Garbage Matte
Definition
A Garbage Matte (or "rough matte") is a simple, roughly drawn matte used in VFX compositing to quickly remove large, unwanted areas of an image before a more precise keying or rotoscoping operation is applied. For example, when keying a green screen shot, a garbage matte might be drawn around the edges of the green screen to remove the rigging, lighting equipment, and other set elements that are visible outside the green screen area. This simplifies the keying process by reducing the amount of work the keyer needs to do.
Contextual Usage
The VFX compositor describes the workflow for a complex green screen shot: "The first thing I'm going to do is draw a garbage matte around the green screen to remove all the rigging and equipment visible at the edges. Once the garbage matte is in place, I can run the keyer on just the green screen area, which will give me a much cleaner result. Then I'll refine the edges with rotoscoping." ---
About this section
Visual effects have become an indispensable part of modern filmmaking, enabling storytellers to create worlds, creatures, and events that would be impossible, impractical, or prohibitively expensive t...
View all 10 terms