Category: blog

Nuke tools: Having spent half of 2014 working as a freelance Nuke Compositor for TV vfx vendors, I’ve had to make or download various nuke tools that I needed that I usually take for granted in the film world. Theses are those tools. I’ve uploaded them to github making it easy to copy and paste…

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YAY! Took a few days how to learn how to set up a linux sever via the commandline. But now I’ve got something to render really complicated sims and photogrammetry with. BOOM! (5 year old Dell Poweredge 16 core server with x5 Raid and x2 fiber – Ebay £300. )

Summary: Another Camera Shake Node: Combine CG vectors with 2d camera shake so the CG motion blur does not go wierd. Uses either vector Blur or 2d transform motion blur . GitHub link Intro: My shot, CG BG, Greenscreen FG. Has a fast crane camera move and it requires camera shake. I had this problem:…

Job Offer Calculator VFX : Here is a handy excel spreadsheet to check job offers*, or at least the financial aspect of the offer. Most companies present their offers differently making it difficult to compare. Pay date ranges, overtime, holidays, benefits and extras vary in the way they are presented. This spreadsheet balances the playing…

When Disney’s Paperman came out it discovered a new technique.  This was using 3d vectors generated from animated geometry to create in-between frames of 2d drawn images or Motion Vector Inbetweening Several VFX companies have started using this technique to dramatically cut the cost of 3d renders. By rendering on less frames i.e. 4, 6 or 8’s,…

Several of the larger vfx companies recently have moved to a different vfx film-making practice which is a small but important concept change in how we work. This is the practice of positioning the shot plate and cg to the blocking or layout position earlier in the pipeline with a ‘layout camera’. Apart from the big vendors…

Worked on this Pop Promo as a compositor: the long shot with the track past band into crab into horses running was mine..

An adventure in super8… A week before an old friend’s wedding in Marrakesh I had a call from the groom.. “I really need you to do me a favour; could you film Nicola walking down the aisle? You used to have a film cameras. I want it to look real forever; it has to be on…

Using data of films that have made it to festival release as a long form feature (from www.indiewire.com) I crunched some data into some statistics; here is a quick look and approximation of what indie films used what cameras in the Sundance, SXSW & Tribeca 2013 festivals. Due to time constraints I have omitted any…

This is an alternative way of using a matte generated from a key that retains fine detail that an normal over node on its own cannot do. It generates a thin key for the translucent detail on motion blur, hair, dirt on glass etc. I will require a normal key for its core. This process…

On the first dark night move this ‘cropped bokeh’ effect was this was requested by  Chris Nolan because the dop Wally Pfister had generated it from his collection of ‘character lenses’ and we needed to match the plate. A very clever chap Adam Paschke now a Rising Sun supervisor, was asked to emulate this Vignette…

[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”][et_pb_row admin_label=”row”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] read part 1 here So what has a burger on a beach got to do with photogammetry? I worked on this commercial for mcDonalds below and we needed to add animated hand-drawn photorealistic paint (suncream) on several actors faces.  So we captured the models of the actors using photogammetry and…

(fō’tə-grăm’ĭ-trē) Photogrammatry uses the laws of perspective to create mathematical models to determine the coordinates of a point inspace from two or more images. This was first developed by R. Strums and Guido Haick in Germany in 1883. 140 years of Photogammatry & History Of Photogammatry History Videos BACKGROUND Previously LIDAR was the only way…

link here The most informative and indepth guide for keying moving images on the interveb! new page up at I wrote this based on many years comping twenty major feature films, I have also written keyers that are part of the site toolset at Double Negative. enjoy!