Original subtitles

in this tutorial

we are going to composite fire in nuke

I'm the Nassau with action key effects

and I will be your structure for today

so let's get started

okay so here is my plate

it is a steady

locked off shot with a yellow artificial light

to help us plan the fire glow

we also have removed

the reflection on the windshield here

I'm going to focus this tutorial on composting

the fire and smoke on top of the car

so I would not focus

on some additional effects at the end

like the environment form

to do the fire

I will be using action fee effects

fire elements

which you can get on our website

especially now during the Black Friday

where everything is 55% off

you can also check the other elements that I'm using

in the description below

first before we begin adding the fire

I have added some fake light flicker

I did this very simply by creating a branch

with aluma key

so we only isolate the bright area

and then promote that key

and then I mask only

the areas that will get affected by the fire

which the bright yellow lights in the middle here

and then I use multiply to control the opacity

but instead of animating the flicker manually

I used an expression

so this is a very simple formula

to create a noise wave animation

so the values goes up and down

non uniformly

you can copy the expression

that I'm using here

or just download this new project file

on the description

and then I much this flickering light on top

of the plates that I have darken

and this is what we have

now let's start compositing the fire

we're going to start with just one

which is this ground fire

from Ground Fire volume 2

usually before I merge any elements

I always make sure to add a reformat

so it has the same dimension as the plate

which this fire already has

but I did anyway

just in case

and then we want to merge it on top of our plates

and then let's get transform

and position this inside of the car

okay so to make it look like the fire is inside

of course we have to roto mask the fire

so I want to create a roto shape of this car

window and windshield

and then let's use that

too much mask our fire

and then whenever you do a mask

my advice is to always give

at least a 1 or 2 pixel blur

so the cut out edges isn't too sharp

now I want some part of the flame to break out

of the windshield easy peasy

all I have to do is to create a garbage mask here

and there we go

we have the fire

half contained

while half other is coming out

now our fire is moving super slow

we can speed it up using a note called Kronos

I like to plug it at the very start of the note

and then you want to copy the input range of the clip

into the Chronos note

and then speed up by

let's say two times great next

I want to offset the timeline of the fire a little bit

so let's get time offset

go to the dope sheet and then offset our fire

perfect next

let's add a backdrop note and nickname

our cluster of notes here

now of course

in the final shot

I use multiple fire elements

so here I have them

and as you can see

I have done the exact same things I did

with the first fire

I re time them the format

create mask if needed

and of course

also I added a backdrop and nickname on them

so don't get confused on which is which

so now let's merge all the fires here

and here we have

our fire branch of the note being merged into our plate

to make sure

the fires are merging with each other seamlessly

I want to change the merch into plus 1 thing

you notice that

all of our fires look different to each other

so what we want to do is to color match all the fires

so they all look the same

so first I want to color correct

our windshield fire here

so let's add grade

then remember to unpremote the offer of your

elements before doing color correction

and then premulting it back again

unpremote would make sure that you get the right color

transparency

when you are doing color correction

you can also do the unpremode

and primalde process without the sandwiching the note

by going to the unpremode on the great note

and click on alpha

either way it works

and I'm going to do this unpremode and primalde process

every time I do color correction on our PFX element

so for the color correction

I want to increase the brightness

until we get a little bit more off the highlights

and then I'm gonna go to the gamma

and I want to put it up

the RGP here

and then I want to push the red a little bit

my goal is to basically just create a

bit more contrast between the highlights here

and the midtones

and dark colors off the edge

but not too much great

so now we want the other fires to have this look

all of these fires

are already looking around the right ballpark colorwise

except our other fire here is a bit desaturated

and also not super bright

so let's just add saturation to match the levels of

the saturation we had on the other fire

