After Effects VS Nuke for VFX - Professional Opinion

hi everyone welcome to this long waited after effects to nuke comparison i happen to have a pretty complex shot done in both of them so i can do a pretty decent comparison because i've done it two times once i've done for our sci-fi project something for nothing which is now on youtube you can watch it it's a draft english dub to show to you know english producers but this is not like the kind of english translation you will see for movies but definitely will help you to understand everything what's happening and the second time i've done it for a fax phd course and for those who want to follow along the link to the project files as always is in the description below so by subscribing to my patreon you are getting access to the project files of all the videos i've done for this channel thank you so much for your support so i will do a comparison in depth and for those who want to know a conclusion right away i will put a timestamp with it at the end of the video when i will say my clear and honest opinion because i want to explain my opinion before throwing it at you and i think i will do it great with this one shot done in both softwares and if you disagree with me in some details you always can write a comment below i really appreciate to have as much opinions as possible thank you so let's start with after effects i guess i have a matte painting projection here source denoised with the same reduced noise effect we use in nuke and then i have mad painting projection put on over everything so basically i don't need the source noise here at all i can turn it off because i have it duplicated here it lies here just in case i will need to duplicate it somewhere so there's my foreground source masked this is the source the noise layer with masks and keys of foreground which is obscuring my background let's go inside of matte baiting projection and see what's in here so you see i have a basic after effects projection set up here with the light shining through the composition of my matte painting projecting it to these solids if i go into 3d view you can see how it looks like here so this is where the funny stuff begins in after effects because you start ripping your hair off only on the stage when you are making a projection so the projection in after effects is pretty limited because the 3d space is very limited you can use only solids this is why some guys developed like a plugin let's see it [Music] here we go projection 3d this is how it is called so here we go this the plugin i was talking about 63 for 63 bucks you are getting the plugin that builds geometry out of solids understand what i'm talking about you can i like import low poly geometry inside of it and it builds the polygons out of solids when they are triangles it masks it with masks automatically so i have tried it and i can say that when you are importing like reduced models from your 3d package like you do in nuke for you know projection on the proxy geometry it doesn't work because you are very limited in the amounts of your polygons otherwise your machine will explode so this is a big pain in the ass that's why this plugin is useful and this is big minus two after effects because in nuke you basically can throw almost anything 3d inside of it remember me throwing into it like millions of polygons and it was working but for projection you have to have something simple the more simple the geometry is the better the projection will work new or in any composting software let's see what i have here here we go i've just imported like thousands of polygons into nuke you see like this stuff is reduced the buildings are boxes because they can be boxes as it is not needed to have more polygons on the walls but what you see these letters and stuff is imported pretty smoothly so if i like use it instead of my previous projection let's maybe merge it here like that it still will work let's try to render it yeah it works absolutely works reason why we have some issues here is because there is another box here that should be removed from this geometry but it definitely works not as smoothly as with the nukes original geometry i free made here just to make it work faster you know with cubes without anything that is unneeded but it totally works to see all these balconies and stairways are in place we're great for a projection actually we're also getting some issues here obviously this is all fixable the other pain in the ass you will encounter in any software when making a projection is matching it with camera you'll have to have like a straight pipeline of exporting and importing camera in nuke it is a pain but it is manageable to create your own pipeline which will work smoothly so because it can import the fbx and alembic files containing cameras this mean that you can directly without any third-party plugins import the camera into nuke so in after effects there's like third-party plugins that import camera with the different position of the plugin that does the projection and there is also some really old ways of exporting and importing the camera working in after effects like with rpf sequence so you render this dinosaur file and you bake in some passes and if you bake in the z depth pass it will also bake in the position of the camera because this is like the way it stores z depth so i have a box and a sphere here and if i'll render this sequence into the rpf file then i'll go to after effects import it here select it then i'll go to animation keyframe assistant and then i have this option of rpf camera import and it will import the 3d camera for me so this is one of the ways of importing the camera for you without third party plugins because the true reason behind the projection is not to you know show your friends how you perfectly repeated the andrew kramer's tutorial but it is to render static things on a compositing stage instead of rendering their sequence out of 3d this means that you will have to have your camera out of 3d package imported in the same scene as your geometry this is the whole reason why you want to import the projection and camera inside of compositing software instead of you know re-tracking things inside and remaking the solids inside