TriCaster Photoshop files

This is a quick tutorial that takes you through one of the Photoshop files that come included with our Virtual Set packs. I’m going to be looking at the ‘left’ angle of Studio 1.

Now – TriCaster users can load the Photoshop version directly into NewTek’s Virtual Set Editor or VSE, but it’s still just a regular Photoshop document and I thought it might be useful just to open it up in Photoshop, so you can see what all the different layers are for.

The first thing you’ll notice when you open the file in Photoshop is these weird coloured gradients. These layers are special UV gradients that TriCaster uses to map live inputs and reflections – so there’s one for when you want your talent to appear in front of and overlap the edge of the desk. There’s also an empty talent layer behind the desk. You’ve got a UV gradient for the reflection of the talent in the desktop, one for the screen content, and its reflection in the desk, and one for the skyline, and the skyline’s reflection in the desk. If you’re not using VSE, or anything else that can use UV gradients, then you probably don’t need to worry about those layers at all.

So – one thing to notice is that some layers are grouped together – so they’re easier to turn on or off just with one click – there’s one group here for the desk, and another group for the plasma screen or monitor.

Now, the most important layer in most of our virtual sets will be the midground layer – that’s usually the main structure of the set. It’s called the midground, because there’ll usually be other layers behind it, and more layers in front. In the background in this case there’s an example skyline image, and behind that layer is the UV gradient for the skyline that we saw earlier, so if you’re on a TriCaster, you can turn off the example skyline layer, and use the live input layer to add your own skyline image.

The same kind of thing applies to the screen group – there’s the surrounding frame of the monitor itself, then behind that an example image for the screen content, and behind that is the UV gradient that TriCasters can use to map your own source into the screen.

The desk group in Studio 1 has quite a few layers. Notice that in this virtual set you get an opaque layer that sits on top of the desktop – it’s just for safety really in case you want to hide all the reflections completely, but behind that you’ll find all the various reflection layers for the desktop – there’s reflections for your talent, and the screen, and the midground, and finally the skyline layer reflections. So just remember if you’re making changes to the background, or screen, don’t forget to do the same for the reflections too.