All language subtitles for nuk214-class05

hey everybody

and welcome to class 5 of Nuke 2:14 here on FX PhD

in class 5 which is part one

of creating a still life in motion

we're gonna be taking uh

this photo that that I've taken

and turning it into kind of a

little motion piece

a short shot

with a moving camera and

we're going to be accomplishing that

by using a lot of the skills that we

picked up in the previous classes

we're going to be using projections

clean plate techniques

and we're going to be adding the skill of

projecting onto

complex or irregular geometry uh

so we're not gonna be using many primitive um

geometric objects in this class

um like the ones that generally come with nuke

instead we're going to be using a 3D application

to create geometry that we can project onto

to create some

some parallax

and so we can extract some other information

uh out of the scene

we're gonna be

ending up with something that looks a little

bit like this

um I chose this photo just because it's a uh

I don't know

it's a it's a nice photo

I think I think it's pretty

um I took it a long time ago

kind of always

had the intention of doing something like this with it

so I'm going to be sharing this photo with you

and also some of the techniques that uh

that I used to create it

uh so class 1 is gonna be focused primarily on um

on doing the prep work necessary to

uh bring the

bring it into nuke

I'm going to be using Maya um

but I wanna stress that you can

really use any 3D application

um on the market um

to generate this geometry uh

so if you're more comfortable in another one

by all means

please go ahead and use that one um

but I'm most comfortable in Maya

so I'm gonna be using that

all that really matters is the technique um

that you use to create the geometry

so I'll be focusing heavily on

uh you know

on best practices for

for generating uh

geometry for

for this kind of application

some other more practical applications of

of this technique um

are things like product photography

so I've just taken a quick detour onto um

Zero's website um

and you can check this out on a real um

that we've done some um

you know like replacing existing objects um

with with other objects

so in this example we model the cucumbers um

in this example we

uh we used um

some animating geometry to uh

to replace the

the dialogue that this uh

the that this guy was saying and

and also some replacing some labels

label placement

label replacement is a

is a huge part of

of the work that we do at zero

on all the commercial work that we do um

so you can use these techniques that will

be picking up in this class to

to hone those skills and

hopefully use it in your everyday work

so with that um

let's just jump right in and

and get started

so before we get started

um modeling

we need some information about about our image

so um first

first things first

we need to grab the resolution of our source image

in this case

my camera took it at 3,088 by 2,056

so go ahead and make a note of that in fact

I'll just use it a sticky note

to keep track of that stuff so um

resolution is 3,088 by 2,056 and um

the other piece of uh

very important information that we need is um

is the focal length of the uh

of the lens that took the image

um so if um

so most cameras keep track of things like that

like f stop and everything like that

so if we use the view metadata node

hopefully your

your images will have uh information like this

uh so it just has all kinds of information

um in a little table uh

you know things like exposure time um

you know the file size

and this is the one that we're really interested in

the focal length

so I'll go ahead and Mark that down

focal length is 55 millimeters

so um just make note of of all this information

and we're going to use that as soon as we get into Maya

so I've gone ahead and opened up Maya

so first let's just let's make a plane that we're going

going to model to now

the best way to go about doing this is

you know just make a plane and

and now to um

we want the uh the ratio if it's uh

if it's a known ratio aspect ratio

then that's great but if not you can just uh

divide the um X resolution by the y whoops

by the uh y resolution and you'll get 1.5

that makes sense

so I'm going to actually change this to um

1.5 1 and one

so now we have a uh

a plane that is going to be the right aspect ratio

for the image that we're gonna be putting on it

so I'm doing some

you know Maya things if you're not familiar with Maya

don't worry about it too much um

you know use whatever 3D application

you're most comfortable with

um and you'll do

you'll do fine um

so basically what I'm doing is I'm just making a shader

that's a surface shader

so it's just plugging in pixel values one for one

and I'm going to tell it to use a file

and that file lives in our image directory

in our plates folder

and it's flower dot E x r

and actually um I wrote out a JPEG

um which might be a better choice for working in Myers

cause we don't really need the bit depth for uh

um for modeling the modeling the flower

so there's my plane

