All language subtitles for nuk309-class10

hi everyone

welcome to class No. 10 of new con digital environment

and this is our last class

and we left the balcony

and we're going to concentrate on the third shot

and what we got here is a full matte

painting that was created for us by Matthew Connor

my friend and colleague

and he's a fantastic matte painter

as you will see when you drop in the elements

but we've left some of the final color corrections

for us to do because uh

in many situations

you get a matte painting that is somewhere you know

in the area of looking good

but still does not sit in the plate

and some plates

specifically like this one are very

very hard for integration

so we looked at this one briefly

at the beginning of the class

and we talked about the fact that everything is very

strongly backlit from

right over there

everything kind of feels hazy

there's hardly any color information in this plate

so whatever we wanna put in there is not gonna be easy

to um to really make it feel like it's there and again

I always trust the importance of color in compositing

I think about

85% of compositing to me is colour

and what we're gonna do today in this class

is really go deep into the issue of colour

and how we can tweak things to make them sit there

so we've got this backleat plate

we've got all these sage this kind of orange

brownish general cast um

we've got these flares

and what the director wants here is basically um

an airplane that crashed

and some debris and things that got broken

in the accident

and that's what we're gonna put in there

so let's start with Matthew's mouth painting

we wanna drop the

layers from the matte painting in the correct order

and usually you would get

a matte painting from the matte painter

separated into layers

and there are usually two reasons for this

well more than two

but the main two reasons are first

that you wanna have separate layers

in case you need to put these on cards

where there is a camera 3D movement

and um the other one is that it gives you more

um your capabilities to color correct individual

elements rather than the whole thing

which makes it of course

much harder

so it helps us here

just looking at the shot

it's very easy to notice that there is no 3D

camera move

so there's no need to put anything on cards

uh there's a tiny little bit of it

not enough to justify all the hard work

all you need to do is do a 2D track

uh for the shot

and that should suffice

of course we need to Rodeau her

because stuff is gonna be behind her

we'll talk about the flare later

what I'm gonna show you in this class is gonna be on

the first frame

but basically whatever works on frame

one will work throughout the shot

so the the rest is easy

the hard thing is to get things in there

so let's start by bringing

our building element first

and we'll just

uh put it over

okay of course

make sure that you are reformated to the right format

that your start on frame 1 and all that

now these are twice the size or

two times the resolution

so we need to of course reform at the element

so let's add a reformat node here

and put this over

so we've got one element there

you see it's the destruction that's happening

on the roof

and already you can tell that these

need some serious color corrections to fill in there

um let's move on and put the other layers in there

so we have everything

and next one would be the telephone pole

so let's put it just over the first one

so we don't need to reform at

everything and that's a telephone pole that

kind of got knocked down

um some wires

let's put these

okay um now the airplane itself let's find the element

here it is

here it is right there and again

you can tell that this needs some serious work

some serious color work to fit in there

which is what we're gonna do

and next we'll put the um the ground debris

and we're gonna put the ground shadow

and finally

the wing the Broken Wing let's find it

alright so we've got all the elements there

all the destruction debris

the airplane

but everything needs some work

of course we need to roto her

and I've got here a roto that I did for just frame one

and I suggest um

putting the plate through the roto over

again so that you can use edge blur to finish

um the edges

so we wanna copy

we wanna take the plate and copy the alpha in

and of course we wanna promote

and now we can put this over

everything again right here

and edges are indeed to be sharp

so we can easily add an edge blur

and that just takes care of the edges

and that's good enough for this frame

and now um two things we wanna do

first is treat overall sharpness and grain

I really suggest putting grain right at the start

because it will help you a lot when you uh

do the colour tweaks

so if we look at the elements

compared to anything back there

well it's very clear that they're too sharp

we can for now

after they reform

I just put a general soften node over everything

so that's a filter soften

that I really like to use instead of a blur or defocus

because it does this little fine

um softening

and you can see that over everything

and I think that should work

for everything we've got here

just soften the edges a little bit

the other thing you wanna make sure is that all your

elements are pre multiplied because these are tiffs

and uh doing that will prevent any kind of

unwanted edges

so I'm just going through all of them

making sure they're all pre multiplied

again if it was any XR

pre multiplied over black that would be different

usually thiefs or generally stuff out of Photoshop

you want to pre multiply when you bring in

it's not a hard rule

but usually that's how it works

so we've got that

we've got a bit of softening

and the next thing we wanna do is add some grain

so grain you wanna add at the end right

after everything

and

matching the grain

you wanna look first at the blue channel

