Comp Lair Live #06 | Guest: Ben McEwan, Compositing Supervisor | Tech Corner: Coverage Maps

[Music] hello everyone welcome to at number six of complainers you can see today I'm in a different place the background is not the same I have this you know for those of you who know what what this is this is where I'm at I'm in Lisbon I flew to Portugal a couple of days ago to give some rest of that pandemic the kind of feeling that is happening in London at the moment to have some time off let's let's call it like this like some time off with my family we did some visit some friends but of course the first two weeks we don't get to do anything because we have to be in quarantine and that's exactly what we're doing as a family we are quarantine in in a house that we've been a few times every time where we come to listen we tend to stay in the same place and this is where we are and this is a place in Lisbon that picture over there what does of you would know first of all I'd like to start the show today by thanking every single one of you that send me messages all the follows all the massive support that I hear that I received this week in particular thank you thank you very much I didn't get didn't get back to every one of you but I will always get back to people it might take me a while because it might be busy with something with something else but thank you very much very much appreciated your support and as you know I'm doing this for you so if if there's that support thank you and thank you for all the suggestions as well it's been really amazing especially this past week a lot of subscriptions on my youtube channel so thank you very much what else says and you think ah we have a but in our chat I'm just gonna switch it to the chat now we maybe there will be you know someone called night what that support that's it about of the channel this is something new for this week and you can interact with with the bots it just helps me to if I'm forgetting something in terms of information that I would like to give you or if you have any questions if they're being repeated questions you can always count with the bots to ask those questions I'm not too sure if it's really working hopefully it is let's take a look if we have if we have any now the but seems like it's still asleep don't know if you type if you type question mark more you might wake up give it a try if you if it helps I'm not too sure I tried it a few times it seemed like it was working not too sure if it's working out I should see a message at the moment but I don't see any so maybe it's not working but we time you will for sure not-not-not question mark but exclamation mark sorry my bed exclamation mark so what else pandemic updates as I just mentioned I mean Lisbon now I have to say that it was like almost like a surreal experience coming coming here because the airport was basically completely at an empty I've never seen anything like that happen it was like an entire Airport stand set in this case with just two flights I believe four days for the entire day at least for the entire morning and those two flights were coming actually to the same place which was Portugal different locations though and and it was kind of surreal because all the shops were closed of course so there was no one apart from the passengers that would would embark at some point in on those slides so it was kind of a surreal feeling to be honest because even people working there it was just like a few but they actually were offering gloves to everyone which is something that I've never seen happening in in London in any you know shop or anything like that of course it's an airport I know that we have to have special conditions for that but it was kind of a surreal moment I have to say and then when I arrived in Portugal the rules seemed like the overall feeling really seems like very very different the shops are all all of them open not like malls and all that stuff that they're not open yet but all the shops like traditional commerce and all that stuff all of that is open to the public and it's mandatory that if you want to go inside to wear a mask which is something that doesn't happen in London which is really weird why is it not mandatory even though London is in such a bad shape as we all know I don't know it seems like every country is following their own rules with their own kind of data not to date in terms of like debts or sick people know that's not the data it's data in terms of science it seems it's really weird anyway in terms of what's happening in London at the moment so the update is the schools were open for the first years including nurseries this week this is already something that parents will benefit from because you know they will have some quality time whether it's to work or to spend some time with their wives or husbands or partners you know or alone because you know working and being with the kid every day as much as we love them it's really hard work and I have a kid so I know what I'm talking about other than other than that it's more about the other at the shops that will open in London I believe it's for the next week from next week I think they will they will open I'm not too sure if anyone could confirm that week right but I think that's that or from the 15th I'm not too sure anyway it seems also that I already read some things out in London or in the UK some industries are solarii covering I'm not sure if it's the case in our industry because now the Fertile scheme is gonna change as they announced last week and this week we already started seeing some changes in terms of what the companies are actually doing because from the moment that they're asked to basically start paying something even even if that something is really you know just a little of course if they're their financial situation doesn't change of course they came out today they will have very difficult difficulties on supporting you know those changes because their situation their own situation didn't change so I think for us and of course we're not alone in this but our industry is for those of many other industries it's gonna suffer I think this will be the more the most critical period and some analysts are saying that you know the real struggle might might be starting now because a lot of companies will not support these change in the fall even though the furlough scheme still goes until at the end of October but from the 1st of August rules rule change and companies will require to pay something I don't alarm anyone of course this this might be just fine or for a lot of you and I hope that's the case but without a doubt that it's easy to understand why this this may not be the case so again this is the time to do you know your personal projects you know you have to find strength in and I know this is really difficult because as I just mentioned before for those of us that especially those of us that have kids and they have to stay at home with us it's really complicated but that situation at least in London in a lot of other countries especially in Europe that is changing as well so there might be you know free up some time for you to develop the things that you wanna you want to do hopefully that's the case but this is where we are in terms of changes in updates for the overall pandemic in the UK technical highlight of the week I started this a couple of weeks ago and and now I'm stuck with it I guess I'm not stuck with it but I think it's it's something that it's cool to mention if I come across with something that I thought or I think it's it's it's easel for for mentioning here why not I already mention here usually at this newsletters and the newsletter from Josh parks as well and this week he posted something that a lot of people sometimes tend to overlook and I think it's you know very comprehensive kind of article