Big fan of this series, you're really nailing it every time! Seriously, there are very few youtube tutorials on anything that are this concise and helpful :) The only thing I was wondering here was what's your take on shooting screens that illuminate actors in darker scenes. Would you always use green with markers then or rather something that matches the content to be added the closest, for example white with markers?
Thanks, that's lovely to hear! For illumination we sometimes shoot with a middle grey screen instead. That way you get some light interaction but there's also still enough that you can pull the reflections back out. The colour of the markers only matters for contrast. If its dark I'd probably use white so they were as visible as possible
Great video again! I just have a couple questions. 1) How would I clean up the markers better (I've already watched the 2D and 3D clean up video, but it only shows what to do if it's a solid colour background)? Since there are reflections, using TransformMasked makes it very obvious that we pulled from another spot on the screen, and looks wrong. 2) At 5:16, what is the purpose of unpremulting? I tested it without doing that and only using the copy alpha node + premult node and it seemed to work the same. Thanks!
Thanks! I didn't show it here but you can see in that setup that I copy across from where I did it before that it's a bit more complex. Essentially to make it work better, I moved across a dark area of the screen and a lighter area of the screen into the same spot with 2 different transform masked nodes. Then I used a keymix and a rotoshape to define where they mix. So I was able to make it look like the reflections moving through them didn't interrupt the patch because I animated the mask to move with the edge of the dark reflection. For the premult, in this case you don't have to. I just always do it out of habit. It doesn't hurt and it means in times where you do actually need to unpremult as well, I don't forget! Hope that helps 👍
@AlfieVaughan Thanks for your reply! I couldn't really understand the copied section from the video, but I had assumed that you did each corner separately as when I tried to do two at a time, the roto wouldn't stay over the markers. Not sure which tracks needed to stay enabled, but I only managed to get it to work when I attached each roto to their specific tracker (by disabling all the others one by one, which seems painfully slow). It works, but it probably isn't the best or right way (definitely wasn't the way you did it since I saw all your tracks in the tracker were enabled later in the video). Is there a way I could get access to the project file to try to figure out how you did it? I wasn't able to find it on your patreon. Thanks!
Yeah I had to do those top ones individually. If you're on my Patreon it's on there. It's in the $4 tier where I share the project files. I uploaded the script and the footage from this video
@AlfieVaughan Awesome, I'll make sure to check it out. How did you recreate the reflections that passed over the marker area though? Would that require painting certain frames? Thanks for your help 😊
@suzelise I just moved sections from nearby that looked organic and then used the mask to blend them. I painted some frames but it's mostly just the 2 different transformed combined with a keymix
Awesome video with loads of useful info, a major issue I run into is rolling shutter and motion blur making tracking extremely difficult on fast moving handheld shots (example something like the original Cloverfield film), do you have any tips for shots that involve that kind of difficulty? Assuming the best advice would be to shoot super high shutter speed and frame rate and add motion blur in comp, but what if that's not an option? Cheers!
Thanks! With shots like that your only option is usually to track it manually with user tracks and baby sit them frame by frame to make sure they're always right on the marker
Awesome video! Lots of valuable information. Only 2 small things i would like to add. 1. the regrain workflow could be optimized by doing a proper denoise on the footage and then subtract/add it on top of the final comp, or, alternatively, sample the noise to match it to the footage using dasgrain or something similar. 2. You are being a bit unfair to the greenscreen approach by turning the brightness up waaaayyyy too high. I think there is merit to the greenscreen method if used with a much reduced luminance. Especially if you want to preserve the natural edge of the screen instead of having a digitally perfect rectangle screen insert with no 'natural edge'. but i do agree that the black screen method definitely wins when it comes to preserving 100% of the reflections. Great work! love to see more!
Thanks a lot! I don't bother going into too much detail about grain on RUclips because it's hard to see after compression anyway. I only really do that at work
A quick question on a problem I’ve been battling for 4 months now, my script getting very heavy and slow when script isn’t even that heavy. Hope I’m making sense, so whenever I start a full CG, after copy pasting the nodes multiple times, the scripts becomes slow, so much that I can’t even move to the next frame without “no responding” dialog shows up even after he line on the view has completed. I’ve changed the settings in preferences, I’ve reset everything back to default but still. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled nuke and same issue. And this slows me down way too much.
