Nuke Exercises

This is my first time using Nuke as post production software, so I tried out a few exercises to familiarise myself with NUKE first.

 

DAY TO NIGHT:

Here is the original image:

 

I began by using the “Gamma” node, to reduce the amount of Gamma in the image, and using the “Color Correction” and “Grade” nodes to adjust the hue and saturation of colour present in the image, and produce a blue tint. This dark blue tint was supposed to give the illusion of it being night time. The master control of the Color Correction node gave me control over other inputs that have an overall impact on the composite such as the Gain, Offset and Contrast between pixels and tones in the composite. For this task, I used the Roto node and Merge node quite frequently, to Roto out a shape that I then wanted to add a Colour grading too and apply it to a specific area of the image. Using the Blur node, enabled me to blur out these sections of the Roto created. I made use of this process of Roto – Colour Correction – Blur when creating the light emitting from the windows, as well as the amount of light bouncing away from the light source, to give the illusion of actual light. As a new user to the NUKE set up and interface, I say that it will take a bit of time and practice for me to fully wrap my head around the concepts of Node based compositing and use of channels and masks. An online tutorial I watched relaying the essentials of NUKE version 8 was my guide that I looked at now and again for information on channel set up and the Color Correction nodes. All in all, I am pleased with what I have been able to produce as far as being a new user to this software. Improvements I would like to make on this task in my own time include becoming more aware of what I can do with other various nodes in the software to make shorter work of a section of the composite. I also want to become more used to creating channels, and applying channels and masks to nodes so that certain areas of a composite can manipulated to achieve better outcomes. I found it quite difficult to insert and background texture of a moon, and even when I was able to achieve some sort of outcome, I wasn’t really pleased with how I reached this outcome. Looking back, the moon should have more of a prominent glow in the composite, and on the surrounding buildings, especially with it being as close as it is to the foreground. I could also add some more lights to the houses and define the street lamp more on the far left of the image. I should also learn to discern when too much has been done to try and edit an image. I can see that I may have been too excited with the blur node.

Here is my Node Graph:

 

 

Here is the final composite I was able to produce:

 

COMPOSITE PRACTICE:

The next task was to make use of VFX skills to render out multiple layers in Maya using render passes, and then use the NUKE software to composite the footage together. This task is to prepare myself for recreating my own geometry and environment for my own scene for the Integration project. I began by recreating the geometry for the ground plane and pillars present in the image plane. By creating the geometry and making use of perspective with the camera created in Maya, I would be able to weave an object (in this case, an illuminated mesh of my initials) in and out of the pillars. I added the “Use Background” shader on these pieces of geometry, so that the pillars and ground plane would appear to be the same as the background plate used as a plane. The light emitting from the initials would fall onto the geometry created to emulate the background. I used the Text tool in Maya to create geometry for my initials, and applied a “Mia material x” shader. I was initially having a tough time with this task, trying to wrap my head around the render passes in Maya to then composite in Nuke.

 

Once I got the hang of the render passes, I rendered out the animated frames of my initials from Maya and then layered the sequences in Nuke. Here is my Node Graph:

And here is the final video:

 

CORRIDOR TRACKING:

The next task was to track a movement of of a camera in Nuke, and then create my intials in Maya for the animated camera to pick up after importing the camera as an FBX file. Tracking the camera was quite simple after watching a tutorial online. It showed me how to delete errors picked up by the camera tracker node, and how to reduce the amount of error I currently had within the tracker node. When I completed rendering out the initials in Maya, I layered the rendered passes and added my own little touches to the footage. I removed the tracker points used from the footage, as well as used various nodes such as the “Grade” node and the “Gamma” node, to play with the look of the footage. Here is my node graph detailing the processes and nodes used:

Here is the end result:

 

SNOWY FOR NOT SNOWY:

The next task was to take a picture of an ordinary environment, and then make it look like it had snowed recently. I took a photograph of an area in Greenwich, and then found images of snowy backgrounds and snowfall on the Internet. A tutorial online that really helped was one I found on Lynda.com, which showed me how to use the “RotoPaint” node, which I used to clone areas of snow from a section of the photograph, and place it in another. Here is my node graph, showing the nodes I used, and the setup of my merge nodes and channels:

And here is the final comparison of the two images; A snowy O2 Arena, and a not snowy O2 Arena: