Ben's Comp Newsletter: Issue 024
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Hey,
This week I've got a tutorial, a handy
utility, a quick python tip and some
automated roto solutions for you to learn
about. Enjoy!
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Easily control CurveTool's output to
help match constantly-changing lights in
your plate.
The CurveTool is invaluable for
analyzing pixels in your image and spitting
out data that animates relative to what's
happening in your plate. Although, unless
those values are exactly what you're after,
they're pretty hard to control.
Many years ago I was working on a shot that
was lit almost entirely by
flickering fire light. The
CurveTool was frustrating me, as
the data it was spitting out seemed
arbitrary and impossible to work with out of
the box. So naturally, I made a utility
gizmo to solve exactly this problem: bm_CurveRemapper!
Check out the tutorial I wrote on how you
can use it in your workflow.
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Easily enable all T-R-S checkboxes in
your Tracker node
Have you ever created a Tracker
node that requires a lot of track
points? As displayed in the above gif,
having to click the T, R and S boxes on each
individual track point is a pain in the
arse. Thankfully, there's a fix for
that!
With my python script, all you need to do is
select your Tracker node, run
the script, and all those pesky little
checkboxes will be enabled!
Note: there are 3 lines
of code at the bottom of the script that
you will need to cut/paste into your menu.py.
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Quick Tip: Easily create legacy nodes
via the Script Editor
Updated nodes in Nuke should be better than
their predecessors, although that's not
always the case. For example, I love that
the latest VectorBlur node is
GPU-accelerated, although I find it's output
quite arbitrary; it never does what I expect
out of the box, and I personally prefer the
old version.
A problem arises here, because the old
VectorBlur is no longer in our
menus. The good news is we can still access
legacy nodes via the script editor!
nuke.createNode("VectorBlur")
creates the old
one.
nuke.createNode("VectorBlur2") creates
the new one.
If this is something you do all the time,
you're able to add the old nodes back into
the Nodes menu, by placing the following
code into your menu.py:
nuke.menu('Nodes').addCommand("Filter/VectorBlur
Old",
'nuke.createNode("VectorBlur")',
icon="VectorBlur.png")
In English, this is looking for the
Nodes menu, then is adding an item
we're calling VectorBlur Old, to
the menu named Filter (if you want
to create a new menu, type a name that
doesn't exist). The second part of the code
is our same nuke.createNode()
function. Finally, the last part is setting
an icon for the menu -- we're just using the
existing icon for
VectorBlur.
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Adobe's #ProjectFastmask
Automated roto is the holy grail tool for
Compositors, and an insanely complex problem
for programmers to solve. There are a
few early-stage solutions out there today,
but this one from Adobe really caught
my eye.
The results aren't quite high enough for
film production, although it seems
incredibly useful and
accurate-enough to aid in
creating a fast matte for a temp comp, or a
simple garbage matte. I'm curious to see
more examples in action, but for now, check
out the 5-minute demo from the Adobe MAX
conference this year...
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Did you find this
newsletter informative?
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Thank you to the following supporters, who
help make this newsletter possible:
Premium Contributor: Seb
Tran
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