that explains basically what the tech checks are and what you should be looking at as an artist and of course is a little supervisor as well but this is more for the art world it's for everyone but it's more for I would say I was about to say that it's more for the artists to know in advance how to self that self tech check it's very common that we in the middle of a production you know some things are missed but I think you should take a look at if you don't subscribe trees newsletter you should might be guessing in one of these days in the show why not I think it would be cool and and I think that's it for this week are you all doing let's see what we have so here in Montreal is recommended to wear masks but not mandatory they give them all in Metro at least well that's very good that's not what's happening in London as we all know well this was like in the news like every day at least in the UK there was a huge lack of protective equipment even for for perfect well mainly for health professionals which is which is really you know the the people that really need them because of course they're in the front line of this panel and that there was that there were a huge problem I think it's a bit better now but maybe it's a bit too late hopefully it's it's better and that's the good news to mention is you know if it's better it's better but I think it comes it came a bit too late maybe hopefully not and everyone he's safe I already have at least one friend that is a health professional that got the virus she's fine but I just got the news I think it was last week before I travel here yeah London not sure if that's that that there was a reason but anyway stay safe and you know do probably what you've been doing so far in terms of you know those measures and washing hands and all that stuff that's the best thing to do even if you don't have any protection I think it's timing out to the tech corner of this week hopefully you will you'll enjoy it thank you once again for all the messages and all the suggestions really appreciate it and keep them coming if you have any suggestions for tech corners upcoming ones of course please let me know and as I said I will get back to every one of you I didn't I didn't have chance yet but I will I promise and let's now change to the tech corner I hope you enjoy it let's take a look at this one and talk a bit more after that [Music] you this is something that I'll be honest with you I've used it sometimes but it's not something that I tend to use quite often but it's useful to know the technique because it can be useful for other things and we're gonna take a look at that let's say that we have this camera movement in this example it's a fairly we don't have like a huge angle in which the camera is is looking at and it's not moving like that quickly but in other situations if you want to extract or swap the sky so if you need to do a sky replacement that would require a few attempts in order to get a background or a new sky in which we would see it throughout the whole camera mode so coverage mapping it's basically a setup and we're gonna take a look at that in a moment but it's basically something that allows you to know exactly where to place our sky in this case if we wanna stop the sky will be always a position wise and the camera whatever camera we're gonna have it's always gonna capture it no matter how fast or how far it goes so I have mine already in my system because it's something that it's a bit too laborious as you can see to build all the time and what this is is I have this camera already because I tracked it from this plate some first thing to do is to put the camera here and we're gonna take a look at the setup but the first thing that we have to do is to look at this first projection and I'm gonna talk about it in a few seconds so we have this camera track and we can take a look at its point cloud so this is how far our scene goes so in order for have the right parallax on the sky we have at least to go as far as away from camera given these less pixels as reference at least so we can have a sphere that needs to follow that so let's see our sphere I suppose in the scene so we look at both the sphere and the point cloud okay let's say around here is already pretty good so that's how big our scene is next we're gonna put the input camera here and we gonna steal this is just a constant here and we're gonna steal the aperture both vertical and horizontal so we can force the shape of this constant to be the same our camera so we're gonna put these two box and we're gonna force this shape and we're gonna say 36 here and then the other one it's gonna be 24 so what this gives us is once we project this to our sphere we can have exactly the limits of our frustum from our camera okay exactly those limits as you can see so this is our world this is our camera is moving and the goal now is to capture every single portion of the sphere from the inside out and see where we see this white bit but we need to see this white bit throughout the whole frame range so we need to have sort of a way of combining all these frames together and the way to do that is with a time echo okay so this is our final output for our coverage map what I mean by this is this you can you can look at this as the interior of the sphere and wrap in every single angle and the way we achieve that is we go to the inside of the sphere and we're gonna have a camera which is the green one that is gonna look in this direction and then we're gonna have another one that is gonna look on to that direction we do that for every single direction okay so we can have six cameras looking on every single direction and we are going to mix all those frames and till the very end so because the method is the plans we're gonna add every single frame on top of each other so we see the entire range at the last frame if we go to the first frame it's gonna only mix that frame because it doesn't have any other frame to look at so in order to have the entire range you need to go to the very last frame meaning that we're gonna add all of those frames on top of each other in terms of how the projection will look like on the white bit and this is why I'm holding that last frame and not grabbing any other because I want in this view I want to know how all those frames are on top of each other I need to analyze the last frame I'm gonna do that same process for every single camera I'm gonna use the same time agram graze the same frame for for obvious reasons meaning that in some direction we won't see anything say for example this one we won't send actually in this example the only one where we're gonna see something it's gonna be this one because the range of our camera it's just big enough for this camera to be capturing it but in a different situation which we have like a much bigger range we could have seen this type of square on other bits of the sphere and the thing is we need to combine all of those into a leg long a new leg long including this white bit so in order for us to do that you can put any format here that you want I advise you to use something as low as it's because they set up since this is based on time echo and we have six of them mixing in this case it's 100 friends in other cases might be even more this is a very slow process and as part of the reason why I don't use these that often at least not for the purposes we're talking about which is swapping to the sky or changing the background but once we have that we're gonna label that what's front what's left what's right and this is given by this guy here which is a square format of checkerboard that in every single one I'm changing the color and I'm adding the text saying where it's looking at this is kind of irrelevant but it helps you to understand what we're doing and we need to mirror this because we are basically