Category: Nuke

This week we reviewed our Balloon Projects in class. Before though I added music to my scene just to add to the theme of it.

The feedback I recieved on this was that it needed to tell more of a story.

We then looked at roles within the VFX industry and what we need to do to impress future employers. One of the main messages we were given was; review your work. This is something that seems so simple yet is looked over so much.

Over the christmas break, I will be writing an essay for my Design for animation module. This contains a lot of research that aligns with Nuke. The lighting and environements I will be talking about use a lot of the same skills we have learnt about in Nuke, so this research will be interesting to compare to what I have learnt so far.

This week we looked at clean up on Nuke, where you can remove things from a scene using roto paint features such as clone. Roto paint offeres more features than the normal roto node, such as clone, blur, and paint. First, we looked at adding focal points to an image. We added the defocus node on to an image of helmets, and we moved the focal point around the image as the focus changed when we did this.

We then played with the roto paint node, with the paint option, allowing you to paint anywhere on the scene. On the same node, we can select the blur option, which in it’s name, lets you blur areas of the scene.

We then looked at cleaning up a scene using some of these features. We were given a scene of a school hallway with posters and drawings on the lockers, and papers on the moving because of the breeze. We were shown various clean up methods such as the fire escape sign being taken out of the shot, the poster being taken out, and also text being added by perspective and trackers on the raidiator. The clone tool was used to remove the things in shot so I wanted to try this out.

We were asked to remove an element from the scene so I chose a drawing on the side of the locker, and used what I had learnt about the clone tool to blend in the removal of this drawing with the rest of the locker. I placed a framehold node then tracked the shot.

Work from home

We were asked to add something to the floor to this scene for homework. My immediate thought was something that had to do with school, kids and playing, and also a floor: the floor is lava! I thought this would be fitting and a fun element to add. To do this I rotoscoped the entire floor, planar tracked it, added stabalize to the roto and also corner pin absolute. I also remebered to add perspective using the grid lines to this planar roto. I then added my image in to Nuke and merged this to the original scene.

I then rendered this out.

Our next task was to finish our Balloon Festival Project. I had nearly completed this already but I wanted to add some more elements to it. I figured if I had the dragon breathing fire on the balloon I should have the balloon catching fire. I added the same fire png file and transformed this to follow the balloon using keys and also scaled it to size. I then added the dissolve node so it appeared at the correct time. I then wanted my balloon to be shown more in the project so I added another one of the balloon model coming in at the end above the roto of the mountain, in closer perspective. I transformed this and then used keys so that it moved to where I wanted it to move. I then added a low opacity filter to the background by funsing a dystopian sky png image that was transparent. I added an opacity node that someone had created online after researching, and it gives the scene a slight orange and red tint to it.

I then rendered this to upload on here as my final scene.

This week, we looked at planar and perspective tracking. This is a form of tracking which follows the perspective and movement of the camera so it stays in the same place in the area.

First we looked at some theory behind tracking and the nodes we will be using in this lesson. We looked at motion blur and the correct paths vs. the incorrect paths which would enable it to work.

We then looked at the same idea, but with grade and transform nodes.

We then looked at the shuffle node. This enabled us to connect different channels from inputs to outputs. We tried changing the input of the alpha channel to depth, so on the alpha channel it would enable us to see the depth within the alpha screen. We used this on an image of helmets.

We then looked at planar tracking on a poster scene. First I created a planar tracking node, selected the 4 points at the side of the poster and tracked it. However, we realised with the pole being in front, the poster wouldn’t track efficiently. We rotoscoped around the pole very roughly, and tracked this back and forth, enabling this to be separated from the tracking of the poster. We then tracked this back and forth, but this wasn’t done properly yet. We had to then select display grid lines and correct plane. This enabled us to adjust the perspective of the poster, so the tracking followed this.

I then added the source image of another poster at the reference point to the scene. We had to corner pin the poster to the 4 sides of the original poster and connect it to all of our planar roto and trackers.

