Jon Wingrove’s Post

The VFX industry is entering hibernation mode, giving us more time for the fun part: Learning and improving your daily life! I've been getting back into some tooling and have put together this simple corrective blend shape node. All expensive operations are configured to run only on upstream changes, making this tool blazing fast. Compared to other tools relying on normals or a 'hero neighbor', this tool builds a clean surface orientation offset considering all neighbors equally. Give it a try! https://lnkd.in/epUY5tGV

Hello Everyone, I'd like to share my experience from Production Training 400, which i did three moths ago, where we had the chance to experiment and refine our skills before starting work on our Demo Reel. This was also the first time we had more than just a week for a project—in fact, we had a full three weeks to work on our assignment. For my project, I decided to attempt a character replacement. As a compositor, we had strict guidelines to follow. We were only allowed to use the Joker scene where he is sitting inside the police car and looking outside. The first challenge was finding a good plate to replace him with. Fortunately, I was able to find a plate that worked well with the perspective and had a neutral lighting. After finding the right plate, I started the keying process using expressions inside Nuke. The person in the plate had a yellow wall behind her, which would normally cause issues with traditional keyers. Later, I realized I could have used the HueCorrect node to change the yellow to green, but building the expression keyer taught me a lot about handling values inside an image, which I might not have learned otherwise. Luckily, I was able to overlay the Joker with the back window and the seat, so I just needed to place the woman from the plate on top and cut the corners. Another task was layering the window reflections over her again. However, the most challenging and time-consuming part was relighting her and adding a light on the thumb from the phone. It was a lot of work, and while I'm not entirely happy with the final result, I decided to move on as further changes weren’t making much of a difference. For the second project, I wanted to try adding reflections onto some buildings and changing the plate from day to night. Our school provided us with a dragon and a fly animation, which I used to integrate into a city scene. I did the tracking in Nuke, exported the camera to Maya, blocked the scene, set up the lighting and the running people on the ground, and rendered it out using Redshift. The cleanup and compositing were done in Nuke, where I brought everything together. Although I feel like I could have done better in some areas, I learned so much from working on these projects and deepening my knowledge that I wouldn’t change much. If you have any feedback or suggestions, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

I’m working on some exciting spec work for a client; exciting stuff coming soon! Thought I'd share a quick snippet of what we are building. For this go-around, we are diving deep into Unreal! It's been a minute since I've used Unreal in a non-virtual production context. It was a much easier time using as a render engine. There was no fudging with tracking, calibration, or media servers! Shots were rendered using Lumen and then Pathtracing for that last shot, then fine-tuned Nuke for comp magic and Davinci for some color fun. This is a little side tangent, but I love the ACES workflow. It can sometimes be a little confusing for others, but once everyone is on the same page, it makes color science a thousand times easier to handle. With this project, I converted everything into a Sony color space in Nuke and pushed it to Davinci. Being overly familiar with how Sony sLog Cine plays, I had a solid base to color in Davinci, just like any regular old plate. I am available if anyone ever needs an ACES breakdown, freelance compositing magic, or wanna chat about VFX. I love teaching people new things! #Unreal #Nuke #Compositing

Ever feel like VFX costs keep climbing with every project? 💸🔥 I get it - balancing quality with budget is a constant juggle. But this season, I’ve got 3 smart solutions to keep your production costs in check without sacrificing visuals 👇 🎬 1. Virtual Set Extensions Why build a massive set when you can create it virtually? With virtual set extensions, we save on real-world construction, location rentals, and setup time, all while achieving the scene’s exact look and feel. Virtual backdrops have really upped their game! 💡 2. AI-Powered Compositing This year, new AI tools are making compositing faster and more seamless. The tech helps integrate actors and assets into scenes in record time - cutting down on revision cycles and costly fixes (if you interested - I can talk later) 🌌 3. Procedural CG Environments Using procedural generation, we create detailed environments at a fraction of the cost of custom-built ones. Imagine a realistic forest or cityscape that can be adjusted and duplicated for different scenes – saving on both artist time and budget. ❗️ Takeaway: Learn or Die! These tools are a game-changer for hitting high production value with leaner budgets - and they’re only getting better as tech evolves. 💬 Curious about how these techniques could fit into your next project? Drop a comment or DM! Let’s talk smart VFX planning for 2024 and beyond. #DigitalAxis #vfx #technology #innovation

🚗Free Driving Comp Nuke Script 🎬 Hello friends! I’m sharing a Driving Comp Nuke script that’s perfect for new artists who want to explore production-level workflows for episodic shows. This is the same workflow I learned from my amazing seniors over the years, and I hope it helps you on your compositing journey! What you’ll learn from this script: ✨ How to add 2D glass scratches for extra detail. ✨ Create environment light interaction on the glass. ✨ Techniques for restoring glass reflections. ✨ Effective despilling to improve your keying. ✨ Edge fixing. ✨regraining to match the plate. Download Link: https://lnkd.in/gXJwsFef I originally created this shot for an online seminar, where I showcased a driving comp workflow. Now, I’m sharing it here so new and upcoming compositors can download, explore, and learn from it. 🎁 Grab the script, experiment, and level up your skills! Feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions—I’d love to hear from you! Thanks my friend Shahid Gire For QC This. Best, Mazharul Islam

Keying free Nuke Comp Script here!!! Thanks to Mazharul Islam Shuvo

🔥 FREE CG RENDERS + NUKE TEMPLATE. 🔥 → High quality renders → Providing also a Look Dev exercise → You can use it for any purpose, make it yours. READ comments for the download link! Thanks again to Mazharul Islam Shuvo, we worked together to get this beautiful UNREAL render. P.s., the link will expire in 11 days! 1. Looking to improve your VFX and Production skills? Follow me, Miodrag. 2. Want to support this type of content? Click on "Repost" next to "Comment". You don't even have to type any text. ♻️ A simple repost will make my day :)

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let me tell you the ingredients for this smooth motion design: 1: puppet pin tool (for character movement) 2: gradient ramp (for mixed colors) 3: deep glow 4: two adjustment layers to control the motion (drop transform effect on a layer and make sure the motion never stops) 5: easing the motion using graph editor (most important) 6: fade animated text (used opacity animator) 7: animated lines ( used pen tool to draw a simple line and added trim path , also added tapper to the thinner edges)

💡 Bringing Characters to Life What will bring your character to life? In my opinion: 1. Crafting a unique personality 2. Animations: Adding depth and realism 3. Voice and Dialogue 4. Interactive Dialogues 5. Character Progression: Customization 6. Lore 7. Secret one I’ll discuss this in depth in tomorrow’s edition of Dev-Insights. Consider joining 200+ other developers and designers to read more and discover the secret sauce to bringing your characters alive! Thanks for reading today’s post! ♻ REPOST if you found the post helpful. Subscribe here → https://dev-insights.tech/