unwrapping at the end from the inside out and then we need to put this from outside in that's the way that look textures things meaning that from the perspective of our camera that lives inside the sphere we're going to look at this invert it so we need to then invert that again but we're going to take a look at that in a moment so every single square and it's square because this camera here is looking at different directions and we're forcing every single scanline renderer at this stage to be a square format and we are changing the camera in rotation every 90 degrees in every single direction so we end up with the square from the inside that in this case it's the back square this one is gonna be the left square and so forth and some of them in this case again we just have one of them that includes the entire range of our camera in terms of frame range we're gonna have the white bit which is where it's the range of the camera disguise it's the only one that we have the other ones will be empty so now the only thing that we have to do in our have a lead long is to combine all of that into a leglock so we're going to use a spherical transform and the input and the output will be from a cube input which is this to a lead lock that's all we need to do we define the output resolution we can always change this but this is the only thing I have to do it's important that you mix the right things in the right order in terms of what disease and what Y and X positive and negative otherwise you can have the assembly all mixed up but if everything goes correctly this is the interior of the sphere and grant including where our camera lives which is this area here cool so this is the range of our camera inside of our world now we need to mirror this so we have this map correctly because at some point within this set up we're gonna map this to a sphere again but we're not gonna include this we just can include our new sky by the way because this is such a heavy set up wood once we have this map I would pre comp it from here so that's exactly what I did here I pre rendered this lat/long and wrapped version of what's interior of our sphere and it's important that you render this whatever format you choose I choose PNG just because I can keep an alpha Channel so we need to have a channel of this region so that's very important and not what we're gonna do is we're gonna change the position of whatever we want that to be okay and we can put this over for now just so we can see more or less where it lives and the goal here now is to put this as big as we want but if we cover the entire white area that means that we say in terms of the range of our camera movement wise so let's say that we have this this is our new sky this is just for alignment purposes and then we need to put these like that and now we're gonna map these to the same exact sphere as we did it above here so this is our sky because we know that the range of our camera matches that place of where we place our sky we know that with our camera this will always be safe we will always be looking at a portion that we can capture so now once we look at it from the camera we know that no matter how far we are this is always gonna be same so now we can have the right parallax because we place our sphere as big as we needed to so we know that we're safe meaning that if we now get a I'm gonna try to get a little bit here very quickly it's not gonna be perfect I know that but just sort of think of an example so this let's say that this is our sky just kind of isolate this area here and if I multiply that I'm gonna have that region and now if I keep mix our sky within our footage we can have something that makes sense with our region so this way it's always safe the reason as I said the reason why I don't use these that often it's because the great majority of the times the range that we have in our cameras might not be that severe and it will take this no time at all just to place a card more or less in the place that we want but if we need precision and if we need to see some features exactly in a specific place and still be able to capture that with the camera and knowing that we're gonna be safe anyway this is a great way to achieve that what this is more useful to see is you know what's the portion of a certain matte painting that we're looking at with a certain camera we can steal the Alpha Channel from here so there will be the portion and if you want to see exactly the portion we can do something like that and now you're gonna see it bit better like that so this is the entire portion that we're looking with the current camera that we have at the matte painting that was provided to us and something is not up to what we need or up to what the client wants this is the only portion of the entire my painting that we would have to change so this is quite handy to do things like this and it's probably the reason why it is more used but it's also valid as I said before for swapping skies or put the backgrounds in the Ranger we're always safe a quick way to prove that this is actually the portion of the image that we're gonna see once we map this to a sphere is by copying the camera here copying the same sphere and then we can even drop rotopaint and draw something inside like a cross and because now we're mapping these to a sphere now we need to add the and now if we drop us can I render our scene there's our cross so no mirror of where we put the cross as long as it's inside this range we will be always safe in terms of what's the range of our camera so it will always be there for you so this is a great way to check whether or not this is correct this region and if we need to change something within the DMP either you change it yourself as a leader as a supervisor or you tell them by them I mean TMP to change this portion this is the only portion that they need to change you are required and expected to be part of a solution and this is a way to uncover and minimize the work for other departments let's now call our guests it's it's time for that I think you all know him at least you know his name let's call our guests to you in two seconds yay it's very Wow even working it's working this time for those of you that are watching this not in a live fashion you should know by now that we had some technical problems that's why barely saying it's working now for you know those people that have been sleeping for the past couple of years or three years or something like that do you can you please tell tell everyone who are you probably people know your name the ones that have been sleeping for a couple of years probably don't know so if you could introduce yourself that would be great sure well obviously my name is Ben McEwan as the screen says I am a compositing supervisor at image adjutant at the moment I've been working in the industry if I can roughly ten years depending on when you start counting and I run a little project called Ben's comb newsletter and that gets sent out every two weeks and kinda aims to share the latest and greatest in like nuke knowledge and tips and tricks and career development advice and all sorts of things so basically what I would have loved to read myself when I was like exactly in my first sort of few years in the industry at least but even now yeah yeah we didn't have that when we started right everything was like almost like a secret what about this technique well I never heard about that but that guide knows was that exactly like you know I mean you know I know that we you've been there because you just told me but we started moralizing this a at the same time so at that time everything was a little almost like a little secret but there's no secrets III normally say that this is no secret this is just about thinking about things coming up with solutions trying and most of the time it's about