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Assignment 1

Final Result:

• With locators, cube and patch

• With cube and patch, no locators

Development

 

xxxx

 

 

Lastly, I bake the scene the scene by going into Edit > Bake Scene.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NUKE:

 

I started off with importing my 3DE Camera and geometry / locators into NukeX to set up the scene inside Nuke,

 

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Assignment 2 – Track a shot & add CG elements to it

Assignment 2 Final Result:

Project Setup

• First, I launch 3D Equalizer and save a new project file to establish my working environment.

Import Footage

• I then import the source footage into the project. Once the sequence is visible in the viewport, I go to Playback > Export Buffer Compression File. This step optimizes the tracking data for efficient storage and future retrieval, ensuring a smoother workflow later on.

Camera and Lens Settings

• It’s crucial to configure the Camera and Lens Settings to match the real-world specifications of the camera used for the shot. This ensures accurate 3D tracking and scene reconstruction.

For this particular shot, captured with a Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera using a 24mm lens, the settings are:

• • Filmback Width: 1.896

  • Focal Length: 24 mm

  • Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0

Begin Tracking

• With everything configured, I start the tracking process. My goal is to establish a robust set of stable tracking points that require minimal manual adjustment, ensuring a more efficient and accurate matchmove later in the pipeline.

• I placed approximately 40 tracking points using CTRL + left-click, focusing on areas that offered good initial track quality to minimize the need for corrections. Wherever possible, I concentrated the points on the ground plane, since that’s where the CG elements will be placed and stability in that region is critical.

Deviation

• Once tracking is complete, I review the deviation to assess the stability of the track—lower deviation values indicate a more accurate and reliable result.
• To start, do calculate all for everything in my scene to even show up in there, then  i go into Config > Deviation Browser  and open the deviation browser. at First it only shows me a green graph which is the average, so i go into deviation browser > all points ot show me all of the points 

Parameter Adjustment: Focal Length

 

Exporting the 3D Equalizer Camera into Maya

Exporting NukeX Lens Distortion Node

Opening the 3D Equalizer files in Maya

Once I’m looking through my camera lens, I go to the Camera Settings > Image Plane Shape and select the UD version created in Nuke as the image plane.

The CG element I’ll be incorporating into this shot is a crab, originally created for the Rigging & Creature FX module. It will feature a simple up-and-down motion to simulate breathing. Since the focus of this module isn’t on animation or performance, I’ve opted for a more subtle and understated approach. My main goal is to ensure the crab aligns accurately with the ground plane and integrates naturally into the scene, with minimal visual deviation.

The crab was previously rigged in Maya using IK handles and skinning techniques, which I developed during a prior assignment. This groundwork made it straightforward to bring the asset into this scene. I imported the rig into my MEL script and created a ground plane, applying the AI Shadow Matte material to it so it could receive shadows realistically. I then aligned everything with the scene, positioned the crab as needed, and scaled it up to fit appropriately.

Finally, I created the simple breathing animation by moving the crab’s main control handles up and down to simulate subtle, rhythmic movement. 

After playing the footage through the scene I quickly realized that the tracking and footage are misaligned due to lens distortion. To correct this, I navigate to the Placement tab under the Image Plane Shape settings. There, I adjust the Size values by entering: =value*1.1. This scales both width and height by 1.1 to account for the lens distortion.

I repeat the same process under a different camera tab: Camera Shape (BlackMagic_Pocket_25mm_1_1Shape1).

In the Film Back section, under Camera Aperture, I again multiply the aperture values by 1.1.

This ensures the camera settings match the distorted footage and maintain consistency throughout the shot.

Lastly, before rendering the scene, I want to isolate the crab from the live-action footage by removing its background, ensuring only the crab is visible in the render, which will later be combined with the live action footage in Nuke. To accomplish this, I adjust the Display Mode setting in the ImagePlaneShape node, changing it from RGBA to None. This prevents the background from being rendered, allowing for a cleaner composite in Nuke.

