I was recently on VFXforFilmmakers channel doing a keying demo using my advanced keying template. Matt has kindly filmed some 4K ACES blackmagic footage for all of you to practice on, and we’ve included this nuke script, original footage, pre-renders and final render in the work files for you to play around and dive into.
It’s a great resource and practical case of how I would use the techniques and templates that I developed in the series. By no means the only way to keep, but hopefully you will find many parts interesting and valuable.
The FREE working files can be downloaded from Matt’s website VFXforFilm.com
I’ve consolidated all the Advanced Keying Videos to a single playlist on Youtube so you guys can easily view them in order and all in 1 place. This should make it much easier to pass around to people, or to revisit them all at once.
I’ll work on getting them up on some other media sites like vimeo for those that don’t particularly like youtube.
0:00 – Introduction 4:30 – CC and transform after key 6:49 – CC and transform before key 12:03 – Advanced Keying Template flowchart 15:25 – Advanced Keying Template 40:10 – Advanced Keying Template Compressed 40:55 – Advanced Keying walkthrough script 41:59 – outro
Hey guys,
Sorry for the long overdue tutorial wrapping up this keying series. Here is the advanced keying template video, along with a flowchart and download link to the template scripts, which you can save to your toolsets for your own use in your nuke scripts.
Here is the Template Flow Chart from the video for you to download and review:
Here is the download to the Advanced Keying Template Package:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/nuke/learn1/ – scroll down to 2d compositing | Compositing Basics. Click on the link that says Download Assets for Basic Workflows (535 MB). Here you will find the girl and desert BG found in this tutorial.
https://mango.blender.org/ – Tears of steal open source project. Free 4K footage for people to download and practice. Highly recommended. scroll down to the blog post called ALL4K FRAMES – NOW AVAILABLE ON XIPH.ORG.
Finally, I want to thank everyone for your continued support, views, shares, comments, and emails. It all means a lot to me and you’ve certainly motivated me to keep going. Thank you.
As always, if there are any questions, just leave a comment or shoot me an email and I will try my best to respond. Hopefully with this series of tutorials, and now this template, you guys will be fully equipped to handle even the toughest of keys.
Explaining Premultiplicaiton and unpremultiplication. Breakdowns of Over and Addmix, and tricks to gamma the alpha before overing. Also at the end, talking about the importance of unpremulting before color corrections (wrong and right ways to do CCs).
This tutorial uses basic colors with a transition to teach these merging techniques and the math behind them. The math and techniques are the same for complex images and alphas, but I felt it was easier to demonstrate this way. If you are bored by the beginning sections (they can be a bit basic), I’d highly recommend skipping ahead to the “gamma-ing the alpha before an over” section. I Hope this de-mystifies some complex concept of merging images, and how to use the addmix tool.
Should be 1 more tutorial left (with a possible bonus to the despill section), presenting a template script and explaining how I have put together all of these concepts we have discussed in order to bring a full key together. This includes tips and tricks to getting around common problems in keying, despilling, and merging. I hope to have this to you guys soon.
0:00 Intro 2:01 Multiplying (how alphas are applied, premult and unpremult) 4:56 Adding 5:47 Over – Breakdown (math explained) 8:28 Overing an unpremultiplied image 10:21 Overing a double premultiplied image 13:42 Gamma-ing the Alpha before an Over 18:36 Gamma-ing the Alpha (practical example) 19:56 Addmix Breakdown 26:41 Addmix Techniques 30:25 Unpremulting before Color Corrections 42:03 Outro
Thanks for all those that are watching and learning. I am really glad I can help.
Heres a tutorial about how to despill in ways to customize the color of the despill. We move away from gray despills towards more useful colors, such as the BG or the subject. Here I go over keylight, huecorrect, talk about keeping luminance values and using the BG’s Luminance to affect the despill color. I then talk about combining despills just like combing keys, and show a little trick with the alpha’s gamma prior to merging over. More to come!
0:00 Keylight for despilling 6:00 Adding luminance back 11:45 Using BG luminance 15:51 Despill matte desaturate fix (finding max of each channel) 18:42 Hue correct for despilling 23:03 Comp example with different despills 28:46 Combining despills 31:10 Bonus: Alpha gamma before over 34:01 Comparison, final thoughts
0:00 intro 0:40 what is despill? 3:40 Separating the Despill process from the Alpha process 7:33 Core Despill and Edge Despill
Hey guys,
I’m going over the first section of Despilling. I talk about what despill is, why you need to remove it, how it should be separated from the alpha process, and combining core and edge despills.
The 2 main goals of despilling are:
1.) Removing any spill while still maintaining the original colors in the plate
2.) Blending the subjects edges with a BG colors
Here is the link to a great despill tutorial which goes over blending BG colors using the difference matte of a despilled plate –> to the original plate. If you are new to the concept of blending your despill with the background then you are really going to like this video. He talks about flame in the beginning of the video and switches to nuke later.
Thanks for watching, next I’ll go over how to achieve and control the despill to get what you need.
Sorry for not posting in a couple months, I have been traveling and working. But I am ready to finish off this series. I think you guys will like this one because I go over some techniques on the IBK workflow. The first part of the video I show you a comparison between how I usually see IBK being used and the IBK stacked technique. There are 4 examples (a greenscreen, a bluescreen, a hair problem, and a shadow problem) that I go over and explain the concept of what the IBK is doing, and the importance of the IBK Color, or cleanplate.
Next I give you a step by step breakdown of how to setup this IBK stacked techniques by building these 4 examples from scratch. If you are already familiar with IBK and want to jump into the step by step process of this stacked technique, you can just to 7:09 (Step by Step process, example 1 greenscreen).
0:00 Intro 0:45 Comparison 1 greenscreen example 3:54 Comparison 2 bluescreen example 4:31 Comparison 3 hair example 5:53 Comparison 4 shadows and markers example
7:09 Step by Step process, example 1 greenscreen 17:12 step by step example 2 bluescreen 22:15 step by step example 3 hair and assisted eroding 27:37 step by step example 4 shadows / cleanplate customization 37:12 Outro
At one point, my cursor disappears in the recording. Something must have gone wrong during the recording process, but you should still be able to see me clicking and marquee-ing stuff.
I’m glad to be moving onto the despill section, as I think it usually is overlooked. In reality it’s just as important as the alpha, if not MORE important.
0:00 Intro, RGB channels 6:00 Luminance 8:37 Adding all channels 11:39 Adobe After Effects Matte technique 16:21 Channel math summary 20:02 Combining Mattes with Keymix 23:20 Isolated mask Post-Grading
In this video I break down the basics and fundamentals of what keying is and how you can make keys from individual channels. I also talk about using keymix to combine different keys, and how to isolate only certain areas of the key to adjust with a post- grade.
Here is the Channel Control tool I showed in my tutorial: ChannelControl_v05_
Here is the Adobe After Effects Matte Technique Gizmo:
The Luma ExponBlur tool actually had some buggy channels being added to your scripts (something leftover from the nuke 6 days I think). I cleaned these channels up so it will not add unnecessary bugs or channels.
Compositing Mentor 