Early thoughts on the Nuke 8 announcement

Today, The Foundry announced Nuke 8.  I only have a few minutes before I have to run off to work, but I have a few early thoughts.

First off, the feature I'm probably most looking forward to is the UV Editor.  There have been countless times when I've generated geometry using the Point Cloud Generator that I'd want to use to catch projections that are rendered to the UV view that I couldn't use because the PCG doesn't generate UVs.  This would necessitate either taking the geo out to another program to UV edit, or try projecting UVs in Nuke, which never worked out well if the geometry was non-planar (which was all the time).  So I'm really happy to hear about this, I think I'll likely use it all the time.

I'm also interested in checking out Deep images generated from Nuke's own scanline renderer.  There's been a handful of times that would have been helpful to have.

It looks like there's a lot of features that, while not earth-shattering, will be very helpful.  Things like improving the dope sheet (which will take into account time changes on keyframes correctly) and having the colour wheel built into the colour corrector properly sound like things that I'll use all the time.  I always use the colour wheel when colour correcting, so that's great.

I am surprised that there's no mention of Nuke/Modo integration.  I was really hoping that Nuke would integrate some of Modo's rendering functionality in this version (especially having just one bounce of raytracing to be able to render reflections in Nuke would be so helpful).  What's odd is that The Foundry have been working on (and showing at trade shows) intense Nuke-Heiro-Modo integration, but there's no official word on it.  I was hoping Nuke 8 would contain some of that, but it looks like we'll have to wait.

Another year over, a new one about to begin

The other day I was in my classroom, just walking around and making sure that there was no garbage hanging around, when it hit me that I had been teaching in that classroom for ten years.  I had been teaching for about a year when we moved from Seneca's tiny campus on Jane St, to a brand new building on the campus of York University (Seneca is one of the biggest colleges in Canada, and has several campuses around the Greater Toronto Area, mine is at York).

It's staggering to think about the amount of change that's taken place over that time. Ten years ago, the program was primarily a compositing course, teaching Combustion and Flame.  We actually had four Flames at the school, which was pretty crazy if you think about it.  It didn't take long to move away from them.  The writing was on the wall for those very expensive systems, there was a clear shift towards PC-based workstations.

We changed over to Digital Fusion and taught that from about 2005 to 2009.  The school didn't really want our program to move to Linux, so even though Shake was the dominant compositing package, we were on the pretty painful version 5 and 5.1 of Fusion for a while.  Fusion was adding their 3D environment to the package, and it was quite buggy.

Along the way we added matchmoving to the program, first with Syntheyes and now with PF Track.  Maya was added early on, which is still a mainstay of the program, considering that Toronto is very much a Maya city.  Houdini was added in 2011.  

We were the first program to add Nuke on the East Coast, and I'm pretty sure in North America but I can't prove that.  I certainly didn't hear of any other schools teaching Nuke back then.  This was just before Nuke swept the industry, but you could see it coming.  I remember back then it seemed like every two weeks you'd see a press release saying that a site license of Nuke was purchased by some huge studio.  

I just finished putting together this year's compilation reel.  I'm always amazed and inspired by what the students can put together in eight months.  Really, that's the secret of teaching, I get back far more than what I put in.  Every year I have a fresh class of students that are so excited and eager to learn.  Their eagerness is contagious, a true pleasure to be around.

To all my past students, cheers, here's to you. I hope the next ten years will be as nice as the last.

PWG Ten

Nothing to do with CG or compositing, but PWG is releasing their tenth anniversary show on DVD.  I have a bunch of their shows and they never disappoint. 

Liquid Shadow

I wish I could have came up with the idea for this myself, but I got the initial setup from here:   I spent some time pulling apart the .hip file, figuring out all the VOPs stuff, but I eventually understood it (it actually wasn't that complicated).  It blows me away how smart some people are.

The wet map came from a Peter Quint tutorial.  I did have to figure out how to get the motion blur working myself, so I was happy with how that turned out.

I have some ideas on how to improve the look of the noise.  The crazy thing is that there's no particle sim at all on this, it's all in a VOP SOP. 

I tried building particles to create little splashes when he hits the shadow, but this effect is dependent on point numbers, so adding more points complicated things.  I'm going to take another crack at that when I have some time.  All and all I was pretty happy with how it turned out, and I learned a lot. 

Ugh...

I was trying to make a tornado, and this abomination came out instead.   I think this setup will eventually work with some tweaking, but it obviously has a ways to go.  First off, way too much curl noise, you can really see it in several spots.  I was generally happy with the tendrils though.

Trails and Lighting test

A bit noisy, but had some fun playing around with trails and geometry lighting. 

Some fluid tests

Just playing around with some FLIP fluids in Houdini.  Render times killed me, I must play around with Mantra more, these took forever and don't look that great. 

Another test

Another test, just this time the particle count is around 2-3 million and they get smaller as they age.

Cloth and Particle Test

Trying to play around with some particle sims.  The particles are moving based on a smoke simulation.  It'd be cool if I could get the particles to kinda/sorta form into a shape, but I'd have to play around with the smoke.  Going to try to do another with way more particles, we'll see if it renders while I'm at work. 

Moma!

So, Siggraph came and went.  I was refreshing FXGuide's website and checking Twitter to see if there was any compositing/Nuke news to come out.  

I couldn't find anything.  No whispers or hints on what's to come from the new version.

But then, during my searching I found this: 

Moma

This is just about exactly what I've been waiting for.  It's a bridge so that you can work in Maya or Mari and see the results in Modo's renderer.  It's pretty amazing, I'm blown away. 

Modo renderer hooking into Mari

The crazy thing is that this sort of functionality is the sort of thing that you'd pay money for, like a version update sort of thing.  It's free.  Unbelievable.   I just got it up and running this afternoon, and I'm pretty amazed with what I'm seeing.  Big thanks to Jacobo Barreiro for developing this and giving it away.

