CG-LiveAction Comp Test

I have tested the idea of compositing live action elements into the CG environment.

Here is the sketch:

This example has partially been textured with the wall on the right being composited from a photograph as well as the roughly roto'd circuit box on the far wall.

I think this is the best option if the tracking process goes well. I see the plan of action being exporting the camera from Maya and bringing that into Nuke for the slight pan to work nicely.

Sh040C Update

Here is an update on Sh040C.

I have cleaned it yesterday (by removing the rope and preparing the plate) but today I begun to add in smoke. I used my slower edited footage of atmosphere.

This is how it looks once the atmosphere is positioned, roto'd, layered and tracked:

However, this is not the look I am after because it looks very flat, slapped on top of the image, right in front of us - in our faces. POW.

So, I want to create the effect in which the atmosphere is wrapped around and intertwined with the ladder on the bottom third of the frame.

Therefore, I have to roto the ladder and composite it back on top:

I found the most effect way, instead of tracking the roto, was to simply animate the roto seen as it moves along a 2D track anyway (it is a very flat movement.) This meant that no unnecessary areas of the character were appearing on top of the ladder or other areas - creepy!

Even though this seems like a cool idea, it doesn't quite yet create the look as it doesn't make the smoke surround the ladder, it puts it behind the ladder. Therefore we need to see some smoke on top of the ladder. The best thing to do here is to take the merge of the smoke which is flat on top of the ladder and roto whispy shapes and areas of the smoke and then composite this again on top of the ladder roto.

This is the effect you are left with:

And this is the shot so far with some more colour correction testing:

What I wanted to create here was to darken it and bring out that contrast, but also not to lose the detail of the face within the darkness. In order to do this I lowered the gain of the whole piece but upped the gain of the shadows. Another notable tweak was that I also upped the gain of the highlights for more contrast and gave it a white cold and dreamy softness with a glow node. This adds to the feeling of the scene. And, this is just still in test mode and not final. I have not yet had a look at it next to the rest of the shots to see if there are any consistency issues, for example...

Initial Scene Preparations

First thing's first. Well, actually, it is calculating lens distortion, removing grain and motion tracking and such.

Here are a few examples of my initial preparations for a shot and how this applies to the final touches of Sh040C:

When using lens distortion, there are a few techniques. I prefer using either of two options: Nuke can automatically calculate - in a similar fashion to tracking - the lens distortion. The other is drawing points along straight elements in the scene and that will calculate if these elements bend due to lens distortion. I first of all use the former and use the latter to test if the lines are straight. If this does not work, I opt for the latter and draw the points manually along the lines.

This is an example for the lens distortion process:

This is the footage with lens distortion from the camera.

I have now applied the 'image analysis' and drawn a line with 'line analysis' in order to check it is has worked and the straight lines are indeed straight. They are.

Looking at this line on top of the original lens distorted footage, you can see that there is now a gradual distance from the line in the corners of the frame. This clarifies that the lens distortion has worked.

It is also important to clean out any noise from your footage if you are going to composite anything into it which may have no or different types and levels of grain.

Here is an example of removing grain in this shot:

Looking again at the original footage there is obvious noise/grain.

For comparison, here is the image once the Denoise node has been applied to the footage.

After the compositing of undistorted and de-grained footage/elements, it is important to re-apply the lens distortion:

Before. Notice the distance between the image and the end of the frame at either side.

After. Notice that gap filled and the rest of distortion now visible.

After. Now all of the smoke (subtle) have the same lens distortion to the originally shot footage.

The lens distortion makes everything like it should again and fills the frame correctly, as well as draw attention to any elements in the framing which the director designed or the DoP chose to bring out in the shoot, along with the elements that have been composited (I believe that it is good to place things in the composite considering the later lens distortion to make sure it looks right.)

And, re-graining:

By sourcing a flat area of the original plate (such as the concrete), using the F_Regrain node, it gives me an idea of grain. But, it always seems to require changing the grain size and amount by looking at the original footage again to use the eye to match it as best as possible.

After.

This is my process so far, regarding the first few cases of using the very effective method.

Sh041 Update

Regarding the previous post on this shot, said issues have been altered.

Some other particular details have been created, for example, the shadow under the additional 'conjoined' extractor fan, the repainting of the wall artefact behind the chosen re-location and a shadow on the fan as this particular fan would indeed be falling gradually out of the highly lit area.

