MacPro

Apples core professional community has always consisted of artists. By that I mean folks that take pixels and make something amazing out of them on a daily bases. This might be photos, editing or simulations in Houdini or compositing in Nuke. Apple has always served the artist. In the nineties SGI was the king of doing this. Image compute speed and disk I/O at all costs. Matador and Cineon are some of the fastest image processors I have ever seen. The interactivity was great. These only run on IRIX boxes. The Foundry wishes its paint is as fast and interactive as Matadors was.

In 1997 SGI released the Octane. This machine was built for speed more importantly graphics speed. There was no 5.25 inch disk bay( they were all the rage). No CD-ROM drive. There were 2 full length PCI slots and 1 half length one. You didn't check Facebook on a Octane. There was a reason Sony Imageworks had stations for artists to use the internet. These machines were fast and even faster for drawing images.

In 2013 Apple released a new MacPro. This machine had SGI written all over it. Small, the GPU is fast. Fast disk I/O. The MacPro is pretty, but behind the design is a cooler core that can run faster longer. This means more power for a longer time from the CPU. Get what ever is in your head out on the screen no waiting. The Octanes GPU was a designated card from SGI. Sound familiar, it should the GPUs in the MacPro are also designated by Apple. They will also need the software developers to support OpenCL. From what I have read OpenCL is the the next step but it's happening slowly. Even Nvidia now supports OpenCL. No Optical drive is also similar. ThunderBolt is the new PCI slots and the internal drives bays.

The amazing thing about the new MacPro unlike like the Octanes is it can also email clients, make Quicktimes for clients, word processing and web browsing as well. A far step from the Octane. Sure you could check websites and send email on an Octane but nothing like how the new MacPro handles those tasks.

This isn't a machine for people who just want the fastest Mac for no other reason than being the fastest Mac. This is about solving image related problems and getting them done as fast and as precise as possible. The new MacPro isn't about text or fonts, it's not about Retina or your iPhone. It's not even about playing games. The new MacPro is about image compute speed which is really important to Apples core community.

Roto

This shot took 2 compositors and a team of 3d artists to complate. I headed up the rotoscoping part of the project. There was a ton.[Rotoscoping explained at vfxwiki.org]

First the shot.

The simple way to discribe this shot is a really complex wire removal. The cliff face had to be replaced. The climber had to be painted frame by frame and then place on top of the clean rock that was built in maya. That also meant the climber had to be rotoscoped threw out the whole shot.

I stopped the roto there so you can see how it kinda works. 10 days for this shot. A lot of work.

Always think about the shot before you shoot and commit to it. Once it is in the can it can be hard not to use it without a fix.

It might save you a ton of money. Nice work Maureen, Lee and Josh.

More on Channels

When I start a shot, one of the first things I do is shuffle the source reads RGB channels into a src_plate layer. By doing this I have created a new layer in my compositing stream that i can now get to at anytime. I can also do this with pre-renders of denoised source plates or maybe just the red channel for tracking. These can be shuffle copied into the compositing stream as well. Now when I need the source plate down the compositing stream I can use a shuffle node to bring that layer front and center.

There is a flip side to all these layers and channels. If you work with folks that do not use this method of compositing then this might cause a problem. Above all else when working with others in compositing is to have everyone on the same page. Above all else if you are working within a group keep your scripts readable and organized as you can.

Take some time and understand what your doing. There is nothing worse than not knowing why a image or matte isn't showing in the viewer.

