Comp Lair Live #11 | Guest: Mads Hagbarth, VFX TD/ Compositor | Tech Challenge: 3D SSS

[Music] hello everyone welcome to another show and uh if you've been watching this for a few weeks now you know this background here so that means that i'm in london again uh this background actually we never address this background this background it's a poster from one of my favorite movies growing up as a teenager it's kind of a teenager movie um but in a good way it's the garden state poster so if you haven't watched this movie great soundtrack and great movie as well so hope everyone's doing uh well uh so as i said i'm in london again we flew a couple of days ago if i'm not mistaken and because portugal even though you know i've been saying here that portugal is doing very well and all that stuff well it turns out that it's one of the worst countries now uh regarding new infections um i don't think the story is well told though but that's how the numbers go and because of that portugal is in the black list of countries that need to be everyone that travels from there regardless they where they from originally they have to do uh quarantine so i'm enjoying my quarantine at my place in london uh very much not really um yeah no it's it's no fun i have to say it's no fun being being stuck at home and um i was really actually um interested when when they announced the the list how they would uh control this uh this kind of situation um because of course uh you know they cannot put a you know a a they can enforce the law by um having or send the policemen to every person that arrives in the country so i was quite uh interested in seeing how they would uh they would do this and i have to say that until now i received one phone call from the the the services and uh just basically informing that we have to do um the quarantine and all that stuff so self-isolation actually that's how they called it and um and yeah uh today is sunny so it's a bit hot inside uh our place but um it was quite quite a change from portugal i have to say and um and well it's it's so different that it's it's hard to to to put in in place but we're going to talk about this pandemic update as usual let me just thank everyone again thank you all for the messages um this is basically like every day there's messages uh arriving uh to my inbox congratulating the show and um you know likes new subscriptions and all that stuff so it's growing quite a lot uh there will be news already from today on the show and it's my intention to keep this moving in terms of new things we'll we'll see what i'm talking about in a while and and yeah so i was saying that uh pandemic update very different uh from uh portugal what's happening here but before that let me just tell everyone uh just in case if people are not aware because this is very fresh this is from today apparently london in london or in the uk the lockdown is going to be eased in the workplaces and also transportation so i don't know exactly what that means this was boris johnson announcing uh this morning i believe it was this morning um so they are lifting the lockdown even though you know the death rates and all that stuff and the numbers are not looking too good but i think the intention is obviously trying to save the economy as much as possible and of course the lockdown will have to end at some point but at the moment i'm not too sure if if the governments because they're so scared um about about this lockdown and about the lockdown is affecting the economy um i'm not too sure if they're just putting all the eggs in just one basket which is like let's let's put the economy running again um without really thinking whether or not this is actually working numbers wise in terms of infections because we've all seen what happened when they opened the pubs in here i was like really shocked i have to say i was really shocked and i know that i'm not alone in this and what what happened was they they opened the pubs and of course everybody was really eager especially because it's such a an iconic thing and it's something that everyone is dying to do just have a little bit of a good time here with your friends in london especially um but throughout the country really uh so a lot of people in seoul especially uh were just it was like a massive amount of people in the streets i didn't see one wearing one mask so it was kind of scary to be honest and it turns out it seems i read on the next day or already in the next week or something that some of those pubs closed down because the staff got infected so that's why i'm saying what i'm saying i don't want this show to be political or anything like that but this is about public health at least that's how i see it but um yeah this is kind of scary so um in london or in uk the lockdown is going to be eased more and more starting from um i think it's from i don't know when the this these these workplaces uh and transportation logged on wise are gonna be lifted but i think it's gonna be soon because this was announced today but um but anyway in terms of what's happening in our industry more and more uh we all see people being available on linkedin posting their uh showreel saying that they're available there's now a green thing that you can put on your um on your profile on your photo on on linkedin saying that you are available it is what it is i guess but i see more and more people uh doing this so um and i know personally speaking some people there are in kind of some dramatic situations um once you know everybody's facing some difficulties um at this point of course but this is um this is scary and it seems like a second wave is more than likely uh at this point and i think the a whoo even though they were saying in the beginning that this this is more and more unlike unlikely to happen a second wave they are now saying that uh the