Ben's Comp Newsletter: Issue 042
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Hey,
I've got some great stuff to share
with you this week, from recreating
old-school film techniques in Nuke,
to taking your first steps using
Blinkscript.
Although, before you start reading,
I need your help! Putting this
newsletter together alongside
working fulltime with a fair share
of OT requires a few tools to keep
me creating efficiently. With the
rapid growth in both scope &
readership of Ben's Comp
Newsletter, these tools are
becoming more costly, and
increasingly necessary to deliver
the newsletter you enjoy receiving
every other week.
The best way to support the project
is by contributing
as little as $1 a month to my
Patreon or by signing
up for my Python
for Nuke 101 course. Thanks
for your consideration -- I hope you
enjoy this week's
newsletter!
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Slit Scan in Nuke
The
VFX industry today is filled with
amazingly powerful tools that allow
us to create anything we can imagine
with a reasonably-high level of
realism, relatively painlessly. Back
in the early days of VFX, however,
artists & filmmakers were
frequently preoccupied inventing new
techniques & technologies just
to be able to successfully finish
a shot. I have a huge amount of
admiration for these problem
solvers, and often find inspiration
hearing stories of, "we wouldn't
have finished the movie if it
weren't for X
invention".
Jack
Hughes
reached out recently to
share this really cool article he
put together about recreating 2001:
A Space Odyssey's
revolutionary Slit
Scan effect in Nuke -- an
optical effect originally pioneered
by Douglas
Trumbull.
Jack shares a brief but insightful
look at the history & theory
behind the practical effect, and
also shares his Nuke
script so you have the
opportunity to create the imagery as
seen above for yourself! This
technique can also be applied to
live action plates for some trippy
results!
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Solving creative challenges in Nuke
(with Blinkscript!)
If
you've been reading this newsletter
for a while, you've likely already
read my interview with Mads
Hagbarth
Damsbo,
creator of the Blinkscript-powered
Point Renderer. One question
I asked was, "Blinkscript is a
relatively new addition to Nuke,
and you’re one of the few people
who are utilizing it at present.
What possibilities do you
foresee Blinkscript bringing to
Nuke in the near future, and
what are the best resources to
help people learn how to create
their first GPU-based tool in
Nuke?"
Blinkscript is a seemingly dense
topic and there is little public
knowledge available at present,
making it quite intimidating to dive
in and get started. Although, if
you've been waiting for an
opportunity to be spoonfed the first
steps, today is your lucky day. Mads
gave a talk at Siggraph this year,
which Foundry
has generously released online,
showcasing what a few basic lines of
Blinkscript code can
achieve.
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Intel's Open Image Denoise.
Quoting
straight from the source:
"The purpose of Open Image
Denoise is to provide an open,
high-quality, efficient, and
easy-to-use denoising library
that allows one to significantly
reduce rendering times in ray
tracing based rendering
applications. It filters out the
Monte Carlo noise inherent to
stochastic ray tracing methods
like path tracing, reducing the
amount of necessary samples per
pixel by even multiple orders of
magnitude (depending on the
desired closeness to the ground
truth). A simple but flexible
C/C++ API ensures that the
library can be easily integrated
into most existing or new
rendering solutions."
The results
in their gallery are already
producing some incredible results!
Thanks to Miles
Lauridsen for the tip.
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A comprehensive guide to the
state-of-art in how AI is transforming
the visual effects industry.
I
share a lot about machine learning
and the implications &
development in VFX in this
newsletter, because I firmly believe
we'll be working in unforeseen ways
within the next five to ten years.
Ross
Dawson compiled
an extensive article about where
these technological advancements are
today, and where they're heading
tomorrow.
It's a lengthy, but worthwhile read
when you get a
chance.
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Did you find this
newsletter informative?
Have you created, or do
you know of any
outstanding
Gizmos, Python
Scripts or Tutorials
that you would like to
share with the global
Compositing community?
Please send
me an
email, and I
will do my best to
include it in a future
issue of this
newsletter.
If you find value in
Ben's
Comp Newsletter,
please consider
pledging
a small amount
on
Patreon to help
keep this project
running! Contributions
are always appreciated
but not expected.
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