I then followed a node path in which added the roto of the pole back on top of the poster. It did this by re-rotoscoping the pole in more detail this time. For me however the pole appeared black and it hadn’t shown the true image of the pole below. I figured I will need to solve this when I complete my homework.

Work from home

I realised the work we had done in class needed some improvement before I worked on the new poster for the homework. I realigned the corner pins and adjusted the roto. I tracked it with these improvements. I re did the steps we learned in class for the next poster planar tracking. I made all of these nodes and trackers alongside a checkerboard for now, so I could just replace this with a poster of my choice later. I scaled and transformed the checkerboard into the left poster frame, and made sure the corner pins were exact. When I made sure this poster frame was tracked properly and moved alongside the tracker with perspective, I added a poster of my favorite film, ‘Drive’ in place of the checkerboard. I added the same grade and colour correction so it fit within the theme of the poster next to it and blended into the scene.

With some help and guidance, I found that the pole was appearing black because the path wasn’t making it’s way back to the background footage. We connected these together and the pole appeared back in the shot, rotoscoped on top of the first poster.

When I made sure this all played through smoothly, I rendered my scene.

Then I moved to progressing my Balloon Festival Project work. At this point I only had my balloon moving within my colour corrected scene, behind my roto of the mountain. I wanted to add something more to it, and the aim was to have fun with this project so I began thinking of ideas. First I wanted to try out putting png files into nuke and transforming them into the frame. I started out simple and added a rocker launcher sniper in the right corner of the scene which would just be still the whole scene. I then wanted to add a funny animation. I decided to get a png of a dragon, put it in my scene scaled down to size, and transformed it’s movement with keys to appear to be chasing the balloon through the sky. I then downloaded a png of fire and added a dissolve node to make the fire appear and disappear into the exact frames I wanted the dragon to be breathing fire towards the balloon.

I then made sure everything was okay and ran smoothly and rendered this out so I could keep track of my progress of this project.

This week we looked more into detail of tracking, stabilizing a shot, and then adding the movement back in.

We were given an iphone, a commercial style scene, to add a screen and animation of scrolling upwards on. We had to stabalise the shot and track the motion first, so we could work on everything else. For this, we tracked four corners of the phone screen, and selected the transforom stablize node from the tracker.

We used a mock iphone screen to match the iphone staring screen. We put it on top of the green screen by mirroring it and transforming it.

We then added the checkerboard ontop by transforming it to fit on top of the screen. We did this by using the mock iphone screen and masking it to match the shape. By adding the dissolve node, we could make the iphone mock starting screen dissolve into the checkerboard to resemble an iphone being unlocked.

Work from home

We got sent another script of this for homework to finish off the animation and image, so I followed throught the steps we went through in class to get up to the part I needed to do. Next, I worked on rotoscoping the fingers so they would be ontop of the screen when ther person scrolled. I added motion blur as the fingers were moving quite a lot, and made sure there was least amount of green showing around the fingers as possible.

I then did the animation for the scrolling upwards of the phone screen for the checkerboard image. I had to do this in the transform node and pick the frames where they start scrolling and stop.

I then added matchmove from the tracker node back in so the phone would move with the camera again. I checked this was all working by selecting the last merge node, it took me many attempts of changing nodes around, changing where the stabalize and matchmove nodes were, before this was all working.

Then I was ready to add my Instagram feed image in. I had to adjust the size to match the length of the checkerboard image in photoshop, then I was able to swap out the checkerboard for this image, adjust it accordingly, and watch all of these steps put together for my final outcome.

Some minor improvements I added at the end included the roto on my fingers, and adjusting the corner pin of the phone screen.