why don't you try this why don't you try that you know I mean so but yeah thank you very much for your newsletter for sure people you know are appreciating this you know effort on your part we all know that these stuff these these little things they seem like it's illegal thing but it's not a little thing this consumes a lot of our time so thank you once again actually this this was sent out this past couple of days ago right the last last one yeah yeah it was on Monday on Monday so there you go so for those of you that as I just said that have been sleeping for the for the past couple of years and don't know what we're talking about please search for Ben McEwan's newsletter you can put it on on the Google and and it will show up immediately for sure so make sure I just sent a link in the chat will get you convenient way you see we have a veteran here I just started this a couple of weeks ago but I've been doing this for couple of years so that's the difference actually today is ff6 which it's almost two months that I started this out of nothing which and the support has been amazing so thank you for everyone everyone for for supporting this but about the newsletter I was about to ask you how did you come up with this idea so the idea came from I kind of made a conscious decision to shift from big studios to more smaller studios focusing less on trying to do the biggest and best shots on the biggest and best movie as I could and more just like trying to find interesting teams of very talented people to work together with and learn from I guess the focus was less on working on the big stuff into finding better ways to do things you know so part of it came from a little bit of insecurity on my part of like if I'm not doing these big things anymore my skills gonna atrophy am I gonna forget how to do it so is partly a way to keep all of that freshener in mind but also like I just had this itch that I wanted to like share some knowledge and help other people out like I'm super introverted and I remember my first few years especially I would sit around people who had been working for as long as I have now but know it's so intimidated to ask them like hey I see you're doing this thing can you teach me how to do it too so that's an even this day and I have a lot of that experiences experiences as well as a supervisor you know you know that this person because you can tell by the way that they look at you or they look the way that they look at your monitor or whatever they want to ask something but for some reason they they they refrain themselves to do so I don't get it you know I always say to them I mean men when when I was in your shoes I was like you know asking everything that I could I don't care what whether or not people would look at me differently I what I wanted was the knowledge you know I mean so ask away hmm totally I mean I try and interview by industry veterans as part of my newsletter and to that point exactly I did an interview with Ivan buskers who's yeah FX supervisor and I am a lot of people who have been in the new community for a couple years know his name and he pointed out that exactly where I always like to ask people like where they came from and like certain failures that they've had or like lessons at that learned and one thing that he brought up was he just wish he asked people more things well he's a pretty accomplished guy technically speaking he is and I think that speaks volumes as well of course you're not born the technically accomplished guy you get that way from asking lots of questions and and from study as well of command and I already mentioned this when I was starting out and I don't want to say this you know for me too as an example it was a real I can only share my own experiences but when I was starting out of course there are things that you need to do in the job that you're not so you know confident whether or not you know how to do it or is it really the way this way to do it and then you know you fear that you're gonna be you know you're gonna show things to other people that you shouldn't because you didn't understand this correctly are already enough in your mind and to avoid that I would go home after a day's work and I would put another 8 hours on top just to try out things just wanted just for on the next day I will come up with something that will be a little bit more confident and you know you know people like even biscuits apparently you know you know we shared that experience with you but it's a pretty accomplished guy and you it was it still is a huge contributor to all the tools that we normally use every day very good documentation as well online so you know that that's another example I would say so yeah I mean for young guys that are starting out this is how you progress in your career in any profession not only in this one you know so I don't know if you're not had something to that or not well they are a business yeah yeah definitely like I guess the main takeaway from that is don't be shy alike people are kind and nice obviously there's an exception to like 99.9% of people that would be so happy to help like yes AI very publicly share my knowledge that's something I enjoy doing but I think that's a trait a lot of more experienced people have they they might have been doing the same types of shots for a little while and it's also something fresh for them too you know like having the opportunity to help something it helps someone else notice always good yeah it's always good to be in that position because sooner or later you're gonna need those people those colleagues in a different stage of your life so be kind to each other there's always what I say because you never know what you know what you can Ennead and it's not so much about needing this or needing that you just you know be a good person overall I would say we've all had our but experiences I'm sure and people probably would refrain to ask and to to put themselves out there because of that but the worst-case scenario is okay this person was adequate to you you know move on you know I mean that there's plenty as you just said the great majority of the people and they're nice people so don't be afraid of that and because of this issue I also know that you are a teacher and a mentor of VES right which was the the place where you study I was that experience everyone telling you exactly thanked over some square yeah I I meant it there after hours a little over a year actually a lot about was just helping students along with their course where I can answering any questions that they had I'm actually self-taught I didn't study there myself but I was thinking I was under new pressure Nathan you studied it I'd know I actually wanted to I remember having a conversation when I was a teenager I was coming up to my last few years of schooling like traditional schooling when I'm to kind of dive headfirst into visual effects and EFSA's program was the first one or at that time like probably twelve thirteen years ago now at that time it was the place to go and we looked at the price and it was it was just too much I don't know if you saw this but in in one of these nuke channels there was like meme saying how much does it cost to go into the VFS school and then the guy it's just what is the picture of the leg and hand hilarious yeah I mean I think school is definitely a good route for a lot of people but I am self-taught like I made my start making like Star Wars fan films in my parents backyard with my friends okay then kind of like got into people paying me to help them do visual effects for Star Wars fan films which is awesome for me as a young guy I imagine but there was obviously a certain point where I was using After Effects at the time I knew that the industry used nukes had to bridge the gap and like I think of myself as a pretty motivated self-starter