These effects are achieved by rotoscoping, either by drawing bezier shapes, colour correcting this and compositing it on top; or cloning and painting artefacts out. Luckily this shot is very, very still and so requires no tracking whatsoever.

This is the original shot plate for comparison:

Factory/Station Comp Tests

After yesterday's very basic start, I am beginning to get a lot more satisfied with some of the proposed effects.

Here is a test of the composite so far:

Focus #1

Focus #2

Lighting: I have opted to do the beams of light solely in Nuke. Here you can make more interesting shapes with roto'. I have added extra spotlights - so I have three, one for the door, one for the light cast at the back, and one for  the foreground over the car. The direction fill light faces the way of the camera. An ambient light is used for the diffuse layer for creating a simple pass at the moment.

Composite: I have applied the same idea of light outside with a light wrap spilling onto the inside. I might go for a sunset feeling with this later. As I mentioned I have created beams of light using roto'. I have used a light layer and ambient occlusion layer and then down-played the diffuse so the ugly textures aren't as visible - and this adds to the misty effect. I have created mist in the background and played with zDepth. I have also applied an 18mm lens distortion from the alleyway scene. I have composited smoke into here - in the foreground, from the pipes and roto'd around the car and the tunnel area to place it in space.

Here are some breakdowns to demonstrate this:

This is the node tree:

I can visibly see things improving and can feel the progress here. I still looks like concept art and not quite realistic enough yet. The big aim is obviously for it, once developed some more, to work as a moving image (even if very slight). The shot will have a simple shake when meant to be still as well as a version which very slightly dollies in. All while smoke glides from pipes and beams twinkle with dust in a state of slow motion.

I will work with my cinematographers to get this scene to become seamless with the rest of the shots in the film.

Nuke Light Wrap Test

I had been creating light wraps in After Effects, using the alpha of the key by converting it to black and white (foreground character, and transparent background), and simple-choking it, expanding it to create a stroke and then blurring it out and masking the background out again to create a sharp edge (it's simple, really).

But for this scene, the large, selling, multiple exposure, I felt it very necessary to composite the background and foreground (which I composited together in After Effects) in Nuke and applying the light wrap there in order for the character to appear to be in the scene that bit more...

We had used light wraps in Hugo Guerra's master class in the last academic year, when he walked us through compositing most of a scene from The Mill's Audi Hummingbird advert, so I knew how to set one up.

This is example of the scene before the light wrap being applied in Nuke:

And, this is the result after the effect being applied:

Okay, it might be subtle (you can flick between the two images), but important I feel.

Also, I tried to get a wrap around the character a little more, even in the dark areas. In After Effects, with the amount of composites and re-scaling, it has taken a while. This might be achieved for the final render, though...

This is a screen shot of Nuke to show you how I set up:

Pretty simple, but effective.

The light wrap node by itself:

Shoe And Tell 5 - "Get Your Shoe Off of the Table!"

I have practically composited the shoe model, textured, into the required scene.

It didn't take too long at all, just say an hour, to composite (included copying files and all that usual stuff.) But, I hadn't really practiced in Nuke too much by that point, so it was a way to do something fairly basic compositing-wise and try out a few things I had seen done or read about and find those nodes to create the effect I desired, such as: GridWarp, ColorCorrection, LensDistortion, Grade, Blur, etc, etc.

Here is the written/rendered image:

I think that the shoe could particularly, an initially, do with some pixelation/compression to it to match the video, as well as some Image Based Lighting with a HDRI (although it was not provided).

I took a screen shot of the node graph to give you an idea of what the image consists of, and to review it.

Here it is:

I look to the future, and further along the masters project and program, where more complicated and comprehensive use of Nuke will be utilised by myself...

Some experiments might be sooner than you think...

Test Composites Progress

Here are some examples of composites for one of the shots in the test:

I have composited this in After Effects, but I aim to try out some keying and some nodes within Nuke, to find out more about that program. Unfortunately, this composite does not have any light wrap in it, so using the light wrap node within Nuke might be worthwhile. 

In regards to the shoot, I feel we haven't done to well with the layout of the shot. This could have been avoided by more planning, and less improvisation. Let's see how the final video looks... I'll keep you updated.