We reported on Razer's new line of 'high thread-count' gaming mouse pads. They come in a variety of sizes ranging from modest to desk-sized. They're perfectly good mouse pads, but I've found an even better use for them.
I'm no stranger to ridiculously large mousepads (and how to clean them). I think they're fantastic, and the idea of covering my entire workspace with a mouse-friendly surface is my dream gaming setup because I do comically large mouse sweeps when I play shooters.
But the Razer Gigantus V2 3XL is actually larger than my desk. It hangs over the sides like a sad gamer table cloth. It's just a bit too big for my setup, so at first, I couldn't find much use for it outside of a substitute yoga mat or a stylish vampire-inspired half-cape (ittedly, rubber isn't ideal cape material). It wasn't until I was rolling the Gigantus up to put it away forever that I noticed its true potential. The bright green rubber backing makes a perfect green screen.
More importantly, a green screen for my dog.
Razer went with a minimalist design for the top of the mouse pad with tasteful green accents. Flip it over, and it's an entirely different story—a 47.28 x 21.67-inch lime green canvas. I draped my new green screen over my chair and enlisted reluctant model Sonny, aka SonnyDays, to help out with the photo shoot.
Once I had my webcam shot set up, I was able to easily key out the green using OBS. It's listed under webcam properties and the Chroma Key filter.
After that, Photoshop s can easily use the magic wand and lasso tools to drop your model into whatever scene you'd like. Toss a Gigantus pad on a chair, and after a little editing magic, you too can have your dog (and I guess cat) star in their own livestream or meme.
I even took the liberty of improving The PC Gamer's PAX East 2020 stream by replacing myself with a more charismatic host.