I could figure it out and get there but some people aren't like that and that's totally fine exam yeah yeah with the money of course yeah I also that have that in common with you I'm self-taught as well I don't have the the Star Wars part in common because I didn't grow up with Star Wars in my country but because my background is engineering actually and this was a total accident the way I come up with with working in visual effects it was a total accident but I mean yeah if you're not curious whether you're in the school or or you're self-taught I mean there's only you know there's a certain level that you cannot top because you don't have the you know the urge of knowing more so if you want to save some bucks and you have that in you yes go ahead and instead if I say even to this day it's totally possible I got a call the other day from a viewer asking me exactly that what would be my advice whether should we go into a school or an online school and I said it's up to you I mean people are different so people need the class to progress because they need that kind of motivation some other people don't but whether you choose one or another I think you need to have that in you throughout your career because otherwise you're not gonna go you know far right totally like there's there's something to be said about learning how to learn as well and not in a traditional school setting sometimes yes sometimes no but if you can figure out the way that you absorb knowledge the most effectively that's gonna pay dividends that's the most important thing you can learn and I think like to a certain extent if you go to a specialized like film school or art school or visual effects school you're gonna be taught those skills but you're not necessarily gonna be taught the soft skills which is honestly half the reason that people get their contracts or need or get your back for a second contractors studio and stuff like that's a very good point that's a very very good point yeah and yes cool that's that's about personality on one hand it's about of you trying to be a good person overall with your colleagues to start with from from the very early stage in your career I would say and your mannerisms all of that you might think that you're the quiet guy but all of those things that they speak volumes on how people perceive you throughout your career and this is something that will pursue you until the end of your career I would say right exactly do you have any examples of people you've worked with that have good traits like that good traits like that generally speaking I think as you just mentioned the great majority of the people there are good people but there's a lot specialty young guys they're really introvert they refrain themselves to to ask this or that even though I always tell them ask ask away if I cannot you know you know answer your question at the moment that's because I can't that's because I'm busy with something else but I will come to you but ask because it's the only way if you have a question because I you know sooner or later that will double get you you know there's other there's bad examples as well then we all have those but of course I'm not going to speak about the bad examples but generally speaking I've been fortunate fortunate to work with good people in in that regards as well and there are people that prefer whether I'm not like criticizing or not saying that because you're you were like this you you know you can accomplish that you never know what you're gonna get but if you if you're a good person overall that thing will be perceived much more than what you think much more because all of those soft skills that you just mentioned will speak volumes but you know ever every person is different I would say and I don't wanna you know now pass the message that in order for you to get to supervision level you have to be really extroverted or you have to be the clown in the class now that's nothing what we're talking about here is what about the denote the subtleties I would say and in that regards I have been very fortunate to work with good people and interesting people especially what about you yeah I would I would say that - like I would categorize myself as a very introverted person and like I made my way to be a compositing supervisor in Italy I think a little bit there yeah but yeah for sure like I've worked with some really talented guys like people who have been in the industry for 15-20 years like can handle any shot that the headphones on don't talk to anybody or when you approach them they're grumpy for whatever reason and those sorts of people like no matter how talented they are you generally don't want to be around the D exactly yeah yeah yeah but on the other hand I've had so many students like that I've worked with whereas their first a second job and well technically they they might not be there yet I'm so happy to help them because they're so enthusiastic that they prove that they want to learn or they just ask good questions like here's how I've done this shot I think it could be better can you give me some advice and like that kind of back and forth helps develop the person but also my team yes but in an open daily setting for sure of course yeah - totally agree with you and speaking of that a lot of people ask me or have been asking me for the you know four years what about Python what about how to do you out do I come up with Python knowledge so how can I improve my skills in that way and then I tell them look you do this you do that this is how I did it even though I have a mechanical engineering background people confused the fact that because I have that background my my you know my path on on that knowledge was like really easy it was not easy it was as difficult or as easy as anybody else because I learned by myself once again and as as probably you also agree with me the documentation a few years ago Python wise nuke was almost inexistent or really confusing I didn't know what an API was at that time so and I was confusing what the API was and what Python was and then what's the syntax of one and another and but I also find out that people would like to have that skill but they don't put the hours or they don't put the effort to develop that skill and again by the way knowing Python doesn't make you a veteran or a better artist it will make you a more complete artist because you're capable of doing different things you will develop your mind I would say but it doesn't make you a more visual accomplished person what's your take on that I agree largely there's a huge difference between creatively being able to get a shot looking nice and across the line you do have to have that skill but I do think python is an important thing to know so I kind of touched on it a little bit that there was a point in my career where I shifted from wanting to do these these like being shots in these big studios to just kind of working with a big group of people who can like help push me forward and I think part of the industry at the moment is like everything's kind of coming together and every client is expecting the same quality whereas like it used to be you had film you had TV you had commercials and every client would be a bit different and they'd all kind of have their own standards you know what I mean but now those stands it's that kind of like getting closer and consolidating and they all kind of expect a similar thing so especially as it relates to like Netflix content and Amazon content if the quality bar is like almost as high but you are trying to like turn around more and more content you kind of have to find better systems and faster ways to produce that so that's that's an important point yeah yeah and I think that's where where python comes in or at least for me specifically like that's one of the reasons that I thought