Neat Video is one of the craziest plugins you can get for Nuke (and pretty much every other VFX software too, these days). All you have to do is run the plugin, click the magical button, and voila! You’ve got yourself a really nice denoise; far better than any other denoiser out there today with the…Continue Reading “4 Tips to Improve Neat Video’s denoise results!”
The ImagePlane gizmo is my favourite for speedily placing an object on a card in (pseudo)3D space. Rather than dealing with Nuke’s clunky 3D system, you can easily get a handful of atmospheric smoke elements layered up and in your shot! But that convenience of fast setup time comes at a price…
If you’ve got 2 or 3 elements to throw into your shot, ImagePlane’s are perfect! Although if you’re working on a mostly-CG shot that needs polishing up with a lot of 2D elements, it’s best you stick with the standard 3D Card, Camera & ScanlineRender setup. It’s more annoying and time-consuming to set up for sure, but it will prevent your Nuke script from chugging along at snail’s pace.
ImagePlane’s in vast quantities, especially with motion blur switched on, will take a huge toll on both your GUI’s interactivity & your Viewer’s processing speed.
Do you have a better way? Reach out and let me know!
Nobody likes getting to that stage of a shot where they come to the realization: “damn, warping is the only way…” Although, there are certain techniques that can make the process more streamlined and manageable. I’ve noticed Compositors, myself included at times, attempt “just a quick and easy warp” without setting things up properly, only…Continue Reading “SplineWarp hacks for an easier time when warping”
Humans are creatures of habit. To align with this mindset, I have created a python script that enables compositors to set Backdrop Node presets in their menu.py!
Continue Reading "Backdrop Node Presets"I often find myself labelling nodes with descriptors, so it’s clear what each node is doing. This usually involves a TCL snippet to return a value of a certain knob. This article is intended to serve as a reference, so we have a good cheat sheet to turn to when we might need to find…Continue Reading “TCL Tips For Visualizing Data In Your Comp”
Matching grain can be tricky at times. The best way to add grain to your comp & get it to match the plate is to just use the grain from the plate!
For this example, I’m going to be using this stock footage from videvo.net.
First, we have to identify when this technique is useful, and when it might not be…
Continue Reading "Re-Graining Your Comp Using Existing Plate Grain"We’ve all been in that place where we’re watching our shot on loop, can see something is missing, but just can’t figure out what that thing is. When I find myself in this scenario, I Give it 10, and the problem solves itself! Here’s how it works…
Continue Reading "Give it 10 – How to generate new ideas when you have none"
Of all the people I have met whilst working in the visual effects industry, I have never met another artist who is truly ok calling something “good enough”. It’s a title that is begrudgingly assigned to a shot when they know they don’t have the time to push it any further. In saying that, is there really such a thing as the “perfect shot”? I would argue no, and here’s why.
Continue Reading "Creativity vs. Productivity"Nuke is incredibly flexible and customizable out of the box, and empowers artists to work they way they want to work to get a shot to final. But there’s a whole other world of untapped potential when you utilize Python to further expand it! In this post, I’m going to show you an example of how even the most simple python script can save you time every day.
Continue Reading "Create Simple Python Scripts To Speed Up Your Workflow"$gui is a simple TCL expression that tells Nuke to process a value differently in the Viewer (or “gui”) vs. when rendering on the render farm.
To use it, simply right-click on any knob in Nuke, choose “Add expression”, and enter $gui in the expression field.
