Just when you thought we were fresh out of awesome Nuke compositing tutorials to show you. Step up your Nuke game with these 5 tutorials!
The Foundry’s Nuke is an incredible piece of software with a robust toolset. Often the most important and flexible tool in the compositor's repertoire, the node-based solution has prevailed in recent years as the most important software to learn for 2D VFX specialists.
At a glance, Nuke can be daunting. For an adept After Effects user, the interface is barren and deceivingly simple. For the general artist, the math, scripts, and nearly limitless access to the detailed inner workings of the program can be an overload of new skills to unpack. Once you’ve dipped your foot in, however, it becomes clear that Nuke is truly a playground fit for any artist.
In our first round-up of tutorials, we discussed straightforward videos to acquire basic Nuke skills. Now we’ll take a look at some of the more focused options available.
1. Smart Vector Toolset
Sometimes it’s best to start from the source. The Foundry’s quick clips series is an amazing abbreviated way of learning new tools in Nuke. Smart vectors, introduced in Nuke 10, are one of the newest and most exciting features in Nuke.
In short, they provide a straightforward way of tracking abnormal and problematic surfaces all inside of Nuke. This is a game-changer for cleanup, especially when it comes to wardrobe and character fixes as seen in the tutorial.
2. How to Add Depth to a Photograph Using 3D Projection
One of the foundational areas of compositing is adding depth to 2D elements. Skills within this umbrella allow artists to create vast and detailed scenes with relatively simple building blocks. In this tutorial, Sebastian achieves some impressive results with a photograph and some ActionVFX stock footage.
He teaches 3D Projection in particular, an invaluable skill you need add to your arsenal!
3. You Just Have To Be Better.... At Making Realistic Fire Glows
Making a return to our Nuke tutorial list is our friend Hugo Guerra! Hugo’s series, “You just have to be better….”, is a perfect place for a deep dive into specific and targeting techniques inside of Nuke.
In the above tutorial, Hugo shares best practices for taking your fire stock footage or CG renders to the next level all within your comp. Not only will you learn fire glows specifically, but you will take away some core lessons about using multiple stages to get a finished look at the end of your node graph.
4. Understanding Premult and Unpremult in Nuke
As opposed to a skill tutorial, this video is much more conceptual and informational. The premultiplication process takes a long time to fully understand for most Nuke artists, but once it clicks, your composites will be much cleaner and properly set up.
The benefit of a video like this shows the way premult and unpremult function in a practical situation involving alpha management as it pertains to color correction.
5. Using Multiple Cameras to Paint Out Objects
Though the creator of this tutorial may need some lessons on node graph tidiness, he does a good job of explaining one way to use cameras in Nuke for painting objects out, even in scenes with extreme parallax. This process once again shows the power of cameras and utilizing motion information inside of Nuke.
By projecting a series of clean plates from a respective series of cameras, the artist comes to a crafty solution for dealing with the parallax and avoiding hundreds of frames of paint out work.
If you enjoyed these tutorials, make sure to head over to more compositing tutorialsfor Nuke!
First time here? ActionVFX creates action stock footage for VFX and filmmaking. (We also have some great free stuff!)
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