it was worth learning and it turns out that it was a great idea like let's say that I authored a course about it yeah yeah exactly I was about to to plug that this well up Ben has I think you call it Python 101 if I'm not mistaken is that right yeah yeah you kind of mean I don't want to spend too much time talking about it but you did mention a few years ago the documentation wasn't very good like I write ap I was like it is certainly a little better these days but I I'd never really liked the approach of like if I want to use Python in Nuuk I have to learn Python and then I have to learn the nuke module and figure out how they go together I just wanted to know what do I do in new to get the thing and it's kind of like taking the moist useful 20% of the knowledge and teaching that instead of the whole big intimidating amount yeah it was quite intimidating when I was starting out and probably you felt the same because again everything was so confusing you didn't know what to link you know a language that can be used for you know so many things in and then the things that you would like to do or you think it's possible to do some of them might be possible some of some of them might not be possible at all you have to have a different type of knowledge so you know if there's something that we can help and you're certainly doing that with that course I mean it's it should be usually appreciated because for for the the new guys if you want to start that by scratch a few years ago it was really confusing and plus you didn't have anybody to ask or not that many people so it was like self digging kind of situation that we found ourselves in so check that out from from Ben and speaking of on that subject as well I can't say that even though and I'm being totally honest here even though you know Python doesn't make you better artists you contributed hugely in my at least for me in my own experience to perceive the software in a completely different way and to be more accomplished or be like probably the catalyst to become a supervisor because I could do some so much more than just being an artist and being an artist of course it's the core of what we do but if you want to take leadership roles of course you have to think about things in a slightly different way so for those of you that would like to become a supervisor one day I think you know learning Python you don't need what I I wanted to be careful about what I'm about to say which is you can't be a supervisor still not knowing Python don't get me wrong okay but what I'm trying to say is if you know that you probably your chances will go up a bit because you be more complete artist and your mind will develop all to think about things in its kind a different way whereas a systematic kind of thing or something that you do once and can be replicated immediately for your teams so you know it might not be something for you but at least give it a try that's what I would say mm-hmm yeah I would totally agree with that I think the way that I kind of like to think about it is if you're an artist whether you're like junior middle or senior you're an artist and if you're a lead or a supervisor you're in more of a support role and at that point you're not just thinking about your own shots but you're thinking about everybody shots in a whole sequence so kind of like forces you into a different way of thinking yeah and any tools you have on your tool belt to help manage that extra workload and like have a better big-picture view is always going to help yeah yeah and sure like python is is one of those things that has helped to me personally but yeah there's many things there that you can anything into project manual for example usually important yeah that was what I really wanted to ask you next like yeah a lot of artists promoted into a lead or a supervisor role they come from an artist role yeah a supervision role is less about actually doing the work and more about project and people management completely different totally different skill set you don't sure you might have so many years of experience using new core working on certain things but you don't have that the skill set which is totally separate yeah how do you think people should develop those sorts of things well again this is where I think in being completely honest again I said previously that being you know having a an engineering background didn't help me to progress or to learn Python because I didn't learn any language at school at college in this case but without a doubt that for project management skills being an engineer that that helped me tremendously because I'm I'm not just a trainee engineer I worked as an engineer so I was I was in the field working as an engineer and of course engineers think about systems all the time think about budgets all the time think about Excel all the time and had the tools so I had that I had that already of course you have to to adapt to to unique challenges for several reasons as you can imagine so you have to quickly adapt and that's I think a key also as a supervisor and but project management skills it's it's it's hugely important because it's not about a animal II say that because people ask me so do you still do shots and I normally say well sometimes I actually do some shots but what I can say is I don't do any shot and I do them all because you have to touch in every single aspect of of of a sequence or several sequences you have to study this beforehand so you can tell your team how to avoid certain pitfalls or don't do this because you can encounter this problem or what you're doing is great but it's not going to fit with what you know the rest of the sequences or whatever so usually important and also you know things like doing projections about on on how this will be possible to deliver with the team that you have simple math really but it really helps me tremendously I think it's on my second episode of this thing that that was in Portuguese because I didn't tell you this but the first three episodes of comparing Portuguese so I would you know be more proactive on that on my small community and on my second one I I shared my master master because it's the only one today that I use spreadsheet for how are you manage my projects and there's a bunch of graphics and all that stuff which is you know you can skip that part it's just more about thought to think about things my attention on showing that was not look at me with all these fancy graphs that's not what the intention is what about how you should think about things and then you can put this on a graph or on a piece of paper it doesn't matter it's it's how to think about things and also organization usually important not only within the scripts like not having like these pockety kind of accidents that we all see and know but what about all to think about things I would say but hugely important so if you want to progress that's what I would say if you want to progress to a leadership role whether it's a lead or a supervision role you have to be I would say you have to be good at project management management skills because sooner or later when the crunch time hits and you don't know your numbers you don't know how you know how to help production on you don't know how you need production to help you you know so what's your take on that yeah no it's totally great I think as an artist you can do quite a lot already for yourself to be proactive about that to prepare yourself a couple of examples might be like I always keep it to do list of my shots and their tasks that need to be done in those shots what else like just being prepared for that question of like coordinator or producer could come up to you at any moment and be like hey if we asked you to deliver this one day early could you do it or how long is it gonna take you to finish x y&z or are mainly