Category: Uncategorized

  • Comp Wizards Ahoy! A student resource

    Comp Wizards Ahoy! A student resource

    I’ve been building relationships with several VFX education providers and created this list of footage that students can use. And in many cases permitted to be used on your showreel! I’ll keep this post updated with footage as I find it. Now go fiddle with some comps good compositing people! ============================================== If you’re looking for…

  • Nuke Tools London

    Nuke Tools London

    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…

  • Showreel of 2014

    Showreel of 2014

    Click Here To Request Password For Showreel

  • 128gb render server goes boom!

    128gb render server goes boom!

    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. )

  • Nuke: Camera Shake

    Nuke: Camera Shake

    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

    Job Offer Calculator VFX

    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…

  • Motion Interpolation CG Proxies

    Motion Interpolation CG Proxies

    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,…

  • Nuke Tool: layout cameras & better VFX

    Nuke Tool: layout cameras & better VFX

    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…

  • London Grammer – Nightcall (comp)

    London Grammer – Nightcall (comp)

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

  • Super 8 in london and how not to shoot a Marrakesh Wedding

    Super 8 in london and how not to shoot a Marrakesh Wedding

    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…

  • 2013 ‘Film’ Cameras: indie festivals

    2013 ‘Film’ Cameras: indie festivals

    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…

  • Nuke: InverseOver Keying

    Nuke: InverseOver Keying

    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…

  • Nuke: Bokeh Vignette

    Nuke: Bokeh Vignette

    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…

  • Photogrammetry 2

    Photogrammetry 2

    [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…

  • Photogrammetry 1

    Photogrammetry 1

    (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…

  • vfxwiki: keying

    vfxwiki: keying

    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!

  • Hello World

    Hello World

    Hello everyone, my name is Rafs. I am a film-maker, who has produced their own projects as well as having been employed as a runner for Ridley Scott, a pop-promo spark, L.A. set carpenter, inner-city remedial unit secondary school teacher, lighting cameraman, online editor and vfx compositor. I start this with the intention of sharing…