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Workshop Notes:

This is my first time getting to learn Nuke, yet with my experience in other 3D softwares like Blender or Houdini, I have been familiar with node-based workflow. Compositing is an important part of CG and VFX industry, I am eager to improve my skill and knowledge on this topic as I believe it will be beneficial in taking my personal works to another level of quality.

Basic Elements:

About Node-Based Compositing:

In compositing, nodes serve as the fundamental components. To craft a new compositing script, you insert and link nodes, forming an operational network. This setup lets you carry out various manipulations on your images (procedural workflow?)

In node-based software, intricate compositing tasks are simplified by connecting a series of basic image manipulations, known as “nodes.” These nodes come together to create a schematic layout, resembling a flowchart. A composite is represented as a tree-like graph, intuitively mapping out the journey from the original media to the end product. This is actually how all compositing software internally manage composites.

Flexibility and Limitations:

This approach offers high flexibility, allowing you to adjust the settings of an earlier image-processing step while observing the complete composite.
However, it’s worth noting that node-based systems often struggle with keyframing and time-based effects, as they don’t originate from a timeline like layer-based systems do.

Key Points to Remember:

Make sure to convert MP4 or MOV files into image sequences before proceeding, as Nuke is not well-optimized for MOV files. It’s designed to work best with image sequences, which are collections of ordered still frames that together form an animation. Typically, these frames are stored in a single folder and labeled in a sequential manner to maintain their order.

Workflow Steps:

  1. Import your video file.
  2. Tweak the frame sequencing and range using the retime and frame range nodes. Exercise caution not to alter the frame speed in the retime node.
  3. Invoke a write node to export the video as an image sequence.
  4. Choose either DPX or EXR as the file format.
  5. Don’t forget to add hashtags, enabling Nuke to properly write the sequences.

Typical VFX pipeline:

Further research

Nuke Nodes: https://learn.foundry.com/nuke/content/reference_guide.html
Nuke Hotkeys sheet: https://s3.amazonaws.com/thefoundry/products/nuke/documentation/keyboard_shortcuts.pdf

By Posted on Posted in Nuke, VFX Fundamentals No Comments Tagged with ,

For this week’s task and given concept of time, it was my opportunity to relive my passion for photography. Time has always been existing as a concept to me, as it is abstract and subjective. Human create metrics to measure and keep track of time, yet there are moments that pass by merely just by us experience and engage in them, giving us different sensation, hence challenge each of our perception of time. The reality only exists in this present moment.

Given my understanding of time, I have given myself more “time” to really look, observe and appreciate small little moments within my days. The pictures might generate different meaning to other people, but to me, I’m the one and only who knows and deeply understand that I was really trying to keep those “present” moments in my memory through the act of taking pictures.