Beginner greenscreen question

[hillbill63]

I'm at the beginning of my webcam and green-screen journey, and before I go and buy a greenscreen, I have the following question:

My set up space is at the end of a narrow hallway, so even if I have the widest greenscreen I can fit behind me, the webcam will still capture the walls either side of me. Is it possible to crop the camera image so only the greenscreen portion is visible, whilst still having the background overlay fill up the original camera window size, if that makes sense?

Thanks for any help!

 

[FerretBomb]

I'm at the beginning of my webcam and green-screen journey, and before I go and buy a greenscreen, I have the following question:

My set up space is at the end of a narrow hallway, so even if I have the widest greenscreen I can fit behind me, the webcam will still capture the walls either side of me. Is it possible to crop the camera image so only the greenscreen portion is visible, whilst still having the background overlay fill up the original camera window size, if that makes sense?

Thanks for any help!

Yes, that will work fine. It's just a visual "background" image anyway. If you move past the greenscreen it will probably ruin the illusion just a bit, as part of your body disappears each time it moves past the 'crop line'.

One tip is to use the Crop filter on your camera first, so anything outside the greenscreen will never show up. Then generate a white PNG image the size of your cropped camera, and have a small gradient at the edges to black. Then apply this after the Crop filter as an Image Mask. At that point if you lean or reach into the cropped area, you'll have a soft 'fade out' rather than a hard crop-cutoff line. A minor detail, but it looks good comparatively. :)

 

[hillbill63]

Thanks @cyclemat and @FerretBomb for your advice - the soft fade out solution sounds very clever, I'll keep that in mind once I get the basics out of the way!