Guitar Hero Style Overlay

[Malkav]

Hey guys,

Me and two friends wanna shoot a cover video of this song and for lols we thought it'd be funny to have a streaming guitar hero kinda display overlayed on it, now the problem is that we are all noobs at this stuff so I have some questions that maybe you could help me with.

1) Can this be done?
2) What program would I need to use to do it?
3) Would I need a different program/function to embed it on a video?
4) Will I have to create a sync'd animation, or is it possible to get it to sync to midi data?

Thanks in advance!

 

[MFB]

1. Yes
2. Some sort of modelling program, as you'd need to create the model of the fretboard as well as the buttons, then animated them moving up and down
3. Yup, you'd need something like AfterEffects to overlay it onto the real footage
4. No clue about that part, generally you'd have to hand animated the motion of the buttons and the timing of the board, etc...

 

[Danukenator]

1. Totally.

2. As a huge ex-GH dork. People create the charts in a program called Feedback. Feedback is basically a GH optimized editor. My friend (published many charts for the Rock Band Network) preferred to use Reaper as he was more familiar with the interface. Charting is sort of an art. If you're not familiar with the process you get GH1 charts that don't really match what the music is doing.

Once you chart the song, you can use a program like (...Guitar Hero DJ?) to import the song into the game. People generally use GH3 as it runs the best on computers. For it to be on the other games you need to either have a custom disk made or access to the Rock Band Network which was just axed.

Then, use Fraps or something to record the in game video. People use 3D analyze to make the game run better because the port is so poorly optimized.

Then, throw it into your favorite video editing software.

3. So, people in the GH community have been doing this for about 5-6 years (perhaps longer). They call it PiP (Picture in Picture). It allows people to see the chart of the song in addition to the player. It helped people learn 8 finger tapping that harder songs needed.

Example:



That one has a lot of flashy effects and whatnot. They just used Adobe or Sony Vegas.

4. Not quite sure what you mean here. The chart is created with a master file. The reason bands like Led Zepplin never made it into GH or RB is that you can extract the masters from the game. They didn't want to hand out the masters for their songs. The song will necessary match the chart as creating a chart consists of playing one second loops of the same thing over and over until it's done.

If the song is relatively simple my friend might be willing to chart it for you.

If I wasn't clear about anything let me know!

 

[Constante]

After you have the Guitar Hero chart file, download a free trial of After Effects/Sony Vegas. Layer the chart video over the guitar cover video, and then use the mask tool to draw an outline over the fretboard. Feather it by just a few pixels so it doesn't have a harsh edge.