Ben's Comp Newsletter: Issue 047
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Hey,
This week's newsletter is one of the
most information-packed ones this
year! With a python script, a
technical blog post, more particle
setups, and a video essay, I hope
you learn something new, or find a
tool that improves the way you work,
or think about work.
Enjoy!
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bm_SmartMerge
In the past
few weeks, I have been experimenting
with something dangerous:
replacing one of the most-used
shortcuts in Nuke with something
better. We're all used to the
m hotkey
creating a Merge node for us, but as
Deep compositing has become
more-or-less common-place, I thought
the hotkey could use a little
upgrade.
I created
SmartMerge, which
enhances our favourite
m hotkey to be
context-dependent! As partially
demonstrated in the gif above,
here's how it works:
-
If
a 2D
node &
Deep
node are
selected, create
a DeepRecolor
node to connect
them. However,
i
f
you have multiple
sets of Reads
&
DeepReads
selected,
SmartMerge
will hook
the pairs up based
on
how similarly the
filenames in
the Reads
& DeepReads
are named.
-
If
only Deep
nodes are
selected, create a
DeepMerge
node.
-
If
a ScanlineRender
node is
selected,
intelligently choose
whether to Merge
or
DeepMerge
depending on
other nodes that are
selected.
-
If
only 3D
nodes are
selected, create a
Scene
node.
-
If
only 2D
nodes are
selected, or if
nothing is selected,
create a vanilla
Merge node
as per usual.
Because
you're subscribed to this
newsletter, I wanted to share
this new tool with you first
before uploading it to
Nukepedia. I encourage
you to download it, use it, and
report
back with how it's
working for you, or with any
bugs you might find!
Personally, adding functionality
to the existing muscle memory I
have has been a
game-changer.
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What exactly does the Grade node do?
I
discovered Chris
Turner's blog
this week, which includes some
pretty neat
things!
Being a technically-minded
Compositor, and understanding what's
happening to the pixels in your
image when you're creating nodes and
changing knobs, aids you when
creating photorealistic images.
Chris wrote an article titled,
Nuke's Grade Node
Demystified, which goes
through the math of how the Grade
node operates.
Whether you're new to Compositing or
a seasoned professional, this
article is worth a read to refresh
some fundamental knowledge about
your craft.
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More Particle setups!
Let's
face it, particles in Nuke still
suck, even after last
issue's cool Particle
Lightning setup. I reached
out to some friends, colleagues, and
students from my Python
for Nuke 101 course, and
asked them what their favourite
particle toolsets were.
Unsurprisingly, there weren't many
responses, but I do have some more
to share with you!
CLOUDTASTIC
Flying
through clouds, or having wispy
clouds in the background of a shot,
is a task that is often completed by
a Compositor. Because Nuke's
particles are slow to calculate and
like to sporadically re-calculate
every frame, I wanted to create
something light-weight that only
operates on a single frame, so that
it's fast to play back, and would be
quick and easy to iterate on the
look.
I came up with a simple setup I call
Cloudtastic, which I
believe solves these issues. How it
works is, you plug in single frames
of similar-looking smoke or
atmospheric elements as particles,
and they get randomly scattered
about inside the volume of a Cube,
which you can fit to fill the
camera's frustum. These particles
are all oriented toward the camera
so you don't get any hard edges or
weird angles, and you can choose to
kill particles within a certain
distance to the camera, so they
don't cause any popping throughout
the shot.
The only downside to this method is
you can't have the clouds
organically fade off when they pass
through the camera, (but you CAN
use this
Particle Killer tool to
get rid of them), and your
cloud sprites won't have any
animation, which is a non-issue with
how fast cameras usually fly through
them!
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CONFETTI
Josh
Parks created a
quick, but effective Confetti setup
using Nuke particles for a
commercial project he was working
on. He's made a tutorial about how
to recreate it, which you can watch
here.
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FLOCK
OF
BIRDS
We have to
mention one of the OG particle
setups, created by Frank
Rueter. It's
super simple: there are three
different sprites of rotoscoped
birds, which are fed into Nuke's
ParticleEmitter to scatter
them about, and make them fly
through frame in a direction of your
choosing.
No matte painting establishing shot
would be complete without
them!
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What's Wrong With Modern CGI.
In
July 2014, I was sat in a cinema
seat in Adelaide, gawking at Weta's
amazing work on Dawn
of the Planet of the Apes.
As the credits started to roll, a
group of people sitting in the row
behind me started commenting, "wow
they did such a good job getting the
apes to act like that!", which
quickly evolved into "they should
shoot things for real more often
because it's way better than the CGI
in Captain America: Winter Soldier,
which looked sooooo fake!"
I had to restrain myself from
correcting these folks, but their
comments have stuck with me since. I
always have a hard time boiling down
why certain films have better VFX
than others to friends and family
who don't create the "movie magic"
themselves. It usually involves
explaining something like: "We
sometimes think dinosaurs and
spaceships look fake, even when
they're incredibly well made,
because subconsciously we know they
don't exist in the real world.
Although, when you see CG buildings
or a well-animated animal, most
people can't tell the
difference."
A couple of weeks ago, a video essay
was released on the Corridor
Crew YouTube
channel titled,
What's Wrong With Modern
CGI. I love this video
as it does a great job of briefly
explaining our craft, and how bad
VFX can be created by incredibly
talented VFX artists, in a simple
way that even Grandma can
understand.
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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 reply
to
this email, and I
will do my best to
include it in a
future issue of this
newsletter.
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Support on Patreon
Ben's Comp
Newsletter: Issue
047 is
sponsored by
Keegen
Douglas.
If you get value from
reading Ben's
Comp
Newsletter every
other week, please
consider contributing
via Patreon to
help keep it
running!
Thankyou
to the following
supporters
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Adam Kelway
Adrian Winter
Anton Moss
Gary Kelly
Hugo's Desk
Julien Laperdrix
Kim
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Lee Watson
Michael Loithaler
Tiscar Coig
Vincent Desgrippes
William Towle
+ 2
others...
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