GradMagic Tool

June 11, 2019

GradMagic is an interactive 4 point gradient tool, which can link to cornerpin nodes, and can toggle between live sampling from the plate or baking the color values of the corners.

Can be used for various tasks in prep and DMP,or if you just need a quick 4 point gradient map.

GradMagic_Properties_Screenshot.png

Quick Overview of the properties:

It’s pretty straight forward, heres some basic written steps:
1.) Set your cornerpoints manually or by pressing one of the ‘snap to’ buttons.  Or alternatively you can link or bake your cornerpoints to an existing cornerpin node (or any node with 4 “to” knobs).

2.) If you need to adjust the points once they are baked/linked/ in place, then show the adjust knobs, set the reference frame to snap the adjust points near the main points, and you can then move each cornerpoint while it still retains its animation path.

3.) You can either keep the node live, bake the corner colors on a single frame, or bake the colors over a framerange.  once baked you can adjust the cornerpoints further if you need to cover up more area.  You can adjust the ‘sample size’ at the top if you want to average more colors under each corner point.

4.) Finally you can apply a blur to the edges to help with transition, and you can select the output at the top, whether to show the gradient over the BG input, or just the gradient itself.

Hope you find it useful

A full tutorial video on how to use the tool can be found here on youtube:
https://youtu.be/oge8jMR0LRw

Or here on vimeo:
https://vimeo.com/341514150

Download the tool from nukepedia with this link:
http://www.nukepedia.com/gizmos/draw/gradmagic

You can also download GradMagic from my github link:
https://github.com/CreativeLyons/Lyons_Tools_Public/blob/master/02_Draw/GradMagic.nk

Stay tuned for more tools and tutorials.

Advanced Keying Template Playlist

May 27, 2016



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.

-Tony

Interview with CoreMatte.com

February 23, 2016

Matt from CoreMatte.com was kind enough to do an interview with me about my work in the VFX industry and my tutorial blog.

http://www.corematte.com/blog/interview-with-compositor-tony-lyons/

I recommend you check it out if you want to learn a bit more about me and my background in VFX as a compositor.  This was my very first interview and I am truly honored.  I also recommend checking out the rest of corematte.com for more interviews and tutorials!

Thanks Matt for taking the time to put together this interview.

Hopefully I will have more tutorials out for you guys soon.

Best,

Tony

Advanced Keying Breakdown: 4.1 – Template

December 18, 2015

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.

advanced_keying_template_flowchart_3

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:

Advanced Keying Template Package Download

Or download from Nukepedia

Package contains:
Advanced_Keying_Template_v06_.nk
Advanced_Keying_Template_Compressed_v06_.nk
Advanced_Keying_Template_Walkthrough_v01_.nk

Some of you have asked for source materials for keying practice.  I can provide you with a few free downloads so you can practice.

https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/support/user-guides/#nuke  – download the nuke keying assets

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 ALL 4K 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.

Until next time!

Advanced Keying Breakdown: MERGING 3.1 – Premulting, Overs, Addmix, & CCs

February 3, 2015

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.

Cheers,

Tony Lyons

Advanced Keying Breakdown: DESPILL 2.2 – Despill Techniques

November 20, 2014

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

Thanks for all your support!

– Tony

Advanced Keying Breakdown: DESPILL 2.1 Initial Concepts

July 28, 2014

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

http://nukestation.com/vkeyer-tutorial/

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.

– Tony

Advanced Keying Breakdown: ALPHA 1.4 – IBK Stacked Technique

July 19, 2014

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.

Cheers,

Tony

Advanced Keying Breakdown: ALPHA 1.3 Channel Math / Combining Keys

May 13, 2014

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:

AE_Matte_v01_

 

My next video should wrap up the alpha section, stay tuned.

Tony Lyons Demo Reel 2014

May 5, 2014

Hi guys,

I’d like to take a pause from the tutorials to present my new demo reel for 2014. I felt like my previous demo reel was outdated, and that I’ve had the honor to work on some awesome projects in the last year and a half. I feel like this reel better represents my skills to date, and hopefully gives me enough credentials to merit me making all these tutorials, haha. I hope you enjoy, and thank you so much for all of you who have shown support! Let the tutorials continue.

Cheers!
Tony Lyons