I then worked on improving my Balloon Festival project due soon. I added my balloon model to the mountain scene, and colour corrected the background to be brighter and more colourful. I also added more detail to the mountain roto so it looked more clean when the balloon moved behind it. I then animated my balloon to go behing the rotoscope of the mountain. I struggled because my balloon kept going transparent when I added it, and when it went back to normal, the roto wouldn’t work. It seemed I couldn’t have one without the other. However I found that I needed to add a premult after the transform and roto, and add the mountain scene to be B instead of A

This is a work in progress I will develop over the next week.

This week we looked at colour correcting on Nuke. We were given a script which we went through teaching us the steps to colour correcting a frame or scene. First, we looked at the Unpremult and Grade nodes. The Unpremult node takes the pixels that have ‘jagged’ sides and fills them in, adding this during a colour correct can add more of a blur or quality to something in the scene and ensures that this jagged edging is sorted. We were given a face that we used the Grade and Unpremult nodes to enhance, and place on a scene.

We then looked at white balacing. I had studied this on my Film BA on a physical camera, and on editing software during post production, so it was interesting to see how this takes shape in visual effects and compositing. We selected the white colour on the properties withing the Grade node, and placed it on the frame to apply it to the places where green was present in the white light.

We then looked at how to merge colours onto seperate frames using the Blur node, we blurred out completely the frame of a forest, and merged that within a frame of buildings to create the same array of colour onto that frame.

Work from home

I used what I had learnt from this lesson to complete the homework. We had to colour correct a plane to look more natural in the setting it was composited into. I scaled it to proportion using the Transform node. I then used the sequence we were taught, using the Grade, Premult and Unpremult, Colour Correct, Merge, Toe and Blackmatch nodes. The latter two are to correct the shadowing. I brought the green colour within the plane through and also played with exposure to ensure it looked more suited to the background.

I then focused on preparing and improving my roto on the mountain for our balloon project. I realised I needed to render more of the side of the mountain to ensure balloons passing behind it would be fully able to be seen going behind the mountain. I expanded the roto ensuring the tracker still worked alongside this.

This week we reviewed ourr homework of the rotoscope of the man running. Having seen the others and recieving feedback, I realised how much more work and detail I really had to add to my roto. I planned to work on this when I got home.

Next, we looked at rotoscoping the bridge, we would have to finish this at home however we needed to learn how to use the tracker first. I began drawing round the bridge to make a template on how to use the tracker on the bridge. We then selected the tracker and went through the ways in which we could get the roto to move with the bridge’s movements on the camera. This will be a really beneficial tool to use. I linked my tracker to my roto and tested to see if it worked and it did after Gonzalo had come to check.

I then worked on understanding the nodes better so when I went home I’d know the exact steps to apply on the other side of the bridge when I was home.

Work from home

The first thing I did at home was work on improving the roto of the running man. I knew from other work that my standards and attention to detail needed to be better on this. I added more points, adjusted the rotos on each body part, and went through every frame perfecting the points.

I then worked on completeing the bridge roto, and tracking both sides to move with the frame.

Then, our other peice of homework was to roto the edge of the mountain for our balloon project scene. We had to roto the details on the edge og the mountain so balloons can pass behind it. I rotoscoped all the edge details, created a matte overlay, added a tracker to the roto so it moved with the camera and played this through. I had to edit some to most of the points as the tracker went on as it wasn’t 100% accurate, and didn’t scale up in size, but the tracker helped a lot with movement.

This week, we learnt have the basics of how to rotoscope on Nuke. We were given a video of a running man, and taught the nodes, different points and techniques on how to rotoscope his body frame by frame. We created a sequence of nodes by just pressing ‘O’, which brought up the Rotoscope nodes in Nuke.

In the session we played around with the rotoscope tools such as Bezier, and practised drawing around the man’s body parts frame by frame. We started with the head, being the most easiest part as this moves the leaast.

We then looked at tools such as motion blur and matte overlaying what we have rotoscoped. When I was more comfortable with the tools, I worked on putting the Bezier around the arms. I also learnt how to change the viewer to show the rootoscope in alpha mode, so you can see the shape you have created better.

