Ben's Comp Newsletter: Issue 050
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Hey,
This issue of Ben's Comp
Newsletter is a
special one -- It marks the 50th
issue, and two years of sending out
useful, curated and created content
to the global VFX
community!
First, I love stats and wanted to
share some with you. Ben's Comp
Newsletter's readership
grew 267% this year and
support on Patreon skyrocketed by
633%! If you enjoy
Ben's Comp
Newsletter and want to
keep it going, contributing
a small amount every month
is the best way to support the
project.
As there have been so many new
readers this year, this week's
newsletter is a round-up of 2019's
best & most popular
tools!
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Most downloaded tools.
SSMesh from
MJ
Tang provides a neat way to
create geometry using position,
depth or deep data.
DeepC,
which is a suite of new Deep nodes
for Nuke. It introduces extra
flexibility into your Compositing
workflow by providing more
controllable grading &
matte-creation options in Deep.
SpinVFX's
Collection of
Gizmos was generously
released online for everyone to
benefit from. There are plenty of
useful gizmos in this package,
including:
-
Erode_Fine,
which erodes an image with
subpixel accuracy, as
opposed to Nuke's default
Erode node which can only
erode full
pixels.
-
Morph_Dissolve,
which allows you to
morph between two
moving
plates.
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Most popular tutorials.
Make
A Custom Advanced Keyer Using ST
Map by Erwan
Leroy gives a brief but
insightful look into how keyers
work, and how we can create our
own.
My Python
for Nuke 101 course
continues to be super popular --
thank you if you have already signed
up! If you haven't, don't be left
behind, and join lots of other
Compositors in levelling up their
skills!
Back
to Basics: A Brief Lesson on
Image Filtering & Node
Concatenation. It's easy to
take the fundamentals as a given,
although every Compositor comes from
a different background, has learned
different things, etc. These
concepts are super important to
understand to maintain image
fidelity as you
comp!
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Most popular interviews.
These
interviews are always the highlight
of Ben's Comp Newsletter
each time they're shared. I've had
the pleasure of connecting with so
many knowledgeable people this year,
who have all shared such valuable
advice, that it's personally hard to
choose any favourites. Thankfully,
the readership statistics could
determine this for me!
João
Sita // VFX Supervisor
João
is one of those rare people who is
the trio of super talented, humble
& incredibly inspiring all at
the same time. His long and diverse
career in VFX spans a variety of
Commercials, TV and Film projects,
and has taken him from his home
country in Brazil, all the way to
Canada, where he now works at
Framestore Montréal.
MJ
Tang // Senior Compositor
MJ
Tang started
working in visual effects in Hong
Kong, circa 2003. Throughout his
career, he has worked with a handful
of different studios from RodeoFX to
Atomic Fiction (now Method Studios),
and is currently a Senior Compositor
at ScanlineVFX in Montreal. He has
provided our global Compositing
community a ton of useful tools this
year (including SSMesh,
above), and provides a fascinating
interview.
Falk
Hofmann // Compositing
Supervisor
"I am Falk Hofmann
and a compositor for roughly a
decade. Since a couple of years also
TD and recently I joined RISE FX |
Berlin as Compositing Supervisor.
Besides that, I like to play around
with my Raspberry Pies, occasionally
writing Android apps and be outside
in the garden. A personal aim is to
bring these three together and enjoy
them all at once."
I frequently
revisit all of these
interviews as they can offer
different insights depending on
where I'm at any given time.
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Most popular articles.
This
CG Cinematography Book, by
Christophe
Brejon de Lavergnée, is a
free book, which provides an
in-depth look at the theory and
principles Christophe has learned
spanning his 8-year career as
(primarily) a lighter working in
film & animation.
In his article, The
Learning Curve – Chasing
Stars,
Xavier
MartÃn shares his thought
process behind learning &
adapting to new technologies, and
how that translates to a tradition
of pushing his own boundaries and
creating a new CG Sun every year.
Super inspiring!
Back
to Basics: Common errors when
creating a gizmo, a recent
article I wrote, highlights things
to watch out for when creating new
gizmos, so you can make them
bulletproof!
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Ben's favourite tools in 2019.
Whenever I,
or someone on my team faces a
problem in Nuke, I'm always excited
about the opportunity to find new
and creative ways to solve it!
Luckily there are so many cool ideas
out there, and I wanted to highlight
the things I got the most excited
about this year.
Stamps,
created by Adrian
Pueyo and Alexey
Kuchinski, aims to change
the way we work inside of Nuke.
Instead of duplicating multiple
copies of renders, cameras, etc.
around your Nuke script, Stamps
intelligently "links" to the
original node in your script using a
custom node with a hidden input.
apDespill,
also created by Adrian
Pueyo, has
been my go-to despill node this
year. The ability to pick a specific
shade of green/blue, and accurately
Despill it is a game-changer!
Lastly, something that has bugged me
for years is how inefficient working
with Deeps can be at most studios. A
lot of this has to do with how large
and clunky Deep files are, but the
workflow of using them in Nuke also
has a bunch of inefficiencies. This
year, I created bm_SmartMerge
to solve one of these workflow
inefficiencies. It adds upon the
existing m
hotkey our muscle memory is used to,
to intelligently detect whether you
want to Merge, DeepMerge,
DeepRecolor, or put a bunch of 3D
objects into a Scene.
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Wrapping up 2019 & lessons
learned.
It's
difficult for me not to enter a
reflective state of mind in the last
few weeks of each year. 2019 for me
was all about embracing the
saying, "you get out what
you put in". I made a
conscious effort to involve myself
in as many meaningful projects as I
could & help whoever I could
along the way. As a result, I gained
a great sense of fulfilment &
had the most successful year of my
career thus far!
Throughout this year, I learned some
valuable lessons such as relying on
motivation is bs, and how discipline
& hard work can also have
downsides too. "Working hard"
shouldn't be the goal, "working
thoughtfully" should be.
We've unfortunately seen too many
rough times this year with large
quantities of contracts not being
renewed at some studios &
studio-wide layoffs at others. It's
a stark reminder that while we work
with some amazing people and are
lucky enough to form great bonds
throughout the course of each
production, loyalty at a company
level is always one-sided. It's a
hard lesson, but one that's worth
storing in the back of your mind, as
the responsibility for a fulfilling
career is only in one person's hands
-- yours.
Naturally, I will be elaborating on
all of these topics in 2020's issues
of Ben's Comp Newsletter
for your benefit!
Lastly, to wrap up the year,
Ben's Comp Newsletter has
joined all the social channels! This
year, I learned more about email
spam filters than I thought I ever
would. It's a shame to see spam
filters picking up some issues of
the newsletter and people missing
them (please whitelist
[email protected] & add to
your email address book if you
haven't already!), so to
combat this I've joined Instagram,
Facebook & Twitter so you can
get your comp-related fix
anywhere!
Follow here:
Of course, if
you've stopped gaining value from
reading Ben's Comp
Newsletter, please unsubscribe
using this link. The only
thing I ask is that you let me know
what you're missing, so this project
can continue to improve & be
better!
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That's it
from me for 2019 -- Ben's Comp
Newsletter will return
bigger and better next year.
Issue 051 will be
hitting your inbox
on January 13th, 2020
(PST). Until then,
take some time to switch off, not
think about work, and enjoy time
with friends & family.
Happy holidays!
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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
050 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
Brent Veal
David Ventura
Gary Kelly
Hugo's Desk
Julien Laperdrix
Kim
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Lee Watson
Matt
Michael Liuyu
Michael Loithaler
Tiscar Coig
Vincent Desgrippes
William Towle
+ 2
others...
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