FXPHD – NUK313 – Photorealism in Compositing with NUKE: Case Studies

The second part of this two-part course, taught by Victor Perez, focuses on putting the theory discussed in the first part (NUK312) into practice. To that end, this courses uses our case studies with a practical approach, compositing the scenes from scratch to recreate the qualities of light, from internal to external setups, in different times of the day.

The intention, technical arrangement and storytelling capabilities for each shot are reviewed in this series of classes. The course includes over 20GB of high quality footage for you to practice your skills.

course syllabus

Class 1: Integrating CG with Live-Action Footage
Beauty grade (aka matching the overall colour values for the three regions of the lighting curve), primary grade vs secondary light effects, the process of the grading (using a checklist), reading the values of the viewer, Grade node vs ColorLookUp node approach, evaluation of motion blur regions for recovery.

Class 2: Greenscreen Element Integration over Live-Action Footage
Natural light vs artificial light, enhancing light qualities, light and edge definition and its impact on edge hardness, and applying 2D light effects with no multipass separation.

Class 3: Full CG Shot
Multi-pass cg approach to composite the development of the look, understanding each pass and its capabilities and contribution, dealing with the values of the components of light, and different looks with the same lighting.

Class 4: Light Artifacts
How to build an artifact script structure, dealing with mattes, the diffraction factor, light in front of the lenses vs inside the lenses, artifacts order logic, implementing in-the-box nuke's glow, light wraps and other convolutions.