There's a discussion in another thread about how to make an object appear through water, and I've had private discussions with a user on making someone appear through a fog, so I decided to write tutorial on how to do this kind of effect using mattes and masks. It almost certainly needs some tweaking, but here it is anyway. Click Here to view the PDF file. To see a short clip of how the effect works, Click Here (1.5Mb WMV file).

Comments and criticisms are welcome. 

Thanks for taking the time and making the effort to put this informative piece together!

 - Jim 

Thank you Dave

HI Dave,

When I try to open the link I get a message that I am not authorized to veiw the page this happens on both links, do I need some sort of password?

Excellent Dave.

There are no passwords required. Are you simply clicking on the links, or are you copying and pasting them?

Waljipatel:

HI Dave,

When I try to open the link I get a message that I am not authorized to veiw the page this happens on both links, do I need some sort of password?

I get an error , 403  , when trying to open up the links, my virus app is AVG and I use only the XP  firewall.

Dave, I have sent you a Pm

I'm working on fixing the links for non-US viewers. I don't think it's me but a global setting on the web hosting site.

I have no problems opening both links.

Thank you Dave, excellent!

Roland (Switzerland)

Dave, I'm in South Africa and have had no problems with the links.

Nice tip Dave, I've done this using BorisFX But not using Matte.

 

OK, the problem is one of network abuse (spam, hackers, etc.) from international sites. Pretty much everything from the Asia Pacific Network and RIPE was disabled. I've changed the settings and you should be able to get to the tutorials.

Correct, the link works from Sweden now.

I've updated the finished demo, just for grins (added appropriate scary music and title). It's now a 2.9Mb WMV file.

Dave,
Cool effect. Would you be so kind (if it's still possible) as to post a screenshot of the AL7 timeline that has the bat clips on it. It would help me visualize how you set up the various clips.

Thanks so much

Art

OK here's the timeline. The male and female matte containers just have the greensceened bat with the greenscreen filter. In both cases I'm using the View Matte option to get the black&white matte. One of them also has the Inverted box checked off so that the mattes are inverted.

The Bat track container has the bat superimposed on the clock tower. This is in the next post (we can only attach one image per post). 

And here's the contents of the Bat track container. Note that this is really only necessary if you have partially transparent areas in the matte, as otherwise the background doesn't show through.

What this container does is place the bat over a copy of the fog covered clock tower. That way, if there were any transparent parts to the bat, you'd see the foggy clock tower through them. 

Thank you Dave. Opens up another world of possibilities....so much to learn!

I too am thankful for you time and doing this tutorial!