THEM ALL

ONCE UPON A TIME....

The story begins here! It s a kind of clean plate task, removing the background with another one. So we used a frame hold node, then Roto, Roto ...and more Roto....

IN THE VFX LAB FAR AWAY....

It is a simple

composition of Princess Leia?!?!?! flying

on the speeder with keying the green screen,

garbage mask and despill node. Our task was really simple

to put "the baker over the background. Using a Merge node with over

/A over B - we always using B on merge node for background, and voila - thats it!

Fish and ...chips?!?

NO CHIPS!!!!???

Chapter 1 - Roto

Artist and tech enthusiast Max Fleischer was the art editor for Popular Science Monthly when he came up with the idea of rotoscoping, with the aim of creating more fluid and realistic motion in animated cartoons. He enlisted the help of his many talented brothers (Dave, Joe, Lou and Charlie) to develop and test what would become a rotoscope device. Max filed a patent for the process and the related mechanism in 1915, which was granted in 1917.

..etc...etc...

This story is so interesting but you guys can just Google it :)

Rotoscoping for VFX is used to create a matte or mask for an element so it can be extracted out to place on a different background, masked out so colors can be changed or any other set of reasons. The rotoscoping artist (or roto artist for short) will trace an object using a set of tools within the compositing software to create a new alpha channel for a specific part of an image sequence or video. Unlike computer generated imagery that can easily add an alpha channel to its images, footage taken directly from a camera has no alpha data so the roto artist will need to manually create that alpha by tracing over the elements within the video. A rotoscoping artist will need to create different shapes around an object and animate those shapes to match the movement on each frame.

Challenge 01- rotoscoping waving hand

First of all - set project settings!!!!

Add roto node ad switch it to the Viewer

Analyse the image and the object for rotoscoping.

Watching and analising the movement of the hand trought the shot I deside to do roto shapes for thumb - two parts, all other fingers to tree parts and and palm separate. I thing thats enough for the hand waving movement. Also I choose Besier splain for my roto shapes. I also deside to start from frame 1 on the timeline. And - lets the fun begin... So far, so good, I did a mistake at the very beginning. You can see it here /fig 1 and fig 2/:

Fig 1

I did a roto shapes for all other fingers but the index finger on frame 999. I did a correction for thumb on frame 1001 and roto for index finger on same frame. Wasn't focused enough. Then moving trought the time line to animate roto I saw this little animation and actually I found a mistake. Check in Dope sheet and - yeah - mistake is real. I did move all frames to proper position and delete the one I don't need. Sorted!!! /Fig 3/

Fig 3

Fig 2

Chapter 2 - Keying

HAVING FUN WITH LUMA KEY

The exercise is pretty simple - sky replacement. Using Luma key. Luma keying is setting the brightness level, so all of the brighter or darker pixels from the set level are turned off, making them transparent. The image or video behind the top later will then be shown through the transparent sections of the top layer. Simple...BUT...

We have this two images - so the task is to replace the sky from fig 1 with the one from fig 2. Ok, lets do this.

Fig 1

Well...first thing first. Import the images in to NUKE. Press R for read node, etc. Set the project setting to HD /1920:1080/. Add a keyed to the image on the Fig 1. Switch view to alfa, pressing A do a keying and inverse it... Playing with setting, invert it, add a Blur node, Copy node, Premult, Merge to the Background image. Done!!!

All good but the little black spots on the walls. This ones yeah, exactly. Fig 3. Hmm! It is not a problem...Simple - I ll add a Roto to the key matte and add another matte to isolate the wall and the hills from the keying. Because when we inverted Keyer the result is - the brightest parts of the bridge and walls and houses of the hills are cute out and actually we can see the darkness from the image of the Fig 2. And thats why we have this "black holes" on the wall.

Fig 2

Simple, BEAUTY composition, the "black holes" are gone, but ....the clouds also, I get back to the Fig 1. Quickly - check the Viewer - thats ok - switched to the Merge, not to the image.....

Double check the pipeline - all is correct, ok ...triple check....yeah - all good but not working....

QUADRUPLE check...

STOP!!!

Fig 3

HINT:

"It is said that despite its many glaring (and occasionally fatal) inaccuracies, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy itself has outsold the Encyclopedia Galactica because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words 'DON'T PANIC' in large, friendly letters on the cover."

I ve select Read 5 - image from Fig 1 and switched it to the Viewer, just to make sure there is not bug or something wrong with the software. I did it couple of times and then......I saw this little numbers on the right corner of the image in the Viewer panel...

Ooook, quickly...check the roto and alfa.... There it is

My project settings are 1920:1080, but the images are, as you can see are 3802:2478 and the result is this huge roto mask below:

REFORMAT! DONE!!!

KEYLIGHT

TEA TIME

VEIL CHALLENGE

Challenge here is this semitransparent veil on the green screen background. Because of the transparency there is a lot of green in the vail! WOW - “Elementary, my dear Watson“

Thats why I need a despill. And because despill madness give error and doesn't work - I created this simple despill sequence, then I did a keying - using the Keylight, I create a core matte and then I put this core matt in to the Grade node mask input, set the mask to alfa and invert - this gives me a control over transperansy ov the vail at anytime, using gamma - for the darkest shades and Gain for the brightest. BTW:

SHERLOCK HOLMES NEVER SAID “ELEMENTARY, MY DEAR WATSON”