It doesn’t matter what node I use. Same issue. So the temporal solution I came up with is to recoup the shots and continue in a fresh script. So sometime I end up with “shot 002_10_v20
That's very odd. Is your machine decent specs? If you've tried reinstalling etc it's unlikely to just be a bug. Maybe you're just trying to do too much for your system specs
Maybe if you are a bit like me, i leave my pc often running through the night (for renders, heavy down and uploads or even just so i dont have to open all my tabs again next day lol).. however from my experience this can be a factor for slower perfomances in nuke and in general of course. Other tips are watch out for your running tasks, open task manager with ctrl shift esc and leave it open while you work and then when nuke gets overloaded and crashes watch how your system stats look, is the cpu overheating? are we running out of ram? or maybe our whole drives are almost full and our nuke cant use some empty space to cache our stuff and so it has to cache like frame by frame? Check that stuff i mentioned please and let me know.
This couldn't of come at a better time! Currently doing this for a project, thanks Alfie
Nailed it! Hope it's going well :)
I'm a Fusion user, but I still love the information you present. It really helps with recreating composites, great video Alfie!
That's great to hear! Thanks very much 🙏
Thanks for these tutorials Alfie, come in handy to refresh some concepts.
No problem!
Big fan of this series, you're really nailing it every time! Seriously, there are very few youtube tutorials on anything that are this concise and helpful :)
The only thing I was wondering here was what's your take on shooting screens that illuminate actors in darker scenes. Would you always use green with markers then or rather something that matches the content to be added the closest, for example white with markers?
Thanks, that's lovely to hear!
For illumination we sometimes shoot with a middle grey screen instead. That way you get some light interaction but there's also still enough that you can pull the reflections back out. The colour of the markers only matters for contrast. If its dark I'd probably use white so they were as visible as possible
@@AlfieVaughan That makes perfect sense, tysm :)
Great video again! I just have a couple questions.
1) How would I clean up the markers better (I've already watched the 2D and 3D clean up video, but it only shows what to do if it's a solid colour background)? Since there are reflections, using TransformMasked makes it very obvious that we pulled from another spot on the screen, and looks wrong.
2) At 5:16, what is the purpose of unpremulting? I tested it without doing that and only using the copy alpha node + premult node and it seemed to work the same.
Thanks!
Thanks!
I didn't show it here but you can see in that setup that I copy across from where I did it before that it's a bit more complex. Essentially to make it work better, I moved across a dark area of the screen and a lighter area of the screen into the same spot with 2 different transform masked nodes. Then I used a keymix and a rotoshape to define where they mix. So I was able to make it look like the reflections moving through them didn't interrupt the patch because I animated the mask to move with the edge of the dark reflection.
For the premult, in this case you don't have to. I just always do it out of habit. It doesn't hurt and it means in times where you do actually need to unpremult as well, I don't forget!
Hope that helps 👍
@AlfieVaughan Thanks for your reply! I couldn't really understand the copied section from the video, but I had assumed that you did each corner separately as when I tried to do two at a time, the roto wouldn't stay over the markers. Not sure which tracks needed to stay enabled, but I only managed to get it to work when I attached each roto to their specific tracker (by disabling all the others one by one, which seems painfully slow). It works, but it probably isn't the best or right way (definitely wasn't the way you did it since I saw all your tracks in the tracker were enabled later in the video).
Is there a way I could get access to the project file to try to figure out how you did it? I wasn't able to find it on your patreon.
Thanks!
Yeah I had to do those top ones individually. If you're on my Patreon it's on there. It's in the $4 tier where I share the project files. I uploaded the script and the footage from this video
@AlfieVaughan Awesome, I'll make sure to check it out. How did you recreate the reflections that passed over the marker area though? Would that require painting certain frames?