but that looks pretty blurry

so I just need to oops

I closed the out here it is

just going to the surface shader

and change the hardware texturing options

there we go

until it to use the color

and the highest resolution possible

there we go

still a little hazy but you know welcome to Maya um

you know and if you are familiar with Maya

you know there's

hundreds of different ways you could do what I just did

again just do what do it feels best to you

so I'm just gonna scale that up

so it's the size of our grid and

and move it back by what is that like

twelve oops

negative twelve

and now we uh can go ahead and create our camera

so here's uh where we can plug in oh

before I do that um

I'm sorry I want to change our

resolution to 3,088 by 2056

and panels camera 1

and turn on our resolution gate

and um

nope

nope

and just line it up um

you don't have to be pixel perfect accurate on this um

this is not

this is going to be just used for projection

so uh you know

don't worry about it if uh

if you're off by by a slight amount um

just make sure that it fits um

and then we'll

we'll go from here

so I'm just also gonna lock

this so I don't move the camera by accident and lose my

lose my position

so to start out with what we want to do is just kind of

get something in there to block

to block in what we're doing so we can get an

get an idea of

how much detail we really need to go into

so this looks like a

looks like a sphere

so I'm gonna go ahead and make a sphere

also I'm going to make a render layer

so that I can

do that

and you can use um

the x ray function if you like um

I usually prefer to just go the simple route and

and change the surface shader to be semi transparent

I'll just keep that window minimized

so I can go back to it if I want to

but um X ray is a great way to uh

is a great way

you know to see kind of behind the object that you're

that you're working on at the moment

um so at so for this sphere that's pretty good for

the shape of the snow

I'm gonna rotate it so that um

so that this plane is uh

so that this edge loop here is kind of in line with

the rough border of of where I want the snow to be

so I'm just gonna rotate that a little bit more

and um I'm gonna delete the bottom half

cause I'm gonna do the flowers separately

cake

good so you may be asking yourself well

that isn't very detailed what's going on um

since we're projecting onto this

we can have a lot of control over uh

over the alpha channel and what gets projected onto it

so um and again

you know this isn't the first step of

of probably many iteration so uh

we're gonna go back to this a number of times before we

end up with uh

with the final um

with the final geometry so

we're just trying to get the shape of it at this point

just to start working so we can get something going

because just like

you know everything else

just like roto and other things

someone might

someone might be expecting to get started on

the next task

the actual compositing thing

so you want to be able to to work

um you wanna be able to work iteratively

so that you can deliver something at any point in time

so next I'm gonna make one that is the

that we're gonna use to project the flowers onto

so something like that looks pretty good

I'm just gonna rotate it similarly and oops

cake

and now we need the stem

and um just from experience I know that in my anyway um

take a look at the UVs and these are

you know not terribly useful

so uh I also know that I don't need the caps

of this thing at all so I'm gonna go

ahead and get rid of those

and um actually before I move it oops

before I move it

I'm gonna lay out uh some new UVs really quickly

so create UVs on a cylinder

and there we go good

that just puts them all um

makes nice clean UVs that uh

you know I don't know if we'll

if we'll need to uh

paint on this later

but it's just good to do now before you

create some complex piece of geometry

that you'd have to go back and layout uvs the hard way

so just things like that take care of early um

even if you don't think you'll need to use the UVs

just do it anyway cause it's always

always a good idea

so before I make it you know super tiny

um I'm going to oh

you know what I can do

I can turn on this fancy high quality rendering

there we go

now I have a nice little nice um

now I have a nice view

sharp view of that um

so before I make that as thin as it

event will eventually need to be

I'm gonna um

just get it roughly into position first of all and uh

and one a little trick you can do um

since we can't

you know move the camera around

um because I locked it

and we also don't wanna move the camera around

because if I do then we'll lose our perspective um

you can use the um

the post scale um

by holding apple

you can drag

any of these boxes by holding apple in the middle

mouse button and dragging

so let's get that right

and use the film translate to move this way

so when we're done doing this part

we can just turn these values back to 1 and 0 um

and we haven't destroyed the position of our camera

so now we're just zooming in right here

