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 (admittedly, 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 users 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.
