The recent release of Nuke 13 brought along the update from Python 2 to Python 3. After all, Python 2 has been officially dead since January 2020, and Python 3 has been around since 2008, so that update was due. Python 3 comes with quite a few improvements and a few changes that can easily [...]
After doing a little bit of thinking about UI in part 1 of this article, it would be great to start producing some actual pictures of stars. As I often do in my posts, this isn't a tutorial that gives you the final answer (though you could skip ahead and grab the final result), but [...]
One task compositors are often asked to complete is to create a starry night sky. Whether you are working on an Epic Space Odyssey or the newest Rom-Com miniseries, you might be asked to sprinkle some stars in the sky. Some directors are a bit pickier than others, and you might be asked to ensure [...]
Even though it’s the compositor’s bread and butter, Keying can still be a particularly painful subject. I’ve been pulling keys for over a decade, yet it is often scarier than comping a full CG realistic shots with projected matte paintings and volumetric smoke. One can never have too many tools on their belt for pulling [...]
Last week we started playing with Higx PointRender, and we saw how it wasn’t really a particle system as we’re used to. Let’s dive a little deeper to understand what differs between this method and Nuke’s particle system, see how we can get our points to behave more like particles, and what are the limitations [...]
For the very few of you who have missed it, the talented Mads Hagbarth recently released his Higx PointRender. While the tool is not free, it’s pretty affordable compared to what some others might charge for tools that can accomplish this much. There are a few video tutorials on the official website, plus some experiments on [...]
This post if for the artists who have been dipping their toes in the water of Python development and are considering taking it to the next level. We will cover some of the points that differ between an artist/amateur level of development and an entry TD level. I’m covering quite a few subjects in this [...]
While Vray is remarkably intuitive for some daily operations, others might require a much more convoluted process. The creation of non-standard render passes, and especially the “Pref” pass is one of these (read that P-ref, like you’d read T-Rex). A few tutorials cover how to render custom render passes (a.k.a. AOVs) such as this one [...]
Even though I usually like to post about Compositing, I’m doing a little exception this time. I recently had to help a student create Fur for her personal project, and I got surprised how few tutorials were present online for the Xgen/Vray Combo. Some sort of Bug prevented us to make any progress for a long [...]
Alright, that’s a long title, but that’s the shortest I could come up with to describe this tutorial. It’s not rare that someone, somewhere, provides us with an element (logo, UI, motion graphics, precomp, anything really) with a nice alpha, but with a white or colored background. Of course it’s not ideal, but that’s nothing [...]