pandemic thing is going to be worse and worse if the countries are not taking the necessary measures so they are changing their speech i think that they the wajo is um also um you know communicating sometimes in a contradictory way um but i think we all we are all learning with this because this is a a novel virus a virus so nobody really knows exactly how to tackle this and on top of that nobody is prepared for a pandemic um so as i said the uk pubs opened about a week ago um with no social licensing even though i saw some policemen in the in the footage that they they put out there and photos and all that stuff but i don't know man it's quite scary i have to say um what else ah there will be masks as a mandatory thing um in the uk as well within a week and this is um this is where i found the most um the most difference between portugal and uk because in portugal you see everybody wearing a mask well if not everybody a great portion of people in the streets and in here when i arrived here i didn't see anyone anyone even if i look at the street at the moment i don't see anyone wearing a mask so it's quite different um also in portugal if you want to go to i'm not saying portugal as an example i'm just saying that this is a difference um and it's a very big difference if you go um into a shop you are required to wear a mask otherwise you're not gonna not gonna get in so um in here they are they are apparently um want to do that within a week but i don't get this weight honestly um just me i'm not a scientist i'm not a doctor of course uh so what do i know i just i'm just saying that this is a massive difference from uh these two countries at least and in other countries as well because i've been speaking with some friends of mine that are living in different countries but uh yeah quite different quite quite different and the overall uh feeling in the streets it's completely different completely different in here i don't see almost anyone in the street and the streets and the ones that i see they are not wearing a mask whereas in portugal pretty much everybody's in the streets also because there's good weather of course they're enjoying their time they're going into restaurants and all that stuff but all these weed masks so they are practicing that kind of um you know measures uh there but the fact is the numbers are going up so um to a certain extent of course portugal still is one of the countries with um less numbers but i think in terms of new infections they are going up quite a lot so and it's really focused on a specific part of the country so and that's why we are now with the um we are blacklisted at the moment at least so that's it i guess for the pandemic update not really good news i don't think um we'll see we'll see what happens in our industry i've been saying this from the beginning i don't think a lot of things will change for the best until the end of the year i hope i'm wrong i don't think i am but i really hope i'm wrong but this is what i'm seeing and this is what we are seeing all of us pretty much every day okay that's it for the pandemic update um sorry if it was like a little bit negative but it is what it is i guess so what else so technical highlight of the week um this is something that is kind of new not necessarily from this week but i came across with a with basically a piece of paper i think that's exactly what it is a piece of paper from a guy called marin petrov which i believe it's a bulgarian developer character td i think he has his own company and he basically put something very simple uh i think i saw it on linkedin maybe a couple of weeks ago or something which is basically a paper explaining how vectors work and how vector operations work like dot product cross product addition subtractions and all that stuff which is i'm going to put this on linkedin i'll leave it in sorry on this core channel if not on our discord channel please join our discord channel because there will be some specific communications that i'm gonna do only there um so what else what else do i have ah and by the way um yes so the technical highlight is the it's for marin petrov and i'm gonna put this on on this core channel and i'm gonna put this probably also on the comments as usual so everybody can can take a look because i think it's a small thing nothing too complicated nothing too fancy and of course you only you will only get the good stuff out of it if you know a little bit of vectors even though that's really simple stuff but if you don't if you don't know what a factor is you're not gonna take anything from from that piece of paper um but uh yeah that's it for the technical highlight of the week and we let's see what uh what we have on the chat all right so we have two of our usual viewers uh our lovely moderator sabine and mauricio are you doing uh youtube um yeah so i was i was saying and i said in the beginning of this show that um there will be some new things coming and i'm gonna announce a new one right now which is the tech corner now it's gonna change sometimes okay sometimes as i please because i'm the owner of the show no but there will not be something like with a specific type of schedule or anything like that it's when i think it's right but there will be a change between an interchange between sometimes the tech corner and one thing that i'm going to call tech challenge which will be something that i'm going to present to you guys you're gonna have like around one week to come up with uh something similar so we promote this kind of interchange uh and getting all of you to be a little bit more interested and a little bit more engaged not interested but engage with the show and this will be something that will be run only on discord channel so there will be not at the moment it's not there yet but there will be a new channel called tech