Ben's Comp Newsletter: Issue 026
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Hey,
Happy New Year, and welcome to the beginning
of your most productive year yet! I'm hoping
2019 will be filled with an abundance of
personal & career growth for you.
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Instancing Read nodes
If you've read my previous article on how
to speed up your Nuke scripts,
you'll already know that copy/pasting Read
nodes around your script will grind your
work to a snails-pace, as Nuke will be
reading the same data from the same file
path multiple times.
Theoretically, cloning said Read nodes
should eradicate this problem, but there's a
problem: Cloning in Nuke is, and
always has been fatal. I've
lost unthinkable hours of work over the
years by trusting Cloning. Without warning,
cloning nodes can corrupt your entire script
& delete nodes. Don't do it, ever!
Because of this, I've had a Python
script on my "to create" list for ages. I
wanted a simple way to instance my Read
nodes, whilst being friendly to Compositors
who don't appreciate PostageStamp nodes with
hidden inputs, including dealing with the
annoyances of simplifying Nuke scripts for
stereo conversion...
I'm happy to share that I've started 2019
with a win, by finally creating this
solution!
As you can see by the GIF above, this python
script works by creating a
PostageStamp node with a hidden input.
It's coloured dark grey, so it's obvious
that the instanced node is different to the
original Read node. What's more, there are
now buttons on each instanced node that show
where the original Read node is in your Nuke
script!
Lastly, a new tab is added to the original
Read node so you can easily show all
connected hidden inputs, and even
de-instance your instanced nodes by
converting them to duplicates of the
original Read node. As mentioned before,
some Compositors don't appreciate this way
of working (PostageStamps with hidden
inputs), so this feature aims to alleviate
those pains, should a cranky Compositor
happen to pick up your Nuke script!
It doesn't stop there: this functionality
also works with cameras! Rather than finding
and changing multiple cameras throughout
your Nuke script when your shot's frame
range inevitably gets extended, why not
instance one camera throughout your script,
and make this problem a thing of the
past!
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Despill To Colour
Have you ever had a shot that's seemingly
impossible to pull an accurate key or
despill for? Yep, me too. When I hit
that point in a shot, I always look to this
technique to bail me out.
The idea behind this technique is that
you're keeping the luminance of your
greenscreen/bluescreen, but replacing
the green/blue hues with your background
image's hues via a despill
algorithm. This will keep your edges
looking great!
I was faced with some gnarly greenscreen
shots on a recent show, and had to come up
with a solution to help the team smash
through the sequence. Naturally, I started
building this technique into a gizmo, and
subsequently found a way better one to use
online, created by Johannes
Masanz. Johannes has created a demo
video which you can watch
here.
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Nuke View Manager
Mads
Hagbarth Lund consistently creates
cool things. His latest tool solves an issue
I didn't know I had with Nuke -- it adds an
easy way to jump between multiple frame
ranges in your timeline! This tool also
doubles as an easy way to create, store and
jump between many different iterations of
different node settings.
I encourage you to watch
the demo video here to see how
easy it is to use, and learn how it can help
to speed up your workflow!
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Compositing, Grading, and finishing
using Nuke
Hugo
Guerra of Hugo's
Desk is a rare type of person in our
community. I admire how he's made a
location-independent career for himself,
primarily directing & producing rad
video game trailers & cinematics!
Although, above all, I admire how willing he
is to share his workflow and day-to-day
processes so transparently.
Hugo's latest free Webinar is an insight
into how his VFX pipeline operates
throughout the course of a production,
focusing primarily on his colour
workflow.
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Did you find this
newsletter informative?
Have you created, or do
you know of any
outstanding
Gizmos, Python
Scripts or Tutorials
that you would like to
share with the global
Compositing community?
Please send
me an
email, and I
will do my best to
include it in a future
issue of this
newsletter.
If you find value in
Ben's
Comp Newsletter,
please consider
pledging
a small amount
on
Patreon to help
keep this project
running! Contributions
are always appreciated
but not expected.
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