Thanks for your help 😊
@suzelise I just moved sections from nearby that looked organic and then used the mask to blend them. I painted some frames but it's mostly just the 2 different transformed combined with a keymix
Awesome video with loads of useful info, a major issue I run into is rolling shutter and motion blur making tracking extremely difficult on fast moving handheld shots (example something like the original Cloverfield film), do you have any tips for shots that involve that kind of difficulty? Assuming the best advice would be to shoot super high shutter speed and frame rate and add motion blur in comp, but what if that's not an option? Cheers!
Thanks! With shots like that your only option is usually to track it manually with user tracks and baby sit them frame by frame to make sure they're always right on the marker
@@AlfieVaughan ah that's fair, wish there was some magic motion blur remover out there 😂 thanks for the helpful advice!
Thanks a lot for your effort!
Glad you enjoyed it :)
Awesome video! Lots of valuable information. Only 2 small things i would like to add. 1. the regrain workflow could be optimized by doing a proper denoise on the footage and then subtract/add it on top of the final comp, or, alternatively, sample the noise to match it to the footage using dasgrain or something similar. 2. You are being a bit unfair to the greenscreen approach by turning the brightness up waaaayyyy too high. I think there is merit to the greenscreen method if used with a much reduced luminance. Especially if you want to preserve the natural edge of the screen instead of having a digitally perfect rectangle screen insert with no 'natural edge'. but i do agree that the black screen method definitely wins when it comes to preserving 100% of the reflections. Great work! love to see more!
Thanks a lot! I don't bother going into too much detail about grain on RUclips because it's hard to see after compression anyway. I only really do that at work
Thank you so much
No problem!
I like that you didn't use a still of green on the laptop. Major W for reflections
😎 pro tips
Great video! But when i try to do the vignette and i add it back with a merge over. the vignette appears white?
Could be that your footage doesn't have an alpha before. Try turning on "auto alpha" in the read node
Intermediate After Effects user.... Do you suggest trying to learn Nuke in order to get into the industry or blender?
Definitely Nuke. I love blender and use it a lot but you won't find much work as a blender artist at studios
great information sir!!!
Thanks!
A quick question on a problem I’ve been battling for 4 months now, my script getting very heavy and slow when script isn’t even that heavy. Hope I’m making sense, so whenever I start a full CG, after copy pasting the nodes multiple times, the scripts becomes slow, so much that I can’t even move to the next frame without “no responding” dialog shows up even after he line on the view has completed. I’ve changed the settings in preferences, I’ve reset everything back to default but still. I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled nuke and same issue. And this slows me down way too much.
It doesn’t matter what node I use. Same issue. So the temporal solution I came up with is to recoup the shots and continue in a fresh script. So sometime I end up with “shot 002_10_v20
That's very odd. Is your machine decent specs? If you've tried reinstalling etc it's unlikely to just be a bug. Maybe you're just trying to do too much for your system specs
@@AlfieVaughan my machine not that much but this wasn’t happening before. I’ve tried installing nuke 13 and I still got the same issue
I'm not sure then, sorry. It's very hard to diagnose without being there to try things
Maybe if you are a bit like me, i leave my pc often running through the night (for renders, heavy down and uploads or even just so i dont have to open all my tabs again next day lol)..
however from my experience this can be a factor for slower perfomances in nuke and in general of course.
Other tips are watch out for your running tasks, open task manager with ctrl shift esc and leave it open while you work and then when nuke gets overloaded and crashes watch how your system stats look, is the cpu overheating? are we running out of ram? or maybe our whole drives are almost full and our nuke cant use some empty space to cache our stuff and so it has to cache like frame by frame?
Check that stuff i mentioned please and let me know.
Amazing, but as a total noob... what I would do for your keystrokes to be recorded and displayed in realtime during your screen record...
Thanks! Good point. I'll try and do that next time
Cool!
However, cant imagine doing it without Mocha now 😄
Haha thanks! I use mocha for tough tracks still. Both studios I've worked at have had it on the machines. Seems to be very popular in all circles 🙏