Here is an example script to look at. And also a link to Nukepedia.com explaining more in-depth layers and channels. In this script there is SRCPLATE and SRCPLATE_CC. Both layers containing RGBA channels. There is also a roto node that is plugged into a copy. I am coping the roto nodes matte into the stream for future use. 

        set cut_paste_input [stack 0]
version 6.2 v2
push $cut_paste_input
Roto {
 output alpha
 curves {AnimTree: "" {
 Version: 1.2
 Flag: 0
 RootNode: 1
 Node: {
  NodeName: "Root" {
   Flag: 512
   NodeType: 1
   Transform: 0 0 S 0 0 S 0 0 S 0 0 S 0 1 S 0 1 S 0 0 S 0 1024 S 0 778 
   NumOfAttributes: 10
   "vis" S 0 1 "opc" S 0 1 "mbo" S 0 1 "mb" S 0 1 "mbs" S 0 0.5 "fo" S 0 1 "fx" S 0 0 "fy" S 0 0 "ff" S 0 1 "ft" S 0 0 
  }
  NumOfChildren: 0
 }
}
}
 toolbox {createBezier {
  { createBezier ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 tt 4 }
  { createBSpline ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { createEllipse ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { createRectangle ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { brush ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { eraser src 2 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { clone src 1 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { reveal src 3 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { dodge src 1 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { burn src 1 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { blur src 1 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { sharpen src 1 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
  { smear src 1 ssx 1 ssy 1 sf 1 sb 1 }
} }
 toolbar_brush_hardness 0.200000003
 toolbar_lifetime_type all
 toolbar_source_transform_scale {1 1}
 toolbar_source_transform_center {1024 778}
 view {}
 motionblur_on true
 name Roto1
 selected true
 xpos 3614
 ypos -43
}
CheckerBoard2 {
 inputs 0
 name CheckerBoard1
 selected true
 xpos 3608
 ypos -205
}
ColorBars {
 inputs 0
 name ColorBars1
 selected true
 xpos 3775
 ypos -381
}
add_layer {SRC_PLATE SRC_PLATE.red SRC_PLATE.green SRC_PLATE.blue SRC_PLATE.alpha}
Shuffle {
 alpha black
 out SRC_PLATE
 name Shuffle1
 label "\[value out]"
 selected true
 xpos 3775
 ypos -298
}
add_layer {SRC_PLATE_CC SRC_PLATE_CC.red SRC_PLATE_CC.green SRC_PLATE_CC.blue SRC_PLATE_CC.alpha}
ShuffleCopy {
 inputs 2
 red red
 green green
 blue blue
 out SRC_PLATE_CC
 name ShuffleCopy1
 label "\[value out]"
 selected true
 xpos 3775
 ypos -184
}
add_layer {roto roto.matte}
Copy {
 inputs 2
 from0 rgba.alpha
 to0 roto.matte
 name Copy1
 selected true
 xpos 3775
 ypos -43
}

Enjoy,

michaelb

RedGuard1.glow

Nuke gets very powerful the more you use its layer and channel system. Ask any nuke artist and many will say the same thing. It's one of those features that you wonder how you lived without for so long.

Let me explain.

In compositing you have layers and channels. Each layer can have 4 channels. R for red, G for green and B for blue. The 4th channel being the alpha channel. That comes in black or white.

In Nuke you can have more than that. You can make them on the fly as your compositing. They can also come from a outside source such as a 3d application, or even Photoshop.

Everyday i work with source plates that includes and red channel, a green channel and blue channel. The alpha is either black or white. Now things can get fancy. Say I do color correction to the source plate. I also make a clean plate so we can replace/hide an object or talent. Both the clean plate and the color corrected src plate can have its own named layer and channels to go with it.

We can also do this with mattes. We can create a new channel called door.matte. Now anywhere in the compositing tree you can use that channel to control color of anything else you might need.This gets even more cool with normals passes and other fancy images that applications can produce. This topic is for its own post.

Why is this powerful?

This makes for very clean and easily readable scripts for one. You can setup your scripts in batches or groups of nodes an not have have pipes zigzagging in the node graph. Which is nice when you are working with other artists. Rotoscoping nodes on top, tracking and other cleanup under that and so on.

Please feel free to post how you use the Layer/Channel system in nuke. and why its powerful to you in your everyday work.