Work from Home

As homework we had to rotoscope the whole 100 frames of the man’s whole body running in the scene. I split the parts into head, left arm, right arm, chest and legs to make the transitions easier to change frame by frame. The part I found challenging was keeping the matte overlay of red on the roto nodes. For some reason this kept removing itself. However I figured out I had to select the overall viewer to be in matte overlay intead of rgb, and this was resolved.

When I comppleted this I struggled with the rendering a bit, but soon realised that the codec was in the wrong encoding selection. I then uploaded this mov file to the homework folder. This blog can’t read the format of this video whenever I upload it, so please press Download on the right to watch my rotoscope below:

This week, we started to look at the software Nuke, and navigating around it.

We worked with nodes and some effects in rendering we can start to do. This was similar to layering and at first grasping nodes seemed complicated however I got to terms with creating seperate nodes and how connecting them to ecahother and the veiwer worked.

Our task was to create a circle with different layers and effects ontop of a checkered background. With help from peers and our teacher, I began to create the image below.

I learnt the usefulness of labeling nodes, the transform, blur and gradient tools, and how these can all work together.

Work from home

At the end of the session, we learned about colour selection and pixels in Nuke. Pressing r shows the red in an image through white on the screen, pressing g shows the green etc. Zooming into pixels shows the exact colour of each pixel on the viewer. I played around with this with various images and learnt a better undestanding of the tools Nuke can offer in terms of colour selection.

This week we focused on exposure, and the effects this can have on cinematography. We can lean the three components to exposure through the triangle diagram we were shown:

ISO was particularly interesting to me; this can affect the image or scene’s resolution due to it being the measure of light sensitivity that is taken with the camera. Higher ISO = higher light sensitivity = a grainier texture to the image.

Aperture, also known as F-value, is the measure of how much light travels through in a camera. A larger f value lets in a small amount of light, with a smaller f value letting in more light.

Shutter speed is the measure of how long the shutter is open for, letting light through to the sensor in the camera. The less the shutter speed, the less light will be let through, and the more shutter speed, the more light will be let through.

This can be measured in fps (frames per second) and the standard speed for cinema is 24fps.

We then looked at angles such as wide lenses, close ups, macro lenses, and compared these to how they are affected by the written above. We did this by looking at a variety of film captures, and the appropriate lens type used for each one.

Work at home

In my spare time I thought about exposure in some of my favourite films, and how this could have affected the experience of the film. One example in particular I would like to share is from the film ‘Drive’ (2011). This film uses neon lighting as a huge part of its aesthetic, yet the exposure varies throughout.

For example, in this scene, when they first enter the lift, we see a quite highly exposed shot, a lot of light is included.

However, when tension builds, and the scene becomes more darker in emotion and actions, the exposure lowers a fraction gradually as the scene continues. As the kiss scene is happening, before the driver kills the man in the lift, we see this change of lighting, and this represents the change in the mood. Exposure here really played a part in the setting of this scene.

Homework

For the homework we had to create a 15 second clip of the city around us that we will edit in Nuke next week.

For mine, I filmed outside my accommodation as that is where I am most times and what the city means to me personally.

I used a split scene effect to represent different perspectives, and different times of the day. I also added casual music to bring all of it together. It also starts and ends on the same scene to make the very short film feel like a closed circle and brings it back to the start.

This week we learnt about Cinematography, and how visual effects is a major part of mise en scène within films.

Having done a BA in Film, this was something I was confident in. We focused on lighting, the three-point rule and techniques particular films have used. We explored the difference in harsh lighting and soft lighting, and how this can affect the mood of a scene. For example, harsh red lighting or white lighting could resemble tension and urgency within a scene, whereas soft pastel colors and lighting would resemble a calmer atmosphere, and perhaps a more relaxed character.

As homework, we were asked to express what ‘time’ means to us within a mood board of pictures we have taken. To me, time represented to me more than anything nostalgia, so I took a trip back to my home, and took pictures of things from my childhood room.