and it looks like the blue is much bigger than 2.5

let's try three

uh that's good

let's look at the green and red

green and red could be a little smaller

let's put them at 2.2 both

and the next thing you wanna look is the grain

on the blacks

black areas because it's a fine balance

um so we wanna look at the darker areas

and it looks like we need to add some

grain in the blacks

um let's put it at um 0.005

let's look at our telephone pole

that's with that's without

now grains on the highlights

and the metones there is a bit too strong

so let's bring this to about point five

and let's look at the green channel

again it's a tad strong um

that's not too bad actually

let's put it at point five two

and let's look at the red channel

um red channel we can have a little bit more

let's try point six

so green looks pretty good on these areas

a little less on the airplane

but you have to remember that

the airplane does not have the right colours right

it's way too bright

so in contrastee

so once we bring it down and we add the flare on top

this grain should work

and we can tweak it later

so let's start not with the airplane

but with the first element we brought in

with the building

what we want to use is the color correct node

because it lets us separate between shadows

midtones and highlights

and I think we'll need that

specifically here

you can take a look and see that

the shadows look kind of bright and orangey

the midtones are not really there

too bright as well

and too blue maybe

and the shadows are

sorry the highlights are all messed up

so I think it would be a good idea

to use the color correct note here

and first set the arrange

use the test button

and I think we want to include a little bit more in

the shadows

so we can extend the curve

a little more

or something like this

and the other thing I usually do is by default

just set on premode to alpha in case you're using um

an offset or lifting the blacks in any way

that prevents lifting the blacks on the whole image

so let's see what we can do here

we might want to start with the midtones

so they definitely need to be darker

oh let's turn off the attest

so they should be around there looking at you know

other areas that are kind of whitish

and um you know

there may be a bit too blue

we wanna make them a bit kind of more orangey

so we can take down the blue a bit

and the green

yeah that's better

and we can go even a bit darker

something like this

that's already looking better

now let's look at the shadows

the shadows need to be of course less orangey

more blue um and darker

but if we darken them

you know they start becoming

too crunchy compared to the shadows over there

so what we can do is gamma up

let's say 1.2

and that already takes us closer

now we can darken even more

and now we just wanna add a bit more blue in there

and maybe a bit more green

something like this to match them closer

so we've got the highlight

the metones and the shadows pretty close

again that's without it's a big difference already

that feels much nicer

what looks really terrible is the highlights

so we can try and gain them down

um but as we do that with this

we basically flatten them

so we don't wanna do that too much

but if we look at the nice highlights

we've got over some other stuff

this is part of the element actually

but even here

we want them to be nice and warm

and they have some really nasty kind of

greenish color to them

which is gonna be hard to get read

just using the color correctnote

so what we can do

let's leave them right here for now

what we can do is use a different color correction note

the hue correct

to try and heat this nasty greenish stuff

and get them more into the

warm kind of nice looking highlights

so let's add a hue correct node

and we wanna kind of control drag over this area to see

what hue that is

and these falls right around the uh

the two right around the orange area

orange green area

so if we go to green suppression

that's we have um

a curve point right here

we can simply

you know suppress the green as if it was a green screen

or green spiel

and by doing that we get some nicer tones there

we get rid of that general kind of green hue

and then if we go back to the color correct

to our highlights

we can pull them down a little bit more

something like this

so that they're not that bright

and then we don't need to do a lot more um

we can make them a bit more red maybe

and

just reduce a bit more

and that already puts them in a nicer place

so this ucorechnoid really helped us

you know get rid of that greeny stuff in there

and this is sitting much better now

I think a little bit more blue on the shadows now

my little less green

something like this okay

let's move on to the next big piece

we'll leave all this stuff for later

of the wires and the telephone pole

because these are easier

I wanna concentrate on the big piece here

which is the centerpiece of the matte painting

so let's add a color correct note to the airplane

and it's good idea to look at it

and kind of come up with a strategy

what exactly do we wanna do

and why is it not sitting in there

um my feeling is that it's first of all too bright

feels too blue

the contrast is way too high

again if we look at the plate around us there's

we hardly see anything

it's kind of a orangey silhouette plus

we have this flare that we'll have to treat later on

but just as a general kind of color

we should probably start by reducing the contrast

let's put that to uh point seven

and that already flattens a lot of the plane

which it will help us

um of course it's uh

it's too bright

let's put the gain 2.77 and these

these are just

general procedures to start getting it there

and um that's already better

let's look at the separation of shadows

and I think that already works well

the way it is by default

midtones here

highlights at the rims and shadows over here

