Abstract: A new method and apparatus for creating, positioning and manipulating a garbage matte which obscures everything outside of a three-dimensional physical set or blue stage. Effectively, the garbage matte is a "negative" of a blue stage. What is important is that the garbage matte is created either as a virtual enclosure around all virtual objects in the virtual environment, or simply as a background color of the graphics engine generating the garbage matte. In this way, the garbage matte provides extensions of blue screens which comprise the blue stage, extending all the way around and behind the television cameras. Consequently, a compositor will not include in a composited output image those physical set elements which are masked by the virtual garbage matte. The compositor will replace areas hidden by the garbage matte with image data supplied by the computer image generator which stores the virtual environment.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for producing data in a virtual set memory representing a composite image. The composite image data is produced from a combination of data representing a virtual image and data representing a camera field of view image. The invention includes a plurality of cameras, each disposed for developing data representing a respective field of view and each having a still store frame buffer associated therewith for receiving and storing data representing virtual images. The still store frame buffers are configured for subsequent selective retrieval. The invention also includes a virtual image data source for generating data representing virtual images and for supplying such data to the still store frame buffers associated with each of the plurality of cameras.