Compositing:

 

 

 

 

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Week 1 – Nuke 3D & Camera Projection

Nuke 3D 

Nuke’s 3D space allows you to bring in or create 3D geometry, place cameras, add lights, and then render it all back into a 2D image. This is super useful for things like set extensions, camera projections, realistic lighting, and depth compositing.

Even though Nuke is primarily a 2D compositing tool, its 3D environment lets you simulate real-world setups so your 2D elements can interact more realistically with space and light.

Here are the core components we’ve been using in class:

1. 3D Geometry

You can import 3D models (like .obj or .abc files), or create simple shapes inside Nuke using nodes like:

• Card – a flat plane, great for projections

• Cube, Sphere, etc. – for basic modeling or placeholders

2. Cameras

The Camera node gives you a viewpoint into the 3D scene. You can:

• Animate it manually

• Import it from 3D software

• Or create it using CameraTracker if you’re matching live footage

3. Lights

Lighting in Nuke works similarly to 3D applications. You can add:

• PointLight – for localized lighting

• DirectionalLight – for sun/moon-type setups

• AmbientLight – for general scene illumination

4. Scene Assembly

All your 3D objects, lights, and cameras go into a Scene node, which acts like a container for your virtual environment.

5. ScanlineRender

This node converts your 3D setup into a 2D image. It’s where everything comes together — geometry, textures, lighting, and shadows — ready to be composited into your shot.

Exercise – Introduction to basic 3D objects in NukeX

Exercise – Tunnel Projection

Tunnel

Need to have a camera thats constantly projecting the image and need to have another one that has the movement

Weve got an image and projection 3d node

i Duplicate the 3d render camera, delete the animation from it and call it a projection camera and apply it onto a rotated by x 90 degrees cylidner with height 100

Projection camera must always be static

 

 

Exercise – Prison Cell Projection

To start off, I import 5 pictures of different parts of the prison cell.

Then, to each of them, I add a copy node which I plug in through the B pipe into the image, and into A pipe, I plug in a roto node followed by a blur node to smooth the edges.

In each of the images, I roto out a different section of the prison cell corresponding with the images name, so in the Back_Wall_Image_01 I roto out the back wall etc I do that for all of the images.

 

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Week 2 – Nuke 3D Tracking

Parralax Movement

Point Clouds within 3D space

Lens distortion

Exercise 1 –

 

Camera Data

 

I bring in a copy node and roto and Camera Tracker

 

In Camera Tracker settings tab, I enable preview features and then select a range of frames from 1001 to 1110, then in  CameraTracker tab I Press solve  to solve my trackers in the same range

 

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Week 3 – 3D Equalizer

Today in class we were introduced to tracking an entire scene in 3D Equalizer and the way the workflow works with a high amount of tracking points and accounting for deviation.

 

 

 

 

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Week 4 – Lenses & Cameras

 

Class Exercise:

 

1. Open 3D Equalizer and set the workspace to basic

2. Import the Footage, set the FPS to 25

 

3. Export Buffer Compression File

 

 

4. Set Up Lens Settings

5. Set Up Tracking Points (25)

Tracking Backwards, Forwards, Manually moving tracks, flip direction

 

6. Fixing up the deviation, removing points

 

7. Setting a camera constraint

 

9. Setting the Focal Length to adjust

 

In Parameter Adjustment Window, Remove all of the other parameters, Focal Length > clear > adjust > transfer parameters which lower smy deviation from 3 to 1.

 

Calculate All To apply changes.

 

10. Setting the Lens Distortion mode to Classic 3D LD

In Paramater Adjustment Window > Clear > Adaptive all > adjust > transfer parameters

 

 

11. Creating constraints based on survey data

 

 

 

 

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Week 6 – 3D Equalizer to Nuke/Maya Workflow

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Week 8 – Surveys 

Import footage

 

Set up 4 Surveys with the data

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Add points to each survey point to the correpsonding palces on teh footage

 

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Week 9 – Filming

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Week 10 – Nuke Maya Pipeline

Class Exercise:

 

Creating the footage for Maya

3D Equalizer Exports

Export 3DE to Maya 

Export 3DE to Nuke LD

Export 3DE to Nuke

Nuke Merging and Finalizing

Final Result:

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