so the shadows again uh

we wanna gain down and probably gamma up to

because if we just gain them down

everything becomes really

really crunchy

so let's put the gain to

let's say point five in general

and now let's leave the gamma to

let's say about point one point 24

and that already already puts it there

but we kind of want this area to just blend with that

so um let's take the gamma

make everything more red

less blue to kind of get this Orangy

and let's maybe reduce it a bit

a bit less blue

and we can do the same with the game

with the shadow game

reduce the beat at a bit more red

every place blue

and that already puts the airplane in a better place

in this case it looks like if we unpremely

if we don't use pre mold it lands better

so let's keep it that way

okay um shadows are pretty much there

midtones again midtones I think are too bright

um we wanna gain it down

let's see by how much

and we wanna go quite a look down there

something like this

much darker

um again let's take out some of the blue there

and make the whole plane feel more like this kind of

brownish you know

you that we've got

you cast that we've got over everything

so yes we are losing color differences

and we're kind of flattening the color range

but really we have to work with the

color range in the plate

if we don't do that and their colors are totally pop up

um that will be against us

and this is pretty close

because we have some of these blues and

greens over there

maybe pull a bit more blue out

just add a bit more green

something like this

and this is feeling pretty nice

now the shadows are kind of whitish

and we probably want to make them

sorry the highlights are kind of whitish

and we want to make them

more warmer

so let's try and do this

we can make it more red

take out blue

and now we get you know

highlights that are a bit warmer

so that's before

totally out

and that's after

so we've made some progress

now it still feels that they're very deep blacks there

that might be a bit too dark

um what we can do is add another color correct node

and this time we wanna hit in the shadows

really just the very deep

lacks something like this

and we wanna

and free mode by alpha

because we want to offset everything

let's turn off the test

and what we can try in the shadows is add a bit of

a little bit of offset

let's see how much

well that's way too much

so we wanna keep it very very small

let's try yeah 1 0 0 1

I can maybe go a little higher

yeah let's just add a bit more red in there

yeah and this is helping too

now we have an area

weird area in the matte painting where the black seem

awfully purple

and this is not something you can do for the entire

plane but what you can do is just put a little roto

and we wanna look at the plane before it's being

um reformatted

and you wanna draw

um a soft drodo around this area

kind of like this and blur it a little bit

and just make sure the Roto is not set to format

because this is pre reformatting here

and if we look at the whole thing we can take this area

um so well probably we don't want

we only wanna hit the shadows

so we can put another color correct note here

and see shadows

that's perfect

and here we might wanna just take out blue

from just that area

and that's already better

now let's look at the whole image again

we haven't treated

the degrees and the stuff in this area

but these are easier

color corrections

there's one thing about this

plane that still kind of bothers me is the way that

this is nice and we're gonna add back the flare on top

so that will blend very nicely

but that area

just feels like we're seeing too much detail

too much contrast

too much highlight

where the background behind almost feels like a solid

color almost

so we we need to find a way to kind of have this

blended more

and um what I'm gonna do here because

the background is so in distinct

you can hardly see any detail here

is do a cheap dirty trick

um that I use when possible

and that is to just make it

semi transparent here

so we basically see the background behind it

it works as long as you

don't have any kind of distinct movement or changes

or colours in the background

that will come through and will reveal the fact

that it's well

interesting

transparent

so what we wanna do and again

let's look at our airplane

is um to kind of do um

one big roto

for this whole area

and we wanna blur these let's say quite a lot by 300

and we wanna add a grade note here

again let's turn off format for the roto

and connect these to the mask

and let's go back

and look at everything and we wanna set this one to all

cause it wanna include the alpha and the grade

and we're just gaining down

and basically at this point we're making it

semi transparent

now the result really

really helps us blend this airplane in

look at this

feels way too much there

and now almost feels like it's sitting

nicely in that area and getting back some of the rays

so uh let's put it maybe a little bit

a little bit less

let's say um point six

oh good to go

that's it 1:55

alright and this is really helping us so again

let's take a look at the airplane before and after

all the stuff we did

this is before out there

not sitting at all

and this is now sitting there much better

so here is um

a version that's a little bit more advanced

uh everything we did

plus I did some color corrections on the other elements

so I just wanna walk you through

uh quickly through these

uh the telephone pole

um just a little bit of

let's zoom in a little

um you know

a little bit less saturation

making it a bit more red

less greenish and reducing a bit all the highlights

um what we have here is the airplane

everything we did

then the wires again

originally they were a bit too bright

just darkening down and also offsetting a little bit

so that the blacks don't go too strong in there