Emmys

The Emmy nominations]were announced yesterday.  It was with great pride that I saw Vikings nominated for Best Visual Effects in a Supporting Role.   Here's the official credit list:

Vikings 

Dispossessed 

HISTORY

An Octagon and Take 5 production in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for History

Dennis Berardi, Visual Effects Supervisor

Julian Parry, Visual Effects Supervisor

Bill Halliday, Visual Effects Producer

Wilson Cameron, Visual Effects Producer

Dominic Remane, Digital Effects Supervisor

Jim Maxwell, Matte Painting Lead

Ovidiu Cinazan, Compositing Lead

Maria Gordon, Compositing Lead

Mike Borrett, Visual Effects Production Manager

I worked with Maria Gordon and Bill Halliday every day, so I'm really happy to see their work be recognized.  Vikings was a great experience for me, one of the best in my visual effects career.

I'll be going back next week to start on season two.  I'm very much looking forward to it.

There was another show nominated, The Borgias:

The Borgias

The Prince

Showtime

Showtime Presents in association with Take 5 Productions and Octagon Films

Wojciech Zielinski, Visual Effects Supervisor

JP Giamos, Visual Effects Producer

Gabor Kiszelly, Special Effects Supervisor

James Chretien, Lighting Supervisor

Ahmed Shehata, CG Supervisor

Chris Ankli, 3D Artist

Jordan Nieuwland, Lead Matte Painter

Adrian Sutherland, Lead Digital Compositor

Amanda Lynn Hollingworth, Digital Compositor

When I saw this list, I was really happy.  Adrian Sutherland, the lead compositor, was one of my students in 2010.

This is one of the joys of teaching.  It's my hope that my students go on and thrive in the industry.  I'm very proud of Adrian and the fantastic work he's done.  His Vimeo page is here and his website is here.

State of Rendering

FX Guide has released an amazing article about the state of rendering.  Part 1 is here, part 2 is here. 

Both articles are fantastic, especially part 2 where they do an overview of all the major renderers on the market.  What I found really interesting is the embedded video that shows Modo/Nuke integration.  In the video (link), you can see changes in Modo being rendered into Nuke's frame buffer.

I'm hoping that there's some sort of announcement that this will become a product at Siggraph, but the article hints that you'll have to talk to Foundry people at their booth in order to get the news on it.

Very promising and exciting news.  Hopefully they're working on integrating Modo's renderer into Mari and Katana as well. 

Modo Practice

I've always been fairly weak at modeling.  Usually I just play around until I get something passable, but I've never really learned the basics. 

I was listening to the latest Modo podcast, and they mentioned a great YouTube channel here.   Peter Stammbach has posted about a hundred modeling tutorials, just what I needed.  I'm going to try to work through as many of his tutorials as I can to see if I can pick up his methods.  I've already learned a couple of things and I've just started. 

I can't help but think that The Foundry will announce Nuke 7.1 at Siggraph.  I'm hoping that they'll talk about more of the integration between their products that we saw hints of at NAB.  I would love the Modo renderer to find it's way into more of their products.  Nuke, Mari and Katana are natural fits. 

Playing around in Modo

Modo is by far my favorite 3D program.  Once you wrap your head around it, it can be pretty fun.  Here I started experimenting with fur. 

Teaching

If you ever get the opportunity to teach, take it.  Here's my story:

In 2002, I was offered a job as a teacher's assistant in a compositing course at Seneca College.  I had been working as a compositor for about a year.  I looked at it as an opportunity to improve my demo reel, since I didn't have a great computer at home.

I was at the school day and night, answering student's questions while working on my own stuff.  Often the students would complain about the quality of the program, that the teachers weren't putting in a great effort.  I felt bad for them, and I did a few impromptu lessons with the class.

The head of the department noticed this, and the next semester I was made a teacher in the program.   The complaints about the program continued, and two teachers from another department would sit in the class.  I was told they were taking the program because they were interested, but really they were evaluating the teachers.  The next semester I was made the coordinator.

Now, honestly, at the time I really didn't deserve the position.  I was in the right place at the right time.

Over the following years, I slowly grew into the role.  When I started teaching, often there were times when I barely knew more than my students.  There were many times when they would ask me a question, and then I'd be up half the night figuring out the answers.

This process forced me to become a better compositor.  I was working at a studio as well during this time, and many times something that I had to learn for the school helped me at work.  Or something I learned at work would become incorporated into one of my lesson plans at the school.

I'm quite sure that teaching compositing has made me a better compositor.  I would highly recommend that if you ever get the chance to teach that you jump at the opportunity.  It has given back a great deal to me.

'Follow your passion' is bad advice...

Great talk.  "Follow Your Passion" is Bad Advice. Here is What You Should Do Instead...
 

Fun with Panoramas

I finally purchased a Nodal Ninja to shoot some panoramas.  Really fun with what you can do with them.

Viscosity Test 1

Just playing around with Houdini's FLIP Fluid Viscosity settings.  Every year I put together a reel containing the best of my student's work, and I like to have a nice opening to it.  Trying to play around with some ideas. 

Two hour sim, seven hour render. 

BulletSOP Test 2

Another basic test with just cubes.  I have to say that I'm completely blown away with the speed and stability of BulletSOP.  I really can't believe that I'm able to run such large sims at home so quickly.

This time I increased the amount of cubes to 112,500 (15 x 15 x 500).  Simulating 367 frames took just over two hours.  The render took about six hours to complete.

I'm starting to dig into the example files, but the more complicated examples are quite a bit over my head.  I'd love to use this with dynamic fracturing, but there are several steps that I don't really get.  When I have time I'll see what I can do.