and now I can start putting in uh

putting in edge loops um

where I where I think I'll need them

one right there

so I'm just gonna try and define this define this shape

I have a feeling that

the forums are gonna be a buzz with talk of uh

what 3D app to use

which one's better

uh for this type of thing um

I'm gonna stay out of that conversation because I

um you know

I know how to use Maya um

I wouldn't consider myself the best 3D

artist in the world

but I know my way around um

so you know

I would say that the best 3D app is the one that

that you're most comfortable with

so if you're more

comfortable doing this kind of thing in cinema 4D

or if you think you

you know know a better way to uh

to quickly generate geometry for this kind of purpose

by all means um

please share it

um and you know

this isn't the only way to do it

but this is um

this is definitely the way that uh that I use

um to get it done quickly and um

and as accurately as possible

so it's uh it's worked for me and um

I don't have any

too many complaints about it I mean

you might have some issues with

all the buttons I have to push to do things

that should be really simple

but you know if you're

if you've worked in my before

you should be

kinda used to that and uh

everybody kinda has their own different ways of uh

of working in Maya

um you know

I don't have too many um

custom hot keys or or anything like that just because I

I jump around from computer to computer so much

I uh find it useful to kinda

to keep myself used to working uh

with the default settings uh

just cause I find it uh

find it difficult to have to migrate

all my settings from computer to computer

so um now that's a pretty good stem um

let's just now is a good time to check

where all this stuff is in Z space so clearly

the stem in the image is on the front side of

the snow so we're gonna have to move that this way

and since we don't have like a top view of this thing

we kinda have to just eyeball it and do our best

so that's not

doesn't look too bad um

but now since we've changed that um

have to look back here

and you can see it's also moved in uh

it's also changed

you know how our thing is oriented to the rest of it

so just kind of muscle that back into place

and let's take a look a little closer

oops

ah what happened

so the more accurate you make this

um obviously the better um

but don't worry if uh

if it's not

you know perfectly accurate

because actually you want to um

model it slightly

slightly wider then

then the object actually is because it's kind of

it's easier as you'll see

to kind of go backwards or sorry

it's actually easier to um

to take stuff out of a projection than it is to put

things um in that you didn't model in to begin with

so that's pretty good

and now I like that little ice chunk so uh

so let's go ahead and put that in

before I model that

I'm gonna move it right on top of the thing there

and I'm just gonna push these vertices

in so that kind of marries it to the to the stem

that's fine just squeeze those a little bit

so like I said

the geometry can be um

really forgiving when

you're doing a projection work like this um

so just kind of get the general idea

and if you have to go back and fix it later you

have to go back and fix it later um

not a big deal

alright

so that's pretty good

um now let's just go through and uh and name everything

that's our model plane

this is our projection camera

our snow object

our flower object

our stem and this is our ice chunk cool

um so now um

we can now we just need to export this stuff into um

into readable formats for nuke uh

and then uh

we'll go ahead and import that stuff into nuke

so like I said uh

nuke can read uh

OBJ files it can read um

it can read uh

what's it called

FBX files um

there's a whole class on FX PhD all about taking 3D um

3D models and 3D information into nuke

so I'm not gonna go into great detail about

the advantages and disadvantages of each um

I will say that uh

that the tried and true method is using OBJ files

over FBX files

just because the FBX format seems to change quite a bit

I prefer OBJ files just because they tend to be smaller

they tend to be simpler

and that makes for a lot less overhead in

in nuke when you start to work with it

the less stuff Newcastle load the better so

and as you can see

I'm exporting each of these separately um

this is a course is a script

scriptable thing in Maya um

if you had you know

100 pieces of geometry that you needed to export

I definitely don't recommend doing it

one by one like this um

you might want to um

script this process

which is definitely possible

so the uh the camera is a special case um

since you can't have a camera in an OBJ file

to the best of my knowledge um

we have to use an FBX file

so I'm gonna just export the camera um

to an FBX file

and I find that the default options work best

um so just uh

leave it alone and um

and yeah go for it

so this is what is this project camp

oops I changed it FBX export

so I'm gonna leave my open um

running in the background

just because I might wanna go back um

