Ben's
Comp Newsletter: Issue
017
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Hey,
As you're reading this, I'm sitting on a
plane making my way back to Vancouver
after a solid 4 weeks travelling around
Europe. I hope you've managed to take
some time away from VFX this year
too!
Although with the end of any vacation
comes a time to re-focus and set sights
on new goals in both work & life --
I have some exciting plans this year
which I hope to share with this
community soon!
In the meantime, let's get on with this
week's newsletter.
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COMMUNITY
CONTRIBUTIONS
I wanted to
take a moment to recognize a few
readers who have written to me over
the past month to suggest
improvements to my work & the
newsletters' content that I share
with everyone. I find this feedback
extremely valuable, as it not only
helps me improve my own skills, but
also helps me to share the best
information with you, the humble
reader.
First, Falk
Hofmann re-wrote my
operationSwitcher Python
script to be far cleaner & more
efficient! If you're unfamiliar, it
sets a hotkey to toggle a Merge
node's operation to the opposite
value (over to under, from to plus,
etc.) Rather than using multiple
if/else statements, Falk has
optimized the code to run using a
dictionary to look up & use the
relevant values.
Check
out the new and improved
operationSwitcher.py
here.
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Secondly, a
number of readers wrote to give
feedback on my previous article
about, When
to Utilize a Different
Colourspace. Specifically to
mention that I'd forgotten to add
converting to log space for any type
of image filtering (reformats,
transforms, etc.) to preserve image
quality. This wasn't originally
included as I felt it's fairly
widely known & already
implemented into many studio's
pipelines, although given the recent
feedback, I have updated my article
to include it!
Once again, thankyou to those who
have replied to a previous issue of
my newsletter, or have contacted me
via my website to share some
knowledge & help make our
community's collective knowledge
grow bigger and better!
If you have something to share with
the community, please reply to this
email and let me
know!
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COMMA
One of the
coolest tools to hit the internet in
the past little while, Comma
by Adrian
Pueyo is a utility that
allows you to instance certain nodes
with the help of a Dot node &
some extra information that gets
displayed.
Why would you want to use it? I'll
give you two examples.
1) As I
previously wrote about in this
article, Read nodes aren't
particularly smart. Nuke
processes each Read node in your
script individually, even if they
are pointing at the same filepath.
For example, if you're copy/pasting
& using the same pre-rendered
matte multiple times in your script,
Nuke is going to be unnecessarily
processing that same data multiple
times, and that slowness weighs down
your script exponentially.
2) Having
the same camera in multiple
locations around your script makes
them hard to update. You never
anticipate having to update your
comp to use a new camera, but it
happens more often than you could
predict! If you have 10 instances of
that camera, it's a time sink to
have to find and update every single
one, and you're open to missing one
or two of them, causing a re-render
& even more tedious lost
time.
In both examples, you can see it's
far more efficient in terms of both
Nuke's processing speed & your
time spent updating individual nodes
to just have one copy of each Read
or Camera node in your script, and
use Comma to instance them
around your script wherever they're
needed!
Click
here to download Comma on
Nukepedia, or Click
Here to watch Adrian's tutorial
on Vimeo.
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A
BETTER CONTACT
SHEET
Let's face
it, the Contact Sheet node in Nuke
is kind of like a resident in a
retirement home; they mean well, but
need a lot of help to function the
way nature intended. I've been
pondering what a good Contact Sheet
needs for quite some time, and have
finally bitten the bullet and
created a better system.
So, what does it do?
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Automatically
lays out your images to
maximize screen coverage,
with no gaps
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Automatically
labels what each input
is
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Automatically
sets it's
own resolution, based
off your Project Settings'
format
-
Adds
a User knob for easy
resolution scaling in case
you want more detail, or
more speed
Click
here to read the quick tutorial
& download the Python
script!
Note:
This tool is essentially an untested
Beta at this point. Please reply to
this email and let me know of any
bugs or inefficiencies you
find!
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DRONE
LIGHT
SHOW!
Intel
recently celebrated their "50th
anniversary of innovation". To mark
the milestone, they put on a light
show made up of 2000 drones,
choreographed & "performed" by
only one computer. Pretty
incredible!
Intel made a video talking about it,
but hasn't released a video of the
event online yet. Luckily, some
other guy with his own drone
uploaded his own edit for us to
watch!
Click
here to watch Intel's video,
or Click
here to watch the drone light
show in action!
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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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