people being engaged right exactly like all of that stuff kind of extrapolates on to a bigger scale so if you can do that for yourself or you can do it for a team of people - sure it's like a bigger but it's kind of a simpler sort of skill set isn't it yeah it's a completely different skill set and and people might think that you know we all end up being supervisors coming from an artist role but that's not necessarily for everyone and that doesn't doesn't say that you're better or worse than anybody it's just a different skill set that you might like it or you might not like it because a lot of times as supervisors you you have to put up with a lot of things have you don't want to and they have nothing to do with the artist part of things it's more about organization and more about the you know that dynamic between Cornwell in disguise kanpur artists and production because it's about - about time it's about you know people and people you know it can be translated into how much money can we actually spend or save you know so I would say that it's a totally different skill set that might be for you but it might not be for you and it's totally fine determine I think like it's it's really important to touch on that like you kind of when I was around a mid-level like sort of five years experience type thing like I wanted to be a visual effects supervisor I felt like naturally for my career to progress I have to go through all the levels and that's the highest I could get but I I met a guy who was at I think it was at ILM or maybe it was Dean egg in Vancouver regardless they'd been just comping forever for like 15 20 years and I was like oh why didn't you ever have the opportunity to become a supervisor though I did many times I just don't want to like I like doing the hands-on work and if you choose to do that that doesn't mean you've stopped progressing right it just means that you're you're wanting growth in a different way whether that's career growth by it trying to stop harder harder and harder shots or whether you want to grow in ways outside of work which is and there's also like a misconception of and III well personally and already in this show I mentioned this which is as a supervisor people think that you have to be if you're a supervisor that means necessarily speaking that you are best that this company I've ever ever seen or the best in your team technically speaking or visually speaking whatever and yes you have to be really accomplished yes you have to solve a lot of problems yes you have to be there all the time to support and to give ideas to your your your artist but that doesn't mean that you have to be the best first of all what's the best the best things in one situation might not be the best in a different situation and it's more about the depth ability I would say rather than to be the best of in this show you know your shots look amazing so you should be the supervisor no it's a different thing it might be of course if you can marry those two skills amazing but a supervisor is more about you know pushing people's talents regardless on how many years this person or that person have of experience and to come up with the team because visual effect is all about the team it's not about individual because it you know anyone that has like amazing you know skills whether it's in comp or any other thing and they cannot work in the team it's impossible for this person to progressing in this in this industry so you know I think that's a misconception that a lot of people have like a supervisor has to be the best in every single aspect of the job and that's that's not necessarily true thank God we have other people that are better than us right to solve some problems right yeah wasn't it like Steve Jobs he has that famous court about like it doesn't make any sense to hire smart people to tell them what to do you find smart people so they can tell you what to do there you go and I think that's yeah that's awesome yeah yeah definitely definitely for sure okay has been a good chat let's see there I think there's a question here which is who here in the chat would like to become a soup or just want to become an awesome senior that's a very good question no replies yet though I feel like it's something if you're not sure like that's always okay of course somebody asked me a question of like I don't know if I want to be a supervisor how do I know and I kind of this is not going to be true for everyone but this is the answer I gave I like the metric if like if it's 9:00 p.m. in crunch time on a show and you get asked to pick up one more shot to deliver that night or tomorrow does that stress you out and if you say yes you should probably just stick to being an artist because as you alluded to before a lot of supervision is more problem-solving like obviously your your problem-solving a lot when you're doing shots but when you're managing an entire team and a show and like collaborating with more production stuff than you normally would those sorts of changes happen all the time and if you're not comfortable dealing with that or you don't want to deal with that that's totally fine but it's something that you do a lot more in a leadership role than you would an artists role for sure yeah for sure for sure of course as you just mentioned this is a stressful job regardless sample of you're right right but without about that being a supervisor you just like it's more things to worry about because you have to worry about you know everyone's shots and I just mentioned before that you don't do any shot but they do them all because you have to study this all of those things in advance but I mean it's it's really about that and sometimes and I'm sure you've been there been as well correct me if I'm wrong sometimes things are so hectic that you're like oh my why I put myself into this position because you know things are so confused but really rare very rarely things go that way at this you might for me in my experience because normally I have like a you know good people a good group of people to support all the needs and production is essential here production can make or break a project from start to until the end and so the artists of course but production is absolutely important and you've made something about like years of experience of versus becoming a supervisor are becoming just anarchist and what's the training needed I think that sometimes in my experience in him again I'm being totally honest here on the production side of things because people progressed from for example a you know runner position which is totally fine don't get me wrong but if they don't put the the training or if they don't develop their skills organization wise and stuff like that and just they just end up working in production forces a coordinator in the Nestle and producer and then finally as a producer if you don't develop those skills that at some point of course you know that they will make your life will be hard I would say as a producer and I think more times and I would like to I see people from production liking those type of skills it's just because they grew up with the industry in the way that they did they don't even know how it happen of course they have to be good at what they do at some point of course but I think unfortunately I see that happening a lot of times what's your take on that I agree completely like I knew it hahaha the most amazing production stuff from producers to coordinators and some who were there just to kind of shrug up do what they needed to and go home a lot and obviously there's going to be different personalities too but I don't think it's restricted to production like everybody in the team no matter if you're in affects a comp or whatever has to be a good team player and I feel like a lot of that just comes down to being curious and trying to