Ben's
Comp Newsletter: Issue
004
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Hey,
This issue is all about
animation curves and their
many forms. It's also filled
with shameless plugs for tools I
created years ago (and still
update / maintain to this day)
to solve common problems I was
constantly facing. I hope they
help you too!
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AUTOMATICALLY
GENERATING NOISE
CURVES
There is a bunch of information on the web
about random noise functions. A few years
ago I wrapped some up into the bm_NoiseGen
gizmo as an easy way to create
any type of curve imaginable. I'll usually
use this to modulate fire-light AOV passes,
create blinking lights in matte paintings,
etc.
David Emeny has a good
resource on his website that
outlines the math behind these different
curves. More-recently, he has created a
super cool tool to automatically add
animation to any knob in Nuke, called Animation
Maker. Makes adding more complex
animation much easier!
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BM_CURVEREMAPPER
I created this tool specifically to handle
data that's output from the CurveTool.
For example, in a shot with constantly
varying light that I need to match, I would
run the CurveTool's 'Avg
Intensities' mode to automatically
generate a curve that matches what's
happening in my shot. This data is useful
as-is if you want a Constant
node to roughly match the values
in your shot, but you have to manipulate the
data for it to be useful when working with
CG renders.
That's where this gizmo comes in! You can
copy the CurveTool's data into the gizmo's
Animation Curve knob, tell the
gizmo what the minimum and maximum values
are, and then remap them to a new minimum
and maximum value (0 and 1 in this case).
This allows you grade any AOV to any value,
and use your new remapped animation curve in
the Mix knob to sync up your changes with
the lighting variation in the plate!
Click
here to download
bm_CurveRemapper!
For the next version of this gizmo, I'm
working on a way to automate finding the
CurveTool's minimum and maximum values. If
you would like to be notified about updates
to this gizmo, or any others I have made,
you can sign
up here.
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ADDING
CAMERA SHAKE, THE RIGHT
WAY
Working on Gravity
at Rising Sun Pictures presented a
bunch of really interesting challenges on
some seriously cool space shots. We handled
the space station re-entry sequence at the
end of the film which involved a lot of
subtle camera movement and turbulent
buffeting. This encouraged the team to look
for reference of cameras shaking in
different situations, which quickly led us
to the conclusion that Nuke's built-in
CameraShake gizmo barely does the
essentials, and ultimately isn't very
good...
We found that camera shake in the real world
can be broken down into three distinct
parts:
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Float -- Large scale handheld-like
movement
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Shake -- What we usually associate
Camera Shake as
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Jitter -- Small sub-frame vibrations
that produce some really
interesting, streaky & squiggly
motion blur
Because Nuke's Transform nodes concatenate,
we could implement our findings as
expressions in three different Transform
nodes, and it all worked whilst only
filtering our image once. Although it wasn't
the most elegant solution...
A couple years down the track, I encountered
a need for this solution again, and decided
it would be handy to wrap up a more-elegant
iteration of the idea into a gizmo. This
gizmo combines all three parts into one
expression whilst still maintaining control
over the individual elements, and also
shakes the centre-point of the transform
(especially on the jitter) to create some
really nice, natural-looking motionblur
whilst the camera shakes!
Click
here to download
bm_CameraShake!
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BEZIER
CURVES UNDER THE
HOOD
I recently came across this video by
Peter Nowell demonstrating
how computers calculate bezier curves.
Pretty interesting stuff!
Click
here to watch!
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DNEG'S
BLADERUNNER 2049 VFX
BREAKDOWN
Bladerunner is up for the VFX Oscar this
year -- this breakdown clearly demonstrates
why! Great work to those who were
involved.
Click
here to watch!
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One last thing.
I
hope you've
been
enjoying
receiving
this
newsletter!
In order to
deliver the
most
relevant
tools,
techniques
and
knowledge to
your inbox,
it would be
a huge help
if you could
please
update
your
profile.
This will
ensure I'm
sharing the
most
relevant
content with
you going
forward!
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