of it according to the point cloud this is the reason why you want to import this stuff from 3d with the same position according to each other not with different plugins that uses different you know world scales and origins so that the geometry and camera won't match at all not to remake it again inside of the compositing software you have to have a clear pipeline for this and maybe some after effects nerds have it but even if this is so i don't believe that their pipeline is cleaner than in nuke where without third party plugins you just connect the projection node import the camera geometry and do the projection well of course you can remake the boxes inside of nuke but this was just the best way i found back then to reduce the pulley count so i guess this can be considered as the lack of work on the pipeline if you really like my videos please stop for a moment and share it with friends you know who will also like them because i'm just starting out and i really want to be known in cg community as i have a lot to say thank you so much this really will be a huge help so the next thing in uke you see everything at once know exactly what you want to do because you see every connection every backdrop of course if you named them and created them and if your notes aren't a big mess you can understand where things are you can copy and paste it to another script in after effects this is different let's go inside of the pre-comp of the pre-comp of the pre-comp of the matte baiting we have a lot of layers here and this is just the passes that are layout at the nuke here like that well there's more of them here than it is actually needed i give you that but you see how easier it is in nuke to see all of them and in after effects this is no it's actually not all the passes that we see new king they are separated to different lights here to control their you know intensity but in after effects we don't have the separation onto lights because this would be even a bigger mess you'll have to have at least you know three screens to work in it to see all the layers of all the comps of the main comp and pre-comp and then see the composition window then you maybe will manage to you know with third eye see all the stuff you need at once otherwise you will always have to go inside of your pre comp and i imagine you working on a laptop i was working on a laptop for three years after all this madness it was like you know taking the big iron shackles from your hands when you have couple of screens with a normal computer when you are working on cg if you have laptop just find second monitor for you so much easier to work please do this right after watching this video and subscribing to my patreon one of the best things you can do for your career in computer graphics if you haven't done it yet after effects does not suck at everything and actually his minuses sometimes can be pluses for one man band generalists one of the great things the after effects has is the dynamic linking with premiere pro so you can quickly import everything from your native editing software to do a quick and easy cleanups or corrections when you don't have much of an effect this will be easier than rendering out of nuke and importing here in premiere because guess you won't use nuke studio for anything you will use premiere as it is more suitable for it the other thing i wanted to talk about is handling of alpha so i have some posters here that i've rendered out of 3d i've like mapped these posters on solids and then distorted them and done some you know tearing of them here with material of tiered paper and i've outputted them here with alpha because i wanted the original background included into their render so so that their edges will contain like a native you know colors of the scene to be nicely blended with my composite but i actually eroded them anyways here well if you import the same posters into after effects uh let's take a path from here here we go posters the first thing you'll notice is that your alpha is already pre-multiplied and this is not okay even if you want to pre-multiply it right away because color correction comes before pre-multiplication this is the whole reason why your edges will look bad as you color correct after pre-multiplying them with alpha if you maybe import something like stock footage from my stock footage pack as also on my patreon actually and i'll see that it is pre-multiplied again and this is bad because the actual background here is useful you don't want to lose it if you ignore the alpha you will have it but you don't have now the alpha channel in the footage but as i've shown you in how to make the stock footage pack tutorial you can you know duplicate this file duplicate it again put it on top and set the alpha for the second file to straight and then you will have it pre-multiplied and then you can like control rgb and alpha by using two files with the alpha matte like that maybe it's linking one to another then you have like position linked and stuff so this is inconvenient this is not the way the compositor you know should handle alpha the alpha should be a separate channel on which you can bacon the alpha and promote it if you wanted to because sometimes you need the rgb that is outside of the alpha region usually for proper pre-multiplication you need for you know merging stuff with your background this is the reason you have to do a setups of separating the alpha from you know the rgb channels so the posters are done here in this nice backdrop with scanline render nodes putting on cards because it is very easy to you know put them in 3d scene and just render them with everything else there are near posters and farther posters here and there and in after effects i believe i've tracked them oh let's go inside of the main comp to see where they are you see how long it takes to just find them it's already getting crazy here we go real near posters i found them quickly because i remember where they are but imagine you don't know where they are and how long it will take for you to find them this will be a pain in the ass this will definitely be a pain in the ass let's see how they are tracked here all right they are not tracked in 2d they are 3d object placed there