do the best by other people that you can because ultimately it's collaborative right like if you have an awesome team a production team who might be inexperienced or has other agendas or whatever things aren't going to be great but yeah likewise the other way around like I I don't name names but I've worked with somebody who I think they did spent like 15 years at ILM and they couldn't wrote her and the show just needed to rotor help but by the way good I think I think it was actually contrary to my convictions I'm gonna mention something as someone which is Donald Trump but he said something that it was actually interesting which was a lot of experience doesn't mean good experience it might be just bad experience you know I mean so when you see someone with 15 years of experience yes in your mind you think oh this guy or this girl or this person you know should be it makes I'm expecting this person to be awesome it what what what he or she does right but sometimes that's not because especially when you cut you you you combine big names of companies that this person these people worked for and you just mentioned one you have these solutions or well sometimes solutions yes but you have these expectations I expected expectations of these people and sometimes that doesn't mean anything and then it's like a deflated kind of you know situation that you find yourself in right when you look you look at this person in a completely different kind of way which is not fair also too because exactly like I personally worked with so many amazing artists in Australia and when I was younger and less experienced there wasn't too many opportunities there but some of these people are kind of tied down to Australia but they have kids they have like a mortgage and stuff they even if they want to try and travel the world and experience different things their life might not allow it did some of them are still some of the best people like the moist talented artists I've ever worked with across all disciplines first like people who have the opportunity to travel around so yeah I think it's it's you make a really good point especially eight years of experience and more about how how committed to bettering yourself here of course yeah yours of experience yes it's important but that that's not the beginning and the end of of anything so don't be you know if because especially young people right because this is a difficult job as we just mentioned and young people might think that oh I have to have 10 years of experience and I'm just starting out when they will when when will I have this opportunity is it really gonna happen my thing my take on it is do the best you can possibly do and those things will appear naturally right agree yeah forget years of experience skip that part in your mind I get asked quite frequently from people like hey I'm a junior how do I go to a mid-level or I'm a mid-level how do I go to a senior and my response is exactly what you say I kind of tend to forget about the title and look at people from the years of experience is kind of a decent indicator but it's not everything like if somebody's been working for ya like you say 15 years and kind of just does the job and goes home and then there's someone who has half the experience but they're really driven and they're curious and they want to learn more I valued our second person much more Oh in a way they're much more new or a senior on paper it doesn't really matter there's a matter at all I've met the most talented people with and to be honest we do the more more talented it seems like it's a trained the more talented I encounter people the less severe years of experience they seem to be that they seem to have so think about that you know for those of you that are starting up now think about that because your self experience doesn't mean anything does mean everything at least cool time now for our note fight people have been asking for this it should be interesting already you know a few minutes ago told you more or less what it is I'm just gonna fire this up and hopefully everything is gonna be fine you ready let's do it all right cool [Music] okay the clock is ticking all right by the way there's no right or wrong answer he's just an answer okay I'm gonna start with a simple one all right Black's match because it gives my love it's called toe reverse and have lets you set the midpoint all at or wherever you want okay so he's smart about that oh all right all right from aberration I liked or I'm Grayson story I'm a last name I like his fxt chromatic aberration he gives me a cold blow my be a miracle doing anything King it might be an old order process it depends on the shop I have a deaf fight to save saves and I can't remember the name of any put me on the spot laughs okay they want to see you want to keep that one let's get let's get this field I look like a jerk where's APD's okay matching rain duster nothing else but that's very reassuring retexture hot man that's also bad that depends on the studio whatever in the engine it is but generally I like being able to unwrap stop unwrap stuff with the scanline renderer yeah all right I'm gonna mention something last week people still talk about to this day the disco channel which is like subsurface scattering takes observe yourself if you have a subset listing includes paintings from 3d yeah what are you just posting the subsurface and booster right without without the pass you have to great looking out that I would try and do something like a diffuse pass and it for help us bear your box that's that's a good answer I would say my phone yeah last one okay okay what's your take on doing a lightning bolt I'm embarrassed by this but the first thing that gets my brain that's always been offer fixed don't do that gives me cold like X Tesla yeah there is yeah that's your answer yeah dustman's clapping you see what I'm talking about thank you for playing today I think people enjoyed it and thank you again for doing this again everyone if you don't know you're bad news you've been asleep for the past couple of years because your newsletter has like a couple of years right or more mm-hmm and that right now to officer three and a half years there's a lot of useful information every two weeks so make sure that you sign up for for that newsletter and let's we should all think people like Ben to come up with those ideas and to put out the effort and the hours because this stuff takes us hours to prepare even though it's just a few lines of text you know that's not the end of the story so thank you once again Ben and thank you for doing this twice almost twice and let's see if people have any questions or any last words for you I don't see anything so I think it's time to wrap up all right thanks for having been no problem would you come back if I call you again I'm just messing around with you all right thank you thank you once again everyone and I'll see you there will be even though this is the you know the repetition of what happened on Friday there will be still a new one coming this Friday which will be two days from today okay this is a special event when it's called it like this all right cool all right man thank you once again man thank you all right [Music]

Channel: Comp Lair

Views: 1,173

Keywords: comp lair, the next level, nuke tips and tricks, vfx, live show, advanced compositing, advanced nuke, nuke tutorial, nuke advanced tutorial, 2d supervisor, compositing, nuke, maths, live stream, foundry, Corridor Crew, Movie VFX, hugo's desk, Allan McKay, cgmeetup, vfx guru, marvel, dneg, ilmvfx, weta digital, framestore, cinesite, milk vfx, mpc film, mpc episodic, lumapictures, pixomondo, trixter film, imageworksvfx, Rodeo FX, Digital Domain, rxpvfx, vfx geek

Id: isqxnCFfYPQ

Length: 71min 15sec (4275 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 11 2020