I mentioned in my last post that a lot of compositors come from non-3D backgrounds.  Being a 2D medium, compositors often come from working with Photoshop or editing software such as Avid and Final Cut Pro.  As such, a lot of compositors might not have a full appreciation of the 3D pipeline.

As I suggested, my opinion is that whatever your job in the pipeline, it is a good idea to have at least cursory knowledge of the skills that bookend your position.  That way you will be able to communicated effectively with your workmates and be more efficient.

Sometimes, depending on the production, you may find yourself needing particular minor things done and you need them done quickly, not when someone finally has a chance to get to them.  The following are reasonably basic skills that can really help out a compositor:

Import match-moved camera data.

At some point, if 3D is being integrated into live action, a Match Move artist (using something like PFTrack or Boujou) will have produced a final locked-off match move solve and camera setup that is being used by the 3D guys.  Knowing how to, at the very least, set projects and open files in Maya is something that everyone in VFX should know.

Even if you are not going to do an entire 3D project, things like cards with textures (eg buildings, animations of people etc) can be easily inserted and rendered out.  Of course, with applications like Nuke and After Effects you have the ability to import 3D scenes and objects, but it is always handy to know how to do it in Maya.  Plus, you have a lot more control in a dedicated 3D application if you have to do something more advanced.

Skydome

Once you have that camera data imported, make sure that you know how to choose and look through the approved camera for that shot.  Making a basic skydome is pretty basic stuff.  On ‘Animalia’ (a children’s animated TV show), we made a *tonne* of skydomes ourself if backgrounds weren’t made or if it was decided during dailies that a new sky would be needed.  The lighters and renderers had their plates completely full, so bothering them to do something so basic would be a waste or their time.

 I was lucky enough to sit next to a guy who had studied Maya (John Kitching) and he showed my how to make skydomes.  As a 3ds Max user, Maya was a bit of a dark art, but even I could follow his instructions.  I mean, really, half a NURBS sphere with a panorama texture placed on it.  I think a smart compositor can figure that out!  Thankfully I have been putting a lot more hours into Maya over the last 2-3 months, so it is becoming a lot more straightforward.

Particles

Ahhh particles, how I love thee  I love ‘em and they are what I really loved to work with in 3ds Max.  I have only just started transferring my skills over to Maya, and to be honest it is a bit of a struggle.  PFlow in Max is an excellent node/flow graph way to get very good results very quickly and intuitively.  Maya seems to involve a lot more coding, but also appears more robust when dealing with large numbers of particles . . . something which Max would choke on (at least until the arrival of Krakatoa).

Having said that, the first thing I will be learning in Maya particles is how to create my own smoke, fog and steam.  Why?  Because you use them all the time in compositing and while you are usually given filmed elements, sometimes you want the smoke to go just there or you want the steam to have a particular look.  Sure you might be able to achieve that with retiming, warping and tracking, but if you know how to make your own, then you’d be crazy not to.  It seems to me that for these types of elements, sprite particles will do the job.  No need for fluid simulations, just a bunch of particles mapped with smoke textures that face the camera!  Voila!  Instant custom made element.

10mins 27secs, 24meg Quicktime h.264 mov

Hey guys, today we are looking at some basic rotoscope principles.  I am not going into a lot of detail, this one is more about the “zen of roto” and what you should be looking at overall.  Either left-click on the video to watch it in your browser, or right-click and “save target as” to save it to your hard drive.  The video is about 26 megabytes and 10mins long.

Footage for this shot (and others I will be using) was sourced from Handmade Digital’s “Digital Media Set“.  I highly recommend grabbing this set because as far as I know, this is one of the few places where you can get proper cineon film scans to work with.

Wellity, wellity, wellity!  Now that’s the question, isn’t it?  Or to put it another way, it’s not really the question but it is a fairly common (and understanable) one.  Let’s make this clear:  I am definitely filing this post under the ‘Opinion’ tag

There are a lot of different opinions on this and of course you could easily say “It’s the artist, not the software”, which is about as helpful as being kicked in the family jewels.  The thing is, even if you aren’t a raw beginner, learning software takes time and effort and it makes sense to focus your time and effort on something that is going to give you the best bang for buck.

Take 3D apps for example.  XSI, Houdini and Blender are fantastic apps, although XSI took a hit recently IMO by dropping their cheap Foundation software.  However, the cold hard steely fact is that Maya is king.  Whether it is ‘best’ or you like using it or not, the fact is that it is used in more production facilities than other software.  Sure 3ds max has a solid foot in the door in gaming and dominates architectural visualisation and Houdini kills with VFX, the fact remains that if you are going to spend 3 years studying something, you want to study something that is most likely going to help you get a job.

So, back to compositing apps, which one?  Before I give a brief breakdown on each of the major applications, let’s differentiate between node-based and layer-based compositing.  You may have heard the terms before, with an aura of mystique and high-end awesomeness surrounding the fabled “node-based compositing”.  

So what is it?  Well, node based compositing is essentially like a flowchart.  You have a node for an image, if you want to blur it, you attach a blur node underneath it.  At the end, your composite looks like a ‘tree’ with several starting branches all converging in the final output node or nodes.

Layer-based applications deal with the comp like Photoshop.  You have an image or images and effects or operations stack up in layers on top of them.  To merge them you can do pre-comps (render out branches) or create groups and then merge them.

So why one over the other?  Well, in my (and many others opinions), the advantage of node-based compositing lies in the clarity of your compositions.  Very complicated comps can be followed very easily, because you just follow the flow chart.  Given it is a flow chart, at any part in a branch, you can branch off again, do some adjustments and then just come back into the main flow.  This allows you to experiment very quickly and efficiently.  This kind of thing can be done in layer-based compositing apps, but it can get very unwieldy for complicated shots, or shots involving a lot of elements.  

