shirts will show that cast a
[11:20] lot more. If I set it to 50, it gives me
[11:22] enough room to play with uh so that I
[11:25] don't have to adjust my key every time I
[11:28] change clothes and fire up the stream on
[11:30] the next day. Uh so with these settings,
[11:33] oh, we set ourselves I guess I hit the
[11:36] opacity here somehow. Uh with these
[11:38] settings, we have got a pretty good
[11:42] looking key here. Now, I mentioned at
[11:45] the beginning of this video that I was
[11:47] going to share with you a little cheat
[11:49] code. And here is what that cheat code
[11:52] is. We're going to go here and we're
[11:54] going to delete our chroma key. Uh in
[11:58] the latest version of my advanced masks
[12:00] plugin, version 1.5.0,
[12:02] I've added a chroma key. Uh we can find
[12:06] it by looking through alpha masks and
[12:09] the mask type will be chroma key. This
[12:12] algorithm is the same algorithm that the
[12:15] OBS team uses, but it's got a couple
[12:18] nice extras. Uh, the first of these,
[12:21] let's dial these all down. So, it's like
[12:23] we're starting from scratch again. Uh,
[12:25] the first of these is a double color
[12:27] select for our key color type. And what
[12:31] this lets us do, rather than having to
[12:33] try to pick out that middle green, we
[12:35] can pick the lightest green and the
[12:37] darkest green, which are much easier to
[12:40] see and identify. So, let's go ahead
[12:42] here. Move this. Oh, no. We'll use this
[12:45] window. Uh, we're going to go ahead and
[12:47] click select color and pick screen
[12:50] color. And the lightest color is going
[12:52] to be something right around here. So,
[12:54] we'll select that green and click okay.
[12:57] Uh, we'll then click select color for
[12:59] the dark one and pick screen color. And
[13:02] I'm going to go down here. This is by
[13:03] far the darkest green. Click okay. And
[13:07] now we can bring that similarity. And
[13:09] you see they disappeared at the same
[13:10] time at an even lower value of 44 here.
[13:14] So it was able to pick that a little bit
[13:16] better than I could by eye. Our
[13:19] smoothness value would probably be the
[13:21] same as would our spill reduction. And
[13:25] here we have another really good looking
[13:28] key uh picked out much easier because
[13:30] you're able to pick those two colors.
[13:33] The advanced mask chroma key also comes
[13:35] with a show mat option. Uh this makes it
[13:39] easy to identify. You can see I've got
[13:41] some some little noise going on in my
[13:43] shoulder here which tells me that my
[13:45] smoothness might be a little high. So
[13:47] maybe we'll bring that down to eight.
[13:49] And you can really start to finetune. I
[13:52] mean, I might have a good enough key
[13:53] here that I can go without any. You can
[13:55] really start to finetune your key with a
[13:57] mat. It's much easier to see in this
[13:59] black and white format. Uh, the other
[14:02] thing that we can do with advanced mask
[14:04] to make your key even better, I've added
[14:07] a feather mask option. So, you'd want to
[14:09] add another advanced mask filter right
[14:12] after your chroma key filter. And you'll
[14:15] go down and you'll your alpha mask will
[14:17] be a feather mask. And now a feather
[14:20] mask is going to blur the edges of the
[14:23] mask. So if I crank it way up here, I
[14:25] look like a ghost or something. But if I
[14:27] set my feather to like two or three
[14:29] pixels, it's just going to add that
[14:32] little bit of extra smoothing to the
[14:36] edges of the subject. And that adds just
[14:38] a little bit more realism to your chroma
[14:41] key.
[14:43] For those of you who made it this far,
[14:45] congratulations.
[14:47] I hope I provided you with some new
[14:49] knowledge that'll help make your green
[14:51] screen look incredible. By using
[14:54] reasonable lighting, a flat green
[14:56] screen, and understanding the chroma key
[14:58] settings in OBS, you have one of the
[15:01] fundamental building blocks to create
[15:04] amazing real-time special effects for
[15:06] your stream. If you found this useful,
[15:09] please hit the subscribe button as I'll
[15:11] be adding plenty more tutorials in the
[15:13] future including
[15:17] how to drop a TV on your head.
[15:20] Also, please stop by my live stream
[15:22] where we build these effects as well as
[15:25] the software that's used to drive them.
[15:28] And I'll see you in the next one.
[15:32] [Music]