Nuke is the industry standard for node-based compositing. Whether you are just starting out in the industry or coming to Nuke from another application, this multi-part course aims to give you a solid foundation for setting up your first shots.
But first, a big shout out to the team at The Foundry over the years for their support of our efforts at fxphd. They have been partners with us since our first term back in May 2006, supporting a new effort to bring professional vfx training to the online world.
We are excited to release the first in our new series of introductory and intermediate Nuke courses here at fxphd, Introduction to Nuke, Part 2. Building on the foundations set up in part of one of this series, part two gets much more production-oriented, with all new material shot specifically for this course. This and over 270 other courses are available as part of a monthly membership, starting at $79/month.
Our new series of Nuke courses are being taught by Christoph Zapletal, a freelance Flame and Nuke artist who has been in the industry for close to 25 years, working on both commercial and feature projects. Beyond that, he is a frequent contributor to Digital Production Magazine as well as an instructor at the HFF in Munich, Germany.
Here’s a listing of the classes in Introduction to Nuke, Part 2:
Class 1: Plate Prep
After a quick walk around the greenscreen set, we set up our project for working with ACES. Next up is plate prep, namely denoising. We look at two methods: using Nuke’s native tools as well as the industry standard, Neat Video.
Class 2: Keyer Overview
There are quite a lot of Keyers in Nuke, so we go through each one of them, explaining the underlying principle as well as instructions on how to use them.
Class 3: Setting up the Key
Using the KeyMix-Node we combine different keyers for the best possible result. After that we apply core and holdout mattes to achieve a proper alpha.
Class 4: Color Correction
We take a little detour from our keying shot to explore the various means of color correction inside of Nuke with a big focus on the grade an the color correct node.
Class 5: Color Matching & Despill
We take our color correction knowledge to practical use and match our talent to our bg. We also ged rid of that pesky green spill.
Class 6: Integration and Regraining
A lot of little things go a long way for a believable comp. So we start of with proper defocus, continue with lightwrapping and finally get to faking animated shadows. After that we take the shot full circle by exploring different methods of reintroducing grain.
Class 7: Shader Rebuild
We start our CG shot by discussing the process of a shader rebuild – both in theory and as an actual use case.
Class 8: Color Correction & Puzzle Mattes
With the shader rebuild done, we can start to actually make the comp our own. The puzzle mattes will not only help us with that, but actually enable us to fix parts of the CG inside of Nuke.
Class 9: Data Passes
UVs, Normal, Depth…they all look funky, but what are they actually good for? What makes them tick? We use them in our shots for proper depth of field, convincing Motion Blur and even some Relighting. That will also lead into our first exploration of Nukes 3D space.
Class 10: Finishing Touches, Export and Review
Let’s take some tricks from real-world footage to make our CG comp more believable. We’ll also talk about automatic repetitive tasks with toolsets, rendering from ACES to different color spaces and about final quality control.