another color correction for the ground debris

ah without they feel a bit too bright and again

it's a matter of

reducing the brightness and offsetting a little bit

and lifting the shadows a little bit

to sit in there a bit better

and um the shadow

just not putting it all the way is strong

just halfway

that's a shadow over here

just giving a hint of something

it helps the blending

then the wing again

it's mostly a matter of making it less bright

sitting there a bit more

and that can still use a little bit of work

for example

I feel these would be too strong

compared to what we've got here

these can be a little more saturated

reddish orange

but it's getting there pretty close

so now let's talk about this flare

because that

the flare is really important in this shot

it's a key element in here

and it's very clear when you see the

how the tail of the airplane just doesn't

doesn't fit there

because the flare goes behind

so what do you do

you have several options

and let's look at the original plate

one is you can try and do an extraction

of the flare

uh the problem with that is that we're

seeing too much detail through it

especially through these

and also here

so it's gonna be hard to get Aluma key of these and

put it over without seeing some of these cars in there

so that's not really an option

another option is to use one of the flare tools in nuke

or a plugin if you want to create something similar

and use that to add over the airplane

and the rest of the mat painting

um I really like the way the flare is right now

so I would hate to create something else

that kind of looks like it

but not exactly

and I think really it's you know

it's a bunch of phrase and um

some shapes

moving around

it might be easiest to just um

wrote all these um

use those colors as fillers

and put it over the matte painting element

and this is what I've done

and I'll show you

what's going on here

now one thing you wanna do

all this of course

is either screening or placing

you wanna do it

after you gray node

otherwise you risk

pushing all the grain

too bright and too grainy over here

and that will

actually help us

because that area always felt a bit too grainy

so um the first thing I did

was do kind of a general flaring

so just a circle

with a blur

and sample that colour

here I have a constant

put that in

and put that inside

our Mac painting or the alpha of the Mac painting

so I'm using another mask

this is masked to the roto

and then using another mask

and using all the alphas of our math paintings together

and when you turn that on

and I'm using a screen here

it already helps a

lot with the plane

just putting some kind of back hazing or lifting

so that's the first thing

now for the actual flares

what I did is

make a roto that basically follows those rays

and this roto can be animated to kind of follow them

doesn't have to be totally accurate

blurring it

using the same color that I sampled as a mask

then of course this fades out

so what you wanna do is put it into a gradient

or circular gradient

so that's basically a circle

with a blur on it

that is used to mask this

once again that's without

that's with

and finally

we're masking this

using the alpha of our matte painting

and don't forget to take that after your soften

so it takes a softened edges

into account

because again

we just want this over our matte painting

not over the entire plate

and now if I turn this on

here we go we got these nice rays going over and um

the last thing you wanna do is

you wanna rotate all these octagons

each one separately

for each one of these

you wanna go and sample the color

put that in

here's our second one again

sampled colors

add some blur to it

and put this into the alpha

of our matte painting and then

again plus this over everything

and there you just

get the exact flare that you should have had

um if it was shot for real over everything

and all you need to do is animate those rotos to follow

the movement of the flare

and you'll get a super good looking

realistic flare rather than something you know

cheap and CG

so now that we've got something looking much better

let's just compare to what we started with

so this is what we started with

and this is where we're at right now

and you see how important this kind of color work is

to get a final shot

so no matter how talented uh

your mat painter is

it's very rare that you'll get something that you

can just flop into the plate and everything will work

that kind of work that

those little

tiny little bits of you know

looking at the shadow and looking at the highlights

and doing all this work and setting the grain and

looking at flares or changes in the atmosphere or um um

the way the lands sees things

those little things are really the things that

that make you um

the ability to solve these issues

will make you a great compositor so yes

tracking and putting the stuff in there

and keying and all that

all of this is very important

but the last 10% of a shot is really

this is sitting there

and trying to see how you can finally tweak

uh values of colour

um to get it to look really nice

so this is the end of the class

and this is the end of the course for me

it was an extremely fascinating experience

it was extremely challenging for me

because I had to really go and do the shots actually

for you in able to walk you through them and teach you

and doing this kind of stuff is always challenging

and you always learn a lot from it

so I don't only feel like I've been teaching you stuff

but I also feel like I've been learning

through this process

and I think it was a very exciting

and interesting process

I hope you learn things from it

I always like to see how other people work

and learn from just watching them working

so I hope I

gave you a little bit of opportunity to do that and um

I hope to see you all

on my next course at FX PhD bye bye