The Art and Science of Digital Compositing, Second Edition: Techniques for Visual Effects, Animation and Motion Graphics by Ron Brinkmann

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1 IFDM 491 Compositing 40 clock hours (16 x 2.5 hour sessions) Objective: Guide students development of floating point compositing skills. After taking this course, students will have acquired the following skills: End-to-end knowledge of state-of-the-art compositing using node based interfaces Understanding of the "pixel math" used in compositing and image processing Understanding of Floating-point compositing vs. Integer pixel depth Understanding of linear light color space and "reverse out" work-flows Understanding of 2D and 3D motion trackers and their application in compositing Practical skill in floating point 2D compositing Practical skill in pulling mattes from blue and green screen material Practical skill in using roto and paint to compliment procedural compositing techniques Introductory knowledge of acquiring green screen material Practical skill in 3D compositing techniques Description: "3D Compositing for CGI" provides comprehensive training in 2D and 3D compositing technology using The Foundry's Nuke as a training tool. The course focuses on imbuing students with an understanding of "pixel math" to de-mystify the internals of compositing software, thus helping them become stronger operators. Considerable time will be given to aesthetic considerations and the art of creating convincing composites. Textbooks: The Art and Science of Digital Compositing, Second Edition: Techniques for Visual Effects, Animation and Motion Graphics by Ron Brinkmann Digital Compositing for Film and Video, Third Edition by Steve Class Materials: Students should have a large USB "Thumb Drive" or portable hard drive for shuttling digital files between home and the UNM-IFDM computer lab. Instructional Mode: Each class period will consist primarily of lectures and demonstrations illustrating concepts and techniques. Exercises and homework will be provided for students to practice skills. A portion of class time may be set aside for critiques of student work. Prerequisites: Students should have proficiency with computers. Basic knowledge of Photoshop or other 2D pixel editing software is a plus. Basic knowledge of 3D modeling is a plus.

2 Week Lecture Topic Exercise Reading Homework 1 Introduction to instructor & Overview of compositing history and matte logic. How to shoot a green screen. (Time permitting) Create home dir. How to encode your homework using Quicktime. Follow along on some Nuke basics. 1,3 Appendix B This weeks homework is extra reading. You MUST read this or you will be totally lost next week! Color_Management_.p df 2 Nuke Concepts: Interface & Keyframing. RTFM! Floating Point workflow. Roto & Paint node. Merge Node on some basics 4 Basic A over B comp with key-framed animation from supplied elements (which require light roto). 3 Types of pixel manipulation: Local (lut based), neighborhood (Median, Dilate, Blur, etc.) premultiplication / pixel math review. Tracker Node. The Bounding Box. Expressions. node exploration and premultiplication 5 ch Extreme Color Correct (requiring MDiv and MMult) use expression to animate CC parameters based on Transform Node position or rotation. 4 Premultiplication review. Multi-input Pixel Math. Non-matte based comp modes Additive / multi-pass compositing (CG), matte-less comp modes, Matte based comp modes. Add-mix. 6 ch 2 Use knowledge of Additive compositing, color correction, unmult/premult, etc. to composite provided multi-pass CG character with photographic BG. 5 Pulling mattes: Basic types - Luma, Color, Difference, 3D. "Hand-rolling" keyers with pixel expressions and doing whatever it takes. Touch on third party keyers. Premultiplication review pulling mattes 2 ch 3 Pull matte from "easy" photographic plate and place it over bg. 6 Roto and Pulling a matte from a tricky plate. Cover third party keyers. Combining & Refining mattes. pulling a matte ch 4,5 Pull matte from tricky plate using procedural techniques and roto.

3 7 More on Refining mattes and matte edges. Edgewrap/blur, grain, last touches. Hacks (Edge extend, etc.) comp refinement ch 8,9 Revise previous homework based on notes and knowledge gained in todays class. 8 Tracking and stabilizing. (Virtual locations) DiskCache, Precomps, Proxies and working smart. Working with clients and making Wedges Tracking and stabilizing 8,11 Pull matte from easy (moving) plate and use tracking to pin in BG. Wedge the brightness of the BG with three looks: One that you think looks just right, one that is 1/2 a stop brighter than that and one that is 1/2 stop darker. Submit all three versions. 9 3D tools, 3D camera tracker, Lens Un-distort/Distort, Tileworlds 3D tools / camera tracker 14 ch Camera Track plate and insert primitives with basic materials or image textures to check track. Submit a concept for your term project in writing. The Term Project should be something that demonstrates most of the skills you have learned over the semester and must be at least 10 seconds long at 24fps. It may be up to 30 seconds long. 10 2D / 3D, camera projection and light-weight virtual sets Calibrate 3D camera and re-project frames back onto primitives to create virtual set. 12 Use camera tracking and projection to duplicate a box in the plate. 11 Shooting a Green Screen Practical Meet on stage to shoot green screen and smoke elements with Red One camera. Camera track or 2D track footage and start term project. This first pass can be very rough but all elements should be present (even if temporary) `12 Image based modeling and virtual sets Create simple model from images in Nuke. Use Virtual set plus camera tracking to insert FG plate into scene with 3D camera. Read guide on shooting images for photogrammetry here: /technologies/photofly/ Create simple virtual set model from images. Think of how you might use this in the scope of your term project 13 Guest Artist. (Guest choice of compositing topic) Present WIP term project. Supervised Lab time Move term project closer to completion.

4 14 Guest Artist. (Guest choice of compositing topic) Present WIP term project Supervised Lab time 15 Term project One-on-one Follow along on one-on-ones 16 Post mortem / Lessons Learned. Visual Effects For Directors (Time permitting) Present finished term project. Move term project closer to completion. Complete term project. Grading: As the goal of the course is to help students develop high level skills and inspire them to create polished work for a demo reel, grading is based on aesthetic merit as well as technical execution and effort. Assignments will be given in two forms, weekly assignments and a single final project. Late assignments lose 20% of their potential grade automatically. Final projects are presented during the final class session. There will be no major written exams. Instead, a Weekly Quiz will test if reading assignments have been completed. The contribution of each grade is distributed as follows: 45% Weekly Assignments 15% Weekly Quiz 40% Term Project Grading Scale: A = % B = 80-89% C = 70-79% D = 60-69% F = <59% Attendance: Students are expected to attend all class sessions. If you are unable to attend a class for any reason, please discuss your situation with the instructor. Students are expected to be on time and present from beginning to end of each class. Students who are substantially late for class will be marked absent. Students who are tardy 2 times will be marked 1 absence.

5 Students who have three (3) unexcused absences will be dropped or failed at the discretion of the instructor.