An advanced CG Compositing class, teaching real world and up-to-date workflows.

This class is meant to simulate a feature film level shot, so it requires time, patience and a high attention to extremely small details.

Course Length

This course is the equivalent of a multi-week university course.

This course is over 40 hours of training, from a Senior VFX Compositor

The Instructor

Alex has worked at globally at various well known VFX Studios such as Weta Digital, Industrial Light and Magic, MPC, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Framestore.

Detailed Description

Alex will teach you his personal workflow for approaching a complex CG shot, focusing on teaching you to improve ‘your artistic eye’, and seeing how to build up an image with hundreds of layers and color corrections.

Specific nodes aren’t difficult to learn in Nuke – it’s the process of layering and understanding how an image should look that defines an experienced compositor. This class focuses in on these technical and artistic concepts and methods.

We will cover dozens of concepts such as

Planning out VFX Shots
Controlling Detail in Highlights and Shadows
Using Black Levels Artistically
Making VFX Cheaper (And Better)
Understanding Impressions V.S Reality (For the Viewer)
Creating Value Contrast and avoiding Value Conflict
Utilizing Color Contrast
Using Simple Python Scripts to Speed up our Workflow
Learning to iterate on a complex CG shot
Controlling Scale
Script Hierarchy, Modular Design, and Management
Managing Script Assets
Baking Complex Transforms on Multiple Planes
Creating advanced patterns and forms
Learning about silhouettes, forms, light and shadow
Utilizing 3D matte painting workflows
Overscan and Bounding Boxes management
Using Motion Blur on many layers
Secondary Grading
Pinging Highlights and Creating Levels of Value
Primary Grading
Creating Light Sketches and Driving Comp Iterations
Managing Complex Parallax, Changing Element Parallax
Using Warps and Creative Tools to create complex forms
Simulating Motion and Overlap
Creating Complex Volume Rays
Layering Complex Volume Rays
Utilizing Depth Maps for complex layered fog
Studying Reference and extracting the essence from them
Understanding light direction
Understanding light bounces, atmospherics, attenuation
Edge Blending
Understanding Material Properties
Integrating 2D Elements and making them look 3D
Using 2D Images for Texture Detail
Creating Different Types of Complex Layered Glows
Matte painting and Forcing Perspective
Blending and Transition Points with Matte Paintings
Detailed Color Integration with Matte Painting
Matching Blacks and Shadows
Utilizing pieces of an image to kitbash functional designs
Taking 2D Images and Adding 3d Perspective, Depth, Layering
Adding or removing texture detail
Understanding asymmetry, value breakup, and randomness
Balancing the overall exposure of a shot, layering contrast, and ‘Contrast Sandwiching / Contrast Stacking’
Understanding dynamic range, and the limitations of it
Rotopainting, Sticky Projections, and Script Speed
Using Daisy Chains, and Managing Pre-Comps
Using Utility Passes to Create More Realistic CG
Advanced methods for grading smoke and interaction
Creating heat distortion
Creating 2.5D effects (Trails, Flames, Plasma)
Utilizing element libraries to design new effects (2d and 3d)
Experimenting with LookDev
Creating 2d Elements from Scratch
Using Multiple Scripts to Speed up Workflows
Creating fake light interaction
Creating lasers, lightning, particle charges, and integrating them together
Designing lens flares
Creating advanced optical artifacts and optical techniques
Compositing explosions
Using advanced forced perspective

And a lot more other stuff!