Week 1: Nuke 3d and Camera Projection

 

 

Week 2: Nuke 3D Tracking

 

Week 6

Light Groups

 

 

 

 

 

Assessment 1:

 

Result:

 

 

Assessment 2:

Preparing the shoot for 3d e with adding some markers and measurements for later needs

 

3d equalizer video explainer

First, I filmed a short 10-second video using my Blackmagic camera. I used a 12-35mm lens, set the shutter angle to 180, and filmed at 24 frames per second. I chose to film in the backyard of my house and added some tracking marks. I filmed in the morning because the light was soft and looked nice. I shot the video by hand (handheld).

After filming, I used a program called 3D Equalizer. In the program, I set the frame rate to 24, and added the camera settings like the focal length size and aspect ratio to 1.

Then I started tracking the video. I used around 50 tracking points. Since I knew the 3D object would be placed on the floor, I added more tracking points on the floor, where I had already placed tracker marks.

After that, I calculated the tracking and changed the focal length setting to “brute force” for better results. I also calculated the lens distortion so I could use it later in Nuke.

Next, I added locators in the 3D space. I set up three points on the floor and made one point the origin. Then I tested it by placing a 3D object at the origin, and it worked well.

Once I saw that everything was working, I baked the scene camera so it was ready to export. I exported both the Maya script and the Nuke camera script, along with the distortion node. I will use these in the next steps of the project.

 

maya video explainer

After that, I set up a project in Maya and created a project window. This helped me keep all the files in one place, including the renders.

I added the new Maya script that gave me the locators from 3D Equalizer. Then I saved the scene as an FBX file so I wouldn’t lose any work — this step is important because if I skip it, the locators won’t be saved.

I picked the bottom locator on the ground (in the center) and opened the camera image plane. Before this, I had already made a JPEG image sequence in Nuke with the undistorted footage, and I knew the scale was set to 1.1. I made sure to set the same scale (1.1) in Maya too.

Then I added the image sequence as the background plate in Maya, so I could see both the camera movement and the footage at the same time. I noticed the locators didn’t match perfectly, so I adjusted the camera height in Maya to 1.1. After that, the locators lined up correctly.

I added a test 3D object and did a render — it worked perfectly.

I brought in the 3D object for the scene — a mantis that I made and textured in ZBrush. I added materials, displacement maps, and subdivisions, just like I had in ZBrush.

Then I added lighting using Arnold and used an HDRI for realistic lighting. I did a test render, and it looked great, so I was ready to move on with the next steps.

I made a small animation on the mantis’s head so it moves down at a certain point. I used the Graph Editor in Maya and changed the movement to linear, because I wanted it to look sharp and realistic (knowing the character is in the uncanny valley, as I decided to make a fantasy creature I had to change the size to Mutant). I watched a few reference videos and saw that mantises move in a very still and sudden way, so I followed that style.

Once I liked the animation, I got ready to render. Before rendering, I removed the image sequence from the camera plane so I could get a clean alpha background. I also added the AOV passes I needed for Nuke: Specular, RGBA, Shadow, and Cryptomatte.

The render was in 4K, and it took a few hours to get a nice final result

 

nuke video explainer:

In Nuke, I first set up the project. Then I denoised the footage and added a “black outside” node. I undistorted and resized the footage to 1.1 so it would match what I used in Maya.

After rendering everything from Maya, I brought it back into Nuke. I cleaned up the tracking markers and added the CGI mantis to the scene. I adjusted the colors and lighting to make it fit better with the environment. Adding some rubbish bags tracked to the shot and Flys.

I also added a few more elements I had tracked earlier, like a rubbish bag and some flies, to make the scene feel more alive.

At the end, I undistorted the whole shot again and added film grain so everything matched and looked more natural.

 

 

Result: Please switch to 4k option when watching from youtube

1: composit with the flye`s and rubbish bag to help the narrative

2. composite only on. the rubbish bag matis and small fly tracked to the plate and removed markers