in the right position right where this wall is according to the tracking markers and this is how they are tracked because there's a camera here which is tracked in after effects after effects have a pretty great camera solver i should say sometimes it works better than nukes camera solver with default setting but i guess the reason for this is the lack of experience in configuring the nukes camera tracker because far more complex it has lens distortion everything the professional you know tracking artist will need more or less is here while in after effects there is only one button which is called you know track camera hit that and well you get some settings all right i have the scene type like the main setting for the camera tracker but i don't i don't have like lens distortion here or stuff i have to do this before the track can specify the angle of view well this is handy i can't import target tracks into it new casts like target tracks you can track something manually if the camera tracker can track it automatically and it will dramatically improve your solve in some crazy situations when you can track without attracts so but as i said camera tracker in after effects is great so i guess after effects is more you know for the guys who don't want to dig into their tools too much they just want to quickly make something simple it's one of easiest way to explain why the after effects could be needed for compositors all right i think that i'm getting too complex here because i can speak like for very long time about you know missing tools in after effects like lens distortion for example i mean the actual compositing lens distortion which you do with image analysis or grid analysis and line analysis speaking about lens distortion i've just uploaded i guess way to do it perfectly in after effects without the actual tools you don't have tools in after effects to do this i mean the way i'm showing you there you can actually do a precise enough for production quality lens distortion using the standard optics compensation effect you want to install as less third party tools into your software as possible and your machine because as you are starting to get crowded with third-party tools you see i don't have anything here sometimes have something to open you know the project files of other people but i usually don't use anything besides the neat video you reduce noise effect this is like the only thing or maybe the cryptomat cryptomat and reduce noise are the only things i need in after effects and nuke i don't need anything besides them everything else i am trying to do inside the software this will work a lot faster and be less buggy especially when you start having like more machines rendering your shots this will become a great pain in the ass to install all these tools to all of them one of the greatest unmentioned things in which after effects does not suck it's when you have compositing with motion design this will be a far more easier to do everything inside one software because usually the compositing for infographics is not so complicated and when you do it with infographics in one project this should be faster than making it in nuke start thinking about camera tracking you start thinking about lens distortion you start thinking about other tools that are missing looks like this is an infinite loop so i will just break down my shots everything that i did not cover yet how they are done in nuke and how they are done in after effects and then we will jump into conclusion of my thoughts so i've already covered the matte painting and the key i will be brief because you don't watch my videos so long you've already turned it off and clicked on some click-baiting thumbnail suggested by youtube triggering your dopamine returns if you do so i suggest you go straight to pornhub this will be maximum dopamine zero experience so i've put on some smoke here as a layer all right some shadows for the posters the posters the color correction for the posters done by you know passing and multiplying the blurred footage on them this time it is just added let's see if it is blurred it doesn't blurt at all this time very interesting works nice actually yeah you just take the footage and then you you know use the color correction effect to get uh the contrast of it which you need to you know add or multiply on stuff then you color correct it this time lowering the saturation usually you have to do this and then you apply it on top of your comp same thing with multiply so multiplies you know the shadows of the footage on top of stuff you are comping doesn't work on some you know uh contrasty uh backgrounds it works on stuff like walls where there is like a very constant color or you can just blur the background and do the same things but then your shadows and lightings won't be so detailed then i've got some heating of the trash cans here so i've got multiple layers of them heating of the trash cans in nuke is a bit more bulky actually than in after effects a lot of notes here because i was struggling in making it realistic you know because that's why there is like so much notes here so much you know channels and players here in nuke and after effects it was done a little bit more simple way that's why it looks less realistic here and i guess it is clipped yeah not good then we got more trash cans heat so a clean plate of ground here also projected so it has the same projection setup but it has only the ground copied here and it has the light and the clean plate here and removes this part of the frame in nuke it is done yeah a new cleanup i have already pre-comp here because some cleanup part is already needed for me then we have some effects reflections finally some effects done by alec as the wagons of compt by me and him some heat distortions before i've put the pre-comp lighting effects and stuff and grain on the very top so in the lighting's precomp this is just holding your renderers basically the same way they are done in nuke added on top and the pre-comp is added also on top here so this is the way they are stacked here and all the elements are done like that in nuke we have a separate script with all of them here by watching the script you can see that this script is done by another