back and forth a little bit and change the way things

are organized

um so so yeah

so I'm gonna leave my open uh

running in the background while I

bring the stuff into nuke and start to

start to work with it and line it up

and make sure that everything is uh

is looking right um

because I might wanna go back

and revise something a little later if I notice uh

I did something wrong um or

and I don't wanna have to

you know reopen Maya

uh so I'll uh

I'll just start up nuke and I'll meet you

meet you back here when I've done that

already here we are

so I just decided to keep working with the uh

with the file that we've been working with

um or that we started to work with

so uh just like uh image files

nuke has a uh read geometry node

so let's just start with uh start with that

so let's navigate to our

to our folder here oops

start with the snow

how about that

and now if we switch to 3D view

um once again the hockeys for that are option

left click to rotate

option right click to zoom in and out and option

middle click to pan

uh so here it is

that's our uh that's our snow object

looks familiar

um and I'm gonna go ahead and bring in the rest of them

actually to save myself some clicking

I'm gonna copy them and uh do it this way

and I'm gonna put them

I'll plug them into

into a C node just so we can look at them

all at the same time without having to have each one um

open at once

alright so that's the stem ice chunk

snow and flower good

and now let's bring in that camera

and to uh to bring that in just make a regular camera

and click the read from file button

um so that's gonna override any user values that we set

and uh read it from whatever file we tell it to use

proj cam and I do want it to reset any data

so now if we uh

if we take a look through that camera

and open up the C note that looks about right

and now if we uh

if we check it by making a scan line render

just put that as the background

great so that's covering it up uh

nicely and uh

now I'm just gonna since some

Charles is gonna do a lot of the compositing in

uh in Class 2

I'm not gonna go into uh

great detail with um

with the new script at this point

I'm just gonna set it up

so that he doesn't have to think about it to

get working

um it's just gonna be a little

it's basically like a

like a precompositing task

so uh he doesn't have to set all this stuff up himself

when he wants to start working

he can just do it uh

right off the bat

and this is also a great way

this is also going to be how we'll uh

we'll check our work

um against uh

what we've modeled

so I'm gonna copy the plate um

and copy the camera

and I'm gonna call this the projection cam

and let's start with the snow

so make our Project 3D node

and tell it to use the camera and

um and the image and then just plug it in

so that worked pretty good

and rinse and repeat for the rest of them

and I'm a stickler for uh

organizing my scripts

so uh you know

you don't have to be as uh

as anal as I'm being about this stuff

um but you know it always helps to

uh to keep things organized

just hate the diagonal lines can't stand them

excuse me

so if we take off our background um

now we can also see that um

that our uh

format is not uh

not correct um

so we can fix this one or two ways

first we can go into our

root project settings and set it to the resolution of

um of our source image

and now it's

it's you know

it's correct 30

88 by 20 fifty six um

but since I wanna render this out at HD

I want the root format to be HD

so if I change it to HD

now the scanline render is

is rendering to the wrong thing

even though that's eventually what I want it to be um

so in order to force it into uh

rendering the resolution we want

which is right out to the original um cameras

we can make a constant

it doesn't matter what color it is

black is fine

um and just change its format to uh 30 88 30

88 by 20 56 and plug that into the background

and there we go

um and now um

if we wanna kind of look around and

and just make sure that everything's kind of working

properly um

I'm going to check unread

I'm gonna uncheck read from file

so keeps the information there

but it's no longer linking it to that file

so it won't

so if I update that file

um I won't lose any information that I set here

and a quick way to

to like kind of orbit around um

anything is to make a access node

and I'm gonna plug that into the camera

so if you can

if we go into 3D mode and uh

we'll see what that does

that basically makes a uh

makes uh it's kind of like a group node

I guess or a null object it just makes a uh

a node uh that

you can kind of move the camera around um

so I'm just gonna

you know change the

the y rotation and um

we can see that already

we're getting some nice perspective here

so that's very cool

obviously we still have uh

you know we have extra stuff that we need to cut out

but I'm you know feeling pretty good about

about where we are so far

but I realized that the

that the flowers are

you know not looking

not looking too hot

they kind of just look flat um

which makes sense considering they are uh

