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Archive for August, 2014

Katana 2D Helpers

August 24, 2014 Uncategorized

katana_2dhelpers

One of the great things about Katana is the ability to have a simple compositor right within your lighting/lookdev environment. I have been using its 2D features more or less extensively throughout the last couple of projects. It’s quite handy to tweak your HDR that you’re using right before you plug it into an environment light, without the need to go into Nuke again if you’re doing just smaller tweaks. Unfortunately Katana’s 2D interface lacks quite a few things that would make it a valueable alternative to Nuke for preparation tasks, because you have to wire more things together. So I was working on a few ‘gizmos’ to make the process a bit less cumbersome.

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Ground Contact Masks

August 3, 2014 Uncategorized

grouncontact

Integrating CG into uneven soil is an interesting challenge. On a recent show we had to integrate CG characters into plates which often had a grassy ground. For Comp it’s benefitial if you get masks from Rendering to aid the blending of the CG elements into the grass. If the ground the characters are walking on is flat this can easily be achieved with a standard PWorld AOV. It get’s a bit trickier though if the characters are walking up a hill or a similarly uneven surface, because the coordinates at which the character comes in contact with the ground are constantly changing. I’ve been trying to come up with a system to make a Comper’s life easier and found a relatively simple solution.

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