artist and this script is done by alex dragonsoft great effects artist great artist in general does some really amazing stuff his website will be in the description so he done this all in houdini and combed it in nuke here on top of my precomps that i've prepared for us so let's go a little bit layer by layer here see exactly what is what so that's how beautiful the reflections are great work and on compositing you see there's only a blur note and color correction notes this is more than enough for alec he doesn't need any more notes i guess i'm running out of memory here yeah so the spots were the lighting kits all constrained in houdini to appear in the right time allah calls it goes it's actually just a you know point cloud made out of uh the scan of the agent that we've done it is just a static frame in nuke which i guess it is static frame no it does not it actually has some particles animations inside of it in 3d so it is distorted on 3d stage very clever then the different versions of lightings are merged here together on composting stage because the director didn't accept the lightings for the longest time and we have some footages of sparks you know just tracked with tracker to the places where the lighting hit and we have some smoke layouted in houdini this was easier to do in houdini for a lack yeah i guess every artist has its own way of doing things because i definitely won't lay out the smoke in 3d i will use z depth for this i guess yeah of course it gives him an advantage the smoke can interact with lighting of everything that is lighting this scene because this is the whole point of making it in 3d this is some small you know alpha dot rendered there with 3d wiggle and then it is being corroded a lot and glowed a lot and it becomes like the spot from where the lightings are born and i guess it is not used here this means that we have something else replacing it yeah we have just a nuke setup of it with transform geo nodes one of which has wiggle expressions here and this is how it is done so just the same way is done in nuke in 3d you see how powerful nuke is comparing to after effects where the only 3d objects you can use are solids and nose right unless you install some crazy plugin to it and speaking of plugins with element 3d and the video copilot plugin can do projection in after effects not yet i guess andrew cramer thinks about it you know you can put a sphere you can wiggle it in 3d and here you go a wiggling sphere rendered quickly works perfectly don't need so much polygons for it and then just glow and motion blur for it works perfectly alright more passes of the splashes of lightings that they uh disintegrate to particles when they disappear and this is what alec has done very great work actually that's all this is how the shot was done from start to finish it was a lot of work in 3d now in composite they are all just plus together here always plus operations plus operations are the same as at operations in after effects so it doesn't matter if you plus or add this is a same you know plus sign operation amazing work done all this interaction with ground sometimes doesn't match quite well i think it matches well but the thing is wrong that uh they are kind of bouncing the same way as from the asphalt but from the backs they shouldn't bounce so much they should like fade there more than bounce that's why it looks strange there but overall amazing job amazing job i like as vegan soft and now the conclusion after facts is more for one man band generalists who doesn't do bulky compositing who usually needs to quickly correct something quickly enhance something or do some simple effects you know like in andrew kramer's tutorials in their own project the nuke is more for production work in a big studio for people to concentrate on compositing on their part of the job and i know them both pretty perfectly i've done effects phd courses on both these softwares and i've worked in this softwares a lot and i can say when you master both of them no matter in what environment you're in working in a big studio or working alone you're using the right tools for the right situations you do after effects when you need more animation in compositing for example like when i had to put the live action shot bird into the aerial shot on the close-up it was a little bit easier to do in after effects because there were more actual animation than composting in there when i do environment composting like comping this crazy projection there in the 10 shots you know i have to quickly copy all the notes without copying and extending all the compositions without the pain in the ass i do it in nuke so in general in a long run you'll be better off knowing both softwares to become a master so if you are like you know intermediate compositor or starting out you should think about what you will use the compositing for in the long run for composting movies in a big studios or for making your own movies and you know your own content every week i now upload new videos i've started to seriously concentrate myself doing my own stuff so subscribe to not miss my tutorials on nuke and after effects and breakdowns and my project files will be as always on patreon so to get all these cool project files all you have to do is subscribe to my patreon are getting access to all of them my name is kirill plachakov and i'll see you in the next class instead of watching clickbaiting content like this one next time try to get your dopamine from getting better than you were yesterday see you next time goodbye

Channel: Kirill Pleshakov

Views: 4,571

Keywords: tutorial, breakdown, special, effects, after effects, nuke, CG, CGI, behind the scenes, VFX, 3d, 2d, Visual Effects, fx, computer graphics, comp, cleanup, roto, tracking, camera, solve, compositing, integration, layers, matte paint, environment, restore, details, matte, extraction, technique, blue, screen, green screen, despill, keying, fxphd, vfx training, course, digital, render, blur, merge, node, grain, passes, shuffle, multiply, master, class, Kirill Pleshakov, video, editing, before and after, Kirill, vs, or, compare, react, to

Id: wcYoyaWrS9o

Length: 30min 27sec (1827 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 16 2021