Ben's
Comp Newsletter: Issue
012
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Hey,
I always appreciate a
clean, organized Nuke script.
Not only is it aesthetically
pleasing, it runs much more
efficiently and is significantly
easier to work with. This issue
of Ben's Comp Newsletter is
about keeping your scripts fast,
clean &
tidy.
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MERGING
2D
TRANSFORMS
When
addressing client notes, I find
myself creating & concatenating
new nodes so I can easily go back to
a previous version if needed. This
is a flexible way to work, although
it can get messy, is hard to reverse
& sometimes causes confusion
with too many nodes (depending on
how picky your client is!).
Once I've dialed in something the
client likes, I could be stuck with
15 transform nodes all with their
own unique animation, and it can be
quite hard to add another layer
while having to fight against
previous iterations.
Thankfully, Erwan
Leroy
has come to the rescue with
a super handy Python script that
collapses multiple Transform &
CornerPin nodes into a single node,
to avoid the clutter!
Click
here to download it, or Click
here to read more about the code
and how it works.
Tip: If you're only
translating & scaling, you
should output a Transform node. For
anything else, including if you have
a stack of Transform nodes with
rotations, I found the tool works
most-predictably by outputting a
CornerPin.
If someone figures out how to do
this with Grade, Multiply &
ColorCorrect nodes, please send it
my way!
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BACKDROP
NODE PRESETS
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! The above
image is representative of some of
the presets I have made for
myself.
I appreciate having consistent
defaults, as it helps our lizard
brains instantly recognize what is
what at a glance, without thinking
about it. If I'm zoomed out all the
way on a massive Nuke script, I know
the green areas are Keys, purple
areas are DMPs, etc. etc.
Click
here to download the python
script, and Click
here to read a quick tutorial on
how it works, and how to set
your own presets!
As a bonus, backdropTools.py by
Ivan Busquets
allows you to cycle through hue,
saturation & luminance of a
selected Backdrop node, and
automatically fix any layering
issues that pop up with nested
Backdrop nodes
Click
here to download
backdropTools.
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EASILY
MOVE MULTIPLE NODES WHERE YOU
WANT THEM TO BE
One of my
favorite Python scripts to hit
Nukepedia in recent history is W_ScaleTree,
by Wouter
Gilsing. This
panel allows you to scale a group of
selected nodes in your node graph by
a specific anchor point &
automatically align them with even
spacing in between. Click
here to download
W_ScaleTree!
Supplementary to this is the classic
script from Frank
Rueter, that
allows you to mirror nodes on the
horizontal or vertical axis. Click
here to download
mirrorNodes.
I use both these tools almost
daily!
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ARE
NEURAL NETWORKS THE FUTURE
OF CG
ENVIRONMENTS?
DeepMind's
AI has been trained to create a 3D
representation of different objects
& environments using a sparse
selection of 2D images. This
article outlines how the
neural network feeds off the
relationship between parallaxing
objects (much like how our favourite
Camera Tracking/Solving programs
do), and can then predict all the
details in between.
It's early days for this kind of
technology, but there are huge
implications for the impact it could
have on the VFX
industry!
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If
you've
created a
gizmo or
python
script to
solve a
common
problem or
speed up
your
workflow,
please reply
to this
email and
let me know
about it's
existence!
I'd love to
help spread
the word, to
help us all
be better
compositors
together!
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