Subtract silhouettes from a static background

Romielouise

Hey guys, I'm really new at this so I can't figure something out.

I want to use a camera/webcam to capture a frame when the program starts. After that i want to capture another frame when i click (but that's not important right now) and remove the background. I want to do this because i have people moving in the frame and i want a proper silhouette that i can subtract from the frame so i can comment on their posture (it's for a P.E. class). I used a very simple OpenCV example and that works fine but it just captures movement within the frame, so for example, when i stand still i fall into the background. What i want is a lot like the apple photobooth effect where you have to leave the frame and it changes everything except for the silhouette that goes into the frame after they determine what the background is. I understand it's vague and but English is not my first language and i'm really lost!

Does anyone have any good tips about subtracting the entire silhouette instead of just tracking the moving parts (or the opposite: subtracting only the background)?

You would really help me out! a really lost girl at war with processing :D

_vk

There is a bundled example that do just this: Background Subtraction. Under video examples.