their honest fear so um

so I'm gonna go back into uh

Maya and just model a couple of these flowers

not gonna go too crazy

um if you want to you know

you can go in and model each one of these flowers

and that would look fantastic um

so but right now I'm just gonna start with a couple and

uh we'll see what that looks like and hopefully um

hopefully we like it

so first I'm just gonna make this guy a little tighter

since we don't need to cover as much area with it

and uh I'll just make a plain and

um model the flowers

yeah

of course my mouse decides to

act up there we go

so I'm just gonna you know

approach it the exact same way as everything else

just gonna roughen the position of everything

first of all whoops

actually gonna hide that

roughen the position and refine as necessary

I think the thing that I like most about this is uh

you know it

it uh

it looks really good for the uh

for the amount of 3D work that

that actually goes into it

you know I'm not uh

obviously I'm not spending a uh

a great deal of time

uh on this uh

on this model but um

I know that once we

get it into nuke and once we can start working on it

it's gonna start looking really good really fast um

so hopefully you can take

some of these approaches and apply them to um

to some of your 3D work um

that you're doing and hopefully speed some of that up

cause the fact

cause uh you know

cause I really feel that uh

at least at this point in time

um photography still has it over 3D

um there's just no contest

um when it comes to

um the photography over CG

I mean it's always getting better but uh

personally I just like to use

real photography whenever I can

so that's looking okay

I just don't like that geometry there

so I'm gonna turn it into triangles

shh don't tell anybody

get probably do the same here just because

nobody likes weird looking faces

alright and let's just get that stem in there so

this is a super cheap way of doing it

don't tell your 3D department

hey

alright

cool so now let's uh

move those into place so that it makes sense in

uh in depth

cause right now they're just in the middle of the thing

oops

take

2 3

cake

so it's definitely a little

bit of a back and forth process

um you know

manipulating things so they look good in one view

and then finding out that they

don't work in another view um

but if you do this a lot

um you'll start to kind of get used to it and uh

and learn ways and uh

and little tricks that

that can help that go a little faster um

but the effort is definitely worth the reward

cake

and move those out again

up again

now we're starting to get there

so I look in perspective

so that kind of makes sense I'm not too

not too worried that that's poking through a little bit

um we can fix that income later um

or if it does cause a problem

I'll just go back and uh

and remodel it

so let's just take another check in my before I uh

export that stuff

good those are still over the thing uh so

the only things that I changed were actually

let's see what did I change

I changed the flowers and I changed the um

and I added two leaves so gonna name these things oops

leaf one and

Leaf 2 and do as I say

not as I do

we should have been saving scenes a lot more frequently

so I'll just name this flower scene and

now I can export that

now um if somebody

had already started working with this um

I will I would save uh

new versions

but since um

I haven't handed this off to anybody yet

I'm still checking my work

I'm just gonna go ahead and uh

and write over this file

but if uh if someone had already started working on it

and I was asked to go change it

I would absolutely save um

save a new version just because I don't want to um

to wreck anybody's script

uh previously

you know if a client says

oh you know

I changed my mind

I really liked the one that you did

uh last week

except make this small change um

if you don't have the files

that made what they saw

um that first time readily available

it's going to be

really difficult to recreate that later

so make sure that uh

that you know

you save versions of new scripts of course

but also make sure that any file like geometry or

or precomps or anything like that um

those are saved in a previous version state as well um

so now I'm just gonna add two more um

oops

we've won

and leaf too

alright so now let's see if we get anything uh

we got anything out of that

oop and uh I forgot um

we changed the flower so I don't have to

since I overwrote that file

I don't have to uh

you know go through that whole process again

all I have to do is just uh

click the reload button

and that reads the file again so now

that's kinda nice

we've got um

we've got a nice little bit of perspective there now

so when we rotate the thing um

we can see it uh

see those leaves kind of move um

separately from the rest of the

from the rest of the flowers um

so that's gonna be kind of nice

um you know I'm not expecting that that will go

you know to to such an extreme um

as as this since um

you know the texture really starts to stretch um