The flip-side of this, however, is that layer-based compositing apps tend much stronger in their animation/timeline capabilities.  Doing motion graphics in Shake is not my idea of a good time.  In fact I would rather stick a pencil in my ear, and a blunt one at that!

So, with that it mind, what app you want to use may come down to what industry you want to work in.  If you are really into design and motion graphics, you would be nuts not to focus on After Effects and maybe know a bit of Shake/Nuke/Fusion.  If you are wanting to go into feature film, it’s node-based all the way baby!  It is worth noting that both Nuke and Fusion both have full-featured free Personal Learning Editions, with Nuke now having the upper hand in free training materials to get you started.  Also, the last time I checked, you can use the student editions of the Adobe suite applications to do commercial work, which is a massive bonus as the discount is for students is pretty decent.  Of course, double check the Adobe website to see if that is still the case.

Shake: (Node Based)  Undisputed king.  As far as I know, still the most used compositing application in high-end facilities.  The price drop to $500 a few years ago put a lot more seats out there and as a freelancer, it is a great deal to pick up a copy on Mac (Unix pricing is still $$$$).  Shake is a great place to get started as it really is very straightforward.  What you see is what you get.  But, and this is a huge but, Shake is dead.  Stone cold dead.  Dead as a Dodo.  It is no longer be developed, no longer being supported and as per Apple’s usual mode of business, there is zero information on anything to replace it.

Nuke: (Node Based) The “new” kid on the block.  Nuke was developed as the inhouse compositing tool for Digital Domain for many years (although sold commercially) up until about version 4.8 or so.  The Foundry bought out Nuke and started pouring some time and actual development dollars into it.  Version 5.0 was a major upgrade, especially in terms of interface and it was clear that Nuke was looking to pick up Shake users, and it looks like they are being successful.  Given that it was developed in direct response to what their artists needed, the tools are very flexible and powerful and immediately make sense.  So much of the stuff I am learning in Nuke has me saying “Bloody hell, I wish Shake could have done that”.  Impressive.

Fusion: (Node Based).  Fusion has been around for a while and version 5.0 was a significant update.  I have only had a bit of experience with Fusion but it seems to have a solid pipeline and in-software 3D particles and 3D comping.  Seems to be popular with a growing number of smaller studios, however it is definitely capable of doing the big shots.

After Effects: (Layer Based).  The king of affordable desktop compositing apps and the reigning champ for plug-ins.  AE has definitely moved on in the last couple of years and is a very capable piece of software.  You can operate in 3D and with the plugins, you can get some excellent results.  Used mainly for motion graphics/broadcast design stuff, but is fully capable of doing high-end TV and feature film work.  Excels at time/animation dependent comps but intense film compositing can get complicated when dealing with many layers which need pre-comping etc.

Combustion: (Layer Based) See description of After Effects, but divide everything by 2  I love Combustion and started out on it, but it is no secret that it hasn’t really progressed over the last 4-5 years.  Also, don’t believe anyone who says that a benefit of Combustion is that once you learn it you will be able to jump on a Flame/Inferno suite.  Apart from the fact that some of the user interface looks kind of the same, they have nothing in common.

So, the winners are . . . BUP BADDA BAAAAAAHHHH (from Zoolander ) Nuke and After Effects.  Chances are that as a student you are probably going to be exposed to After Effects in your courses and that is not a bad thing, but I would also suggest getting the Nuke PLE and all the free tut’s just to see how it works.

Remember, it’s all about the principles.  If you understand the principles of compositing, then you can quickly apply them across different apps.  We are lucky in that compositing concepts transfer relatively painlessly across apps, as opposed to 3D where you often face very different ways of doing the most basic things.

‘Til next time.

Matt

Alrighty guys.  I have been spending a bit more time with Nuke, getting myself acquainted with it’s way of doing things.  This isn’t going to be a review, or even a “which app should I use” post (more on that in the future), but more my first impressions.

• Firstly, it’s great to see Nuke going ahead with a strong development team, something that obviously was not happening with Shake in the last few years and will not happen (Shake not being developed for, in case you didn’t know.

• Following on from this, with it’s sale to The Foundry, the Nuke team has made a lot of effort to make the software more friendly to artists who are moving from different packages, especially Shake.  I used the PLE (Personal Learning Edition) of Nuke back around 4.7 or so, and while it was obviously powerful, I felt the interface was completely utilitarian and not very obvious.

• Lots of on screen controls soon become very intuitive.  The ability to have more than 2 viewers, ala Shake, is a god-send.  The onscreen scale/rotate tools and proxies for objects when you translate them are excellent.

• The layout is completely customizable, letting you set up your workspace.

• Very logical way to set up proxies for hi-def and film-res elements.

• Am just getting into gizmos (essentially macros) and the use of python scripting is great.

• The use of channels instead of piping masks in everywhere is a great concept and one I am still getting my head around.  Seeing as it is one of the most powerful features of Nuke, I need to spend more time with this.

• Roto tools seem a bit clunky, but frankly Shake was nothing to shout about either.

So far I have only really scratched the surface, but the more I use Nuke, the more comfortable I will be with it.  It is still tempting to go back to what I know in Shake when I need to get something done quickly, but I am consciously trying to do more work in Nuke.

If you wanted to get started, The Foundry have a PLE version of Nuke for download and have a tonne of training materials, including a bunch of great introductory videos from the guys at FXPhD.