and then using great

I will bump up the brightness a little bit more

basically you want to go back and forth

to make sure the fire is matching

okay so all the fire now has matching pretty well

next we're going

to add the glow

the following glow techniques

is something that I've Learned from our friend Yugo

Kara from Yugo's desk

that I have modified a bit

so we want to break up our glow

into three layers

first is the inner highlight glow

and then the midtones glow

and then the outer glow

so first let's start with the midtones glow

we want to create a dot here

and we want to add our glow note

branching from it

and then on the glow

we want to click

effects only

so we only have the effects without the actual element

so now I want to do is I want to increase the tolerance

of the glow just a little bit

and then we want to reduce the brightness

and saturation by half

and then let's push the glow size a little bit

okay so now it looks unremarkable

but that is fine

what we're going to do next is we are going to merge

screen this glow back into the element

and then reduce the mix just a little bit

so this is before the Midton glow

this is after

so now let's add the second glow

we want to branch it again

and the second glow is the highlight glow

so let's click effects only

and because you only want the highlights

let's push the tolerance pretty high

and then reduce the brightness

and saturation just a touch

and then for the size

I wanted to be very small

and then once again

let's much screen it back into the element

and this is what we have

we have a little bit more push

on the highlights of the fire

okay so this is our glow so far

now let's add the outside glow however

we're not actually going to insert this outside glow

into the effects

we're going to implement it directly into the plate

so here let's select effect only

and then increase the tolerance

and brightness a little bit

and then let's push down the saturation just a touch

but then on the size

we're going to set it really big like 500

so now we have this really great gloom effect

and so now we want to much this

to the plate just before the fire

and then set the operation to plus

so then the next thing I want to do

is I want the fire to blend a little bit better

with the plates

to do that we're going to go to the much of the fire

not the much of the outer glow here

and we want to change the operation to either plus

or screen plus is technically

more accurate because fire is light

so it has an additive property

but I don't like

the overexposed look that it has on this specific shot

so I'm just going to go with screen

okay so we have our fire

so now before we move forward

I just want to add some backdrops to some of our

effects to make it easier to navigate this script later

next let's add some light interaction and some texture

on the car thankfully

we already have a lot of heavy lifting done by the

artificial light on set for the light interaction

but let's push it

a little bit more

and because of course

this is a burning car

it needs to have some burn Mark

so let's get

this burn Mark texture here and merge it above the fire

and then to align this to the car

we're going to use card 3D

this note allows you to move your footage

in 3D without the need of 3D scene

and then I want to mask this

so this burn Mark only affect the hood of the car

and then I want to duplicate the burn Mark

to put it on the side of the car

and then we want to reduce the much mix

to make it blend a little bit better with the surface

next I want to add some extra brightness of when

the fire makes contact with the car

so let's get great

and we want to increase the lift

and then let's click on the color wheel

and change the value to be more orange

and then of course

we want the great to only affect certain parts

so let's add a mask to it

now here the color still a little bit too much

so let's just reduce the lift

there we go

you also want to make sure that the shape

of the light interaction mimics the shape of the fire

next I'm going to add

the fire's reflection on the car hood

so let's go to our hood fire here

and then I want to create a branch just before it

enters the glow

and then I'm going to add transform

and I'm going to flip

the footage to create a fake reflection

and then I'm going to merge

screen it back into the fire

and then of course

I want to mask the reflection

so it only appears on the hood

and then this reflection

would not this be clear and sharp

especially with the burned Mark present

so let's copy our burned Mark texture

and it's called 3D

and we want to use that as a mat to stencil

our reflection from it

and then let's get blur to blur it out just a touch

and then let's get multiply

to pull the opacity just a bit by the way

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and now let's go back to the video