especially when we get to the side of it um

but this method isn't supposed to be you know a

a solve all for uh

for the entire thing um

it's just supposed to get us kinda subtle motion that

uh that you might find in a nice

like product shot or something like that

so the next thing I'm gonna do

to get this ready for Charles is at a ground plane

or is at a background plane

so I'm gonna start with a card um

just so we can

kind of block it in there and see where we are um

and the the card um

doesn't really have to be uh

projected since uh

well let's make sure that it's uh

big enough

so the card comes in the uh

the right size um

as whatever is plugged into it

it's already got the aspect ratio um

and you can change that

if you want it to be square by default or

or ignore yeah

so if you want it to be square

um which we probably don't in this case

you can just uncheck that um

uh otherwise it'll just assume

the shape of whatever is plugged into it

so let's move that back

um you know

an appropriate distance away that we think the uh

the background really is

so something like that maybe

um you know

the trees probably this far back um

and make it uh you know make it as big as a frame

there so now when we orbit around

oops

you see the background good

and it may be a little weird to look at it like this

but um you know

just keep in mind that um

that we're gonna be doing clean plates

for each of these projections

um in the uh

in the next class um

and if you want

you know you can all

you can go ahead and get started on that um

but Charles is gonna show you some of the things that

might not be readily apparent

um you know

like how to get rid of the uh

the space in um

the space in here so you know

we're gonna have we're gonna talk about uh ways to um

about ways to kind of uh

crop it to the areas that you need

so I also noticed um

now that one more thing

just because um

I noticed that this geometry is

definitely not where it needs to be

it really should be over here um

that stem is apparently a lot closer um

on the sphere

uh than I thought it would be so we can try

I'm gonna try and uh

and accomplish this by um

using a transform geonode um

but I'm really not sure if this is gonna work

let's just see

if that can do the job so I'm gonna move it uh

in little steps

oops that wasn't a little step

till it looks about right

so again this is another reason why it's usually

it's really important to make

your geometry just slightly bigger than the

than the object that uh that you're projecting um

because now we can move this around a little bit and uh

and we still have room to work with

so it doesn't look like that's gonna work actually

because no matter if I if I move it

you know into place

it's clipping

this area a little bit

which I don't want

and it's also

gotten really big because we moved it closer to camera

so this is another instance where

I'm gonna have to go back into Maya

and just change the position of this a little bit

so good thing I still have it open

I'm gonna put these

two in a group so that I can move them together

so now the it's touching the edge of the

sphere right around there

which pretty close let's just get it a little closer

I do want it to overlap a little bit so

oops

alright and everything else looks to be

still in the same place

I'm just gonna tighten this up a tad

good that's looking okay

and now let's just reset our view

cool

alright so now let's re export these two objects

export selection

oops actually I want to do one at a time

stem and ice trunk

okay and now go back to nuke

and get rid of that transform Geo

cause that didn't work out

and reload the stem better and the ice trunk

take a look at that stuff oops you see

what is that

oh that was a

I guess it was just a UI bug or something like that

yeah weird sometimes things like that happen

oh you see I did mess up a little bit um

I didn't check my work carefully enough um in Maya

so just before I forget

I'm just gonna move that onto the stem

it's good

alright now we're cooking ah

and again

see it's good to do things quickly

of course not good to rush when you really shouldn't

so that's lined up to the camera

and it's lined up to the stem good

gonna push one more vertex in

and export that one more time

good

excellent

so now our stem is uh

is properly positioned um

right to about where it's supposed to be

and our snow is looking good

our flowers are looking good

our leaves are looking good

so now at this point I'm uh

I'm about ready to uh

hand it off to Charles um

and what Charles is going to do is uh

is take this

this comp that I've done and animate the camera move

and start generating clean plates

and basically just comping it together

and making it look really pretty

so thanks for joining me for class 5

class 6 is gonna be a lot of fun

we're gonna take this and

bring it the rest of the way home um

generating clean plates

doing some really cool

um depth of field effects

um and other

other little things to

uh to make this comp look super pretty

so looking forward to it and um

and I'll see you in the forms bye