The Boris FX Continuum 11 Key and Blend Unit is a collection of compositing and cleanup filters. It's designed to automate the creation of precise keys with a minimal amount of adjustment. The filters strip away the complexity of chroma keying by automating matting, edge softening, edge refinement, light wrapping, and light reflections to produce seamless composites, of both real-life and green/blue screen clips. Some of the filters also feature a built-in PixelChooser with integrated Mocha planar tracking that allows for greater control over which areas of the image the filter should affect.
The Key and Blend Unit is a multi-host plug-in compatible with Adobe, Avid, Resolve, Vegas Pro, and Nuke. It can be used in all host applications at the same time as long as they are on the same computer.
Key Features
- Built-in presets
- On-screen control widgets
- FX browser (not supported in Apple hosts)
- PixelChooser matte and masking system with integrated Mocha planar tracking for select filters
- Hardware acceleration (OpenGL/OpenCL) for select filters
- Multi-processor (SMP) and multi-core (CMP) support
- Beat Reactor for audio-generated VFX
- Support for Adobe host native mask shapes
Filters
Primatte Studio (New)
Primatte Studio is a comprehensive blue/green screen toolset that allows you to easily chroma key and composite using the same Academy Award-nominated compositing technology as films such as the Lord of the Rings and Spider-Man. Exclusive features include automatic green/blue screen analysis, manual transparency tuning, adjust lighting to correct unevenly lit screens, foreground object detection to deliver a perfect key with a single color sample, and an integrated Mocha masking and planar tracking system.
Light Matte
Light Matte uses applied light to create or modify an alpha channel. Rays of light spread from the light source point in all directions. As the rays expand, their intensities are affected by the luminosities of the pixels that they cross. The farther from the source the rays extend, the less they are affected by the intensities of new pixels that they cross. This process is referred to as attenuation, since the effect of the pixels on the intensity of the rays attenuates, or lessens, over time.
The filter allows users to determine which source color channel is used to create the light and to calculate the intensities of the source pixels. Pixels with higher values in the selected channel are considered to have higher intensities.
The filter allows users to determine which source color channel is used to create the light and to calculate the intensities of the source pixels. Pixels with higher values in the selected channel are considered to have higher intensities.
Alpha Process
Alpha Process blurs the alpha channel of an image, performs levels and gamma correction on the output of the blur, and composites the output alpha with the initial alpha using the chosen apply mode. The filter also allows you to soften the matte by blurring the alpha channel after it is processed.
Boost Blend
Boost Blend is a compositing filter that blends two independent layers in a composition and adjusts contrast in the blended pixels. Unlike most transfer modes, Boost Blend adjusts the mix only where the source and blend layers are different. Boost Blend is especially useful when you composite an image over itself and do not want the transfer mode to affect areas where the blended pixels are identical to the source pixels.
Chroma Key
Chroma Key is used for compositing camera footage shot using a blue, green, or red screen as a backdrop over a new background video or a still image from a separate file.
Chroma Key Studio
Chroma Key Studio is an all-in-one keying suite that combines screen enhancement, auto-garbage matte, and masking. Additionally, users are able to take advantage of the following advanced features: chroma key, matte cleanup, matte choker, foreground color correction, and light wrap.
Composite
Composite offers a wide variety of options for compositing one layer over another.
Composite Choker
Composite Choker allows the user to contract or expand the edges of a matte to bring them closer to or farther from the foreground. Two Choke controls allow you to smoothly adjust the matte, while Region Parameter controls let you define a specific region of interest with which to apply the filter.
Glow Matte
Glow Matte outputs an alpha channel instead of colors. This filter is useful for making semi-abstract mattes based on a glow of any channel in the original image. It allows users to select the channel in the source image from which the glow is derived. Pixels with higher values in the selected channel are considered to have higher intensities.
Two Way Key
Two Way Key is useful for keying out a range of colors while retaining one color in the range. Two Way Key works by using a Key Color to determine which color is keyed out, then using a Keep Color to restore opacity to selected colors in the range. You can also adjust the range of colors to key out and key in using the Similarity controls.
Light Wrap
Light Wrap reflects a background image around the edges of a foreground image to form a border. This creates the illusion that light from the background image is reflected onto the foreground image. This creates a more convincing composite by making it appear as if the images were shot in the same environment.
Linear Color Key
Linear Color Key creates a key based on the difference between the color of each pixel and the specified Key Color. The color comparison can be done in RGB or in HSL color space, and you can adjust the relative importance of each RGB channel with the RGB Weights parameters. Linear Color Key also allows you to remove unwanted foreground objects or restore opacity to a transparent region in the foreground using the region of interest controls. This feature is useful when the foreground has an isolated region that is similar in color to the background (for example, a person wearing a tie of the same color as the background).
Linear Luma Key
Linear Luma Key creates a key from a single channel in the source. This type of filter is called a luma key, because the key is usually created from the image luminance, but you can also use any single RGB channel. You might want to examine the individual channels of the source and use a channel that provides more contrast between the foreground and background than the luma channel.
Make Alpha Key
Make Alpha Key creates a new alpha channel from one of the existing channels in the image and then applies levels and gamma correction to the new alpha channel. You can create many useful effects by making a Full On (completely opaque) alpha channel and using the built-in PixelChooser to control which parts of the image key out.
Matte Choker
Matte Choker is a tool for the often-frustrating task of adjusting mattes that are not quite right. A first-pass matte often has unwanted holes in areas that should be opaque, and/or unwanted spots in areas that should be transparent. These problems can usually be fixed with Matte Choker. BCC Matte Choker uses an iterative technique to process the source alpha channel. In other words, the filter applies one stage of the process to the source image, then applies a second stage to the output of the first stage, and repeats the process using the output of each iteration as the input of the next.
Matte Cleanup
Matte Cleanup is used to help correct imperfect mattes as well as generate interesting matte effects. Often a key can create an imperfect matte in which traces of the background color remain around the edge of the foreground subject. Matte Cleanup allows the user to fine-tune aspects of the composite blending, as well as choke the opaque regions to remove any unwanted fringes.
Pixel Chooser
PixelChooser, which features integrated Mocha planar tracking, provides numerous techniques for selecting which areas of an image will be affected by a filter. The PixelChooser has been incorporated into many of the filters in the Key and Blend Unit but is also available as a standalone filter. PixelChooser creates a matte/mask between filtered and unfiltered pixels, allowing far greater control over the design process. The matte/mask can be defined in numerous ways: Mocha planar spline tracking, host spline import (in AE), basic geometric shapes/gradients, luma/alpha/channel mattes with thresholding, and robust color keying.
Premult
Because of the complexities of algorithms, some filters can mix in color channels from pixels that were originally transparent. This creates a premultiplied alpha channel which includes transparency information in the color channels as well as in the alpha channel. The Premult filter sets the color channels of all transparent pixels to the selected color, giving the user control of the color that is mixed in these cases. When you composite an image with a premultiplied alpha channel over a new background of a different color, the edges of the alpha channel show a "fringe" of the old background, because the edges of the alpha channel were blended with the original background color information. Premultiplied Alpha Key allows you to key out most of this unwanted color.
RGB Blend
RGB Blend provides independent compositing of the source image's RGB channels with the Mix Layer's RGB Channels. The brightness and contrast of the composite can also be adjusted independently for each channel.