okay so now let's composite our smoke fire

so we have two types of smoke that we want to composite

one is the black thick smoke that is going upwards

and then there is the white

thin smoke that is a bit more atmospheric in nature

the first smoke that I want to composite

is the thick black smoke

and I will be using this close up of large scale smoke

bloom volume 1

and of course

just like the fire I have

added a Kronos to speed up the animation of the smoke

and then some time offset to offset the timing

and of course reform at it just in case

so now I want to merge this smoke into the plate

but I want to merge it behind the fire

and then let's add transform

and of course we want to mask out the bottom here

and then I want to darken the smoke

so let's add great

and of course primo on premult it

and let's darken it to match the blackness

off the plate

then maybe change the gamma also

so a bit so it's a bit more orange

now I want the smoke to be brighten up exclusively

by the brightness of the fire

and so to do that

we are going to borrow the information that we had

earlier from here

and we want to create a new branch just right here

and let's add a blur note

and then I want to blur it really high

and then maybe let's get great again

to brighten our blur

so we get this hot spot in the middle

and then let's go back to our smoke bloom again

just before we color corrected

and we want to create a branch for this one

and we want to create a branch again as well

and then on this branch

we're going to color correct it again

and this time I'm going to make it really bright orange

and then what I'm going to do is

I'm going to merge these two

and then instead of over

we're going to switch the multiply

and there we go

I want to go back to the great here a little bit

and push it so we can get more hotspot on our smoke

and then we want to put this glowing smoke that we had

on top of our black smoke

so let's merge it on top

there we go

and then much this into the plate boom

so now we have this

we have the fire glow

and we have the fire

now of course this is pushing a little bit too much

so we can just go back to the color grading

and just make sure

to play around with the settings until we

find the right look of our fire smoke

okay so that was the black smoke

now let's do the white thin smoke

for that I will be using this small scale smoke bloom

and this smoke doesn't have any alpha channel on it

doesn't have any transparency

so I'm going to bring a shuffle note

and I'm going to use the green channel as my alpha

so now let's merge this on top of our fire

and we're going to position it here

then of course the smoke is too small

so what I will do

is to make a duplicate by creating a branch

and march it into itself

and then of course we want to roll the smoke

and we want to color correct it

so for the color correction

I just want to make it a little bit more orange

great and then just like the black smoke

I want this white smoke

to be masked out by the brightness of the fire

so let's merge the smoke with that blur again

and then of course

we're going to change this to multiply

perfect so now we have this

but of course our white smoke is getting too thick

so what we can do is we can go back to the grade here

and reduce the multiply or the opacity

and then we want to mask our smoke here

so it is behind our actor and also

I want to mask out the middle part of the smoke

so the values doesn't add up with the fire

so let's create a mask

and I want to do the middle here

and instead of masking

of course I want to do the opposite of masking

which is stencil

there we go

and we want to blur it out

now Toroto our guy

we can do that

manually or

you can use this mat that I created that we can use

to substitute the roto

so this mat footage doesn't have an alpha channel

so again we're going to use shuffle

to use the green channel as the alpha

and then we're going to merge this mat with the roto

so now we still have a little bit of

smoke bleaching through here

and that is not from the white smoke

that is actually from the black smoke

so the black smoke needs to be masked as well

okay so here our smoke is looking a little bit still

you know too thick

let's change the merch from over the screen

there we go

so now it's like the brightness isn't too much

so here what I'm going to do is just adjust

my scene a little bit before doing some final touches

like for example

I want to scale down the black smoke a little bit

and change the outer glow tint into a bit more orange

and then I want to add another fire on the tire

I isolated the bottom part

of this wall fire that I have rotated

and then merged it with the other fire

for the reflection

I did the same thing as before

except I flipped it horizontally

and brighten the reflection

to match with the specular reflection on the bumper

and then after that

I added another white smoke

that is coming out of that new fire

and then after that

I'm just merging additional elements on top of the fire

to help sell the scene

like fire embers

and a haze fog

and the very final effects I did

was creating heat distortion effect

using a noise that I used as a forward UV channel

and then I use

I distort to drive some distortion using that

forward UV channel

and that was basically the shot

and once again

if you're looking for fee effects

stock footage like we used in this tutorial

you can check out our website at Action

Fee Effects com

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and that was the tutorial on composite fire in nuke

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