challenge and you'll be able to put your submissions there in terms of you know trying to emulate what i'm about to show you at the moment uh so let's take a look let's open this new segment let's take a look and i'm gonna interchange as i said you know week by week between this and the um tech corner all right so we mix a little bit uh this is actually something that is not new for some of you because in the beginning of the show there was a show in which i was talking about the specific effect on the notify and and then i was like okay maybe i'm going to put my version of what i'm trying to get people to answer and then and then i you know without being officially or anything like that i start doing what it's now going to be the tech challenge so let's take a look at this one that i'm talking about i'm going to let it run for a while and i'm going to talk on top of it but let's open that new segment called tech challenge [Music] alright so this is the tech challenge for this week okay so it's um and i'm gonna tell you the rules i'm gonna put my face in here so i'm gonna tell you the rules so the rules are you have to come up with something similar to what i'm showing you here okay and the rules are it has to be with all native nodes okay so there's no plugins or tools that uh you you use that you probably wouldn't want developing them or whatever but if that's the case you have to open them up okay you have to come up with something that is truly yours with only native notes all right and the the winner of the challenge and i'm gonna pick up a winner within a week or so has to be open to share the solution of course that's the all promise of of the segment of course and then we can conf confront our solutions okay so i can tell you that this is a pretty simple thing to achieve there's nothing it looks like really good in terms of not good but complicated sometimes but um or it can appear complicated that's what i'm trying to say but it's not okay it's a very simple solution and all of you will be able to regardless the level all of you will be able to achieve this i believe all right so as you can see this is a cube you can choose whatever geometry you want and this has to work in every single geometry and the premise is you have to come up with a fake subsurface kind of a thing okay it's a fake fake sub surface all right and you have to be able to put an object inside as well as i'm showing you here and the the refraction that you're seeing here of of the glow it's uh it's optional okay this is this is this just uh some extra stuff and it has nothing to do i can tell you it has nothing to do with the effect itself all right so this is um this is the tech challenge for this week and the winner at least for now all right maybe this will change in the future but the winner will be here with me on the show okay so if people want to participate they have to be open to share the solution they have to be open to share the solution not only with me but with everyone of course uh please submit your answers on the specific channel that i'm going to create it's not created yet but i'm going to create a new a specific channel on discord so you can submit your your result i just want to care about the results for now and it's based on the result that i'm going to choose the winner all right and then um and then the winner will be here on the show with all of us talking about everything and nothing as usual but also talking about the solution that he or she came up with all right so that's it i hope you liked it let's see what's the reaction i paid a long time to say hello mauricio so this is the tech corner for tech not that corner tech challenge now it we changed the name for this week so it's time now for for our guest and i can let me tell you something about the guest today all right so the guest today is someone and i've been saying this actually for the past um few weeks and it's true again uh it's uh someone that you all know all right i believe that you all know if you have if you don't know this person if you don't know this name there's uh you're probably not not looking um you know you're basically asleep or something because it's an um it's a name they've been around for for quite a while um doing very interesting things and and it's with great pleasure that i'm gonna i'm gonna have um i'm gonna have this guest in in the show and i believe everyone will uh will like uh this guest as well as usual okay we have a great show for you today as usual so let's uh let's try to call our guest let's see if everything is ready everything seems all just fine all right so without further ado let's call our guest see you in a second hello ma sakbar pretty much everyone should know you by now because for the past five years or so that's when i come and come across with with your name actually yeah uh and uh since then you've been developing a lot of stuff and you've been very active in the community so i think everyone uh by now uh pretty much know you but for those people uh they probably are living in a cave or something or just starting out we have to address all everyone can you please introduce yourself a bit better yeah my name is uh i'm a virtual effects technical director and pipeline technical director uh at a small or medium-sized small to medium-sized the post house in copenhagen in denmark uh that makes you know small uh you know tv series and feature films and stuff like that and i'm also quite well known for developing tools both of the on new pedia and i have a little blog uh with my surname how about doesn't it and i have a little uh a commercial tool out now um the point render which yeah which pretty much everyone heard about me i believe yeah so uh so yeah that's kind of what what uh what i'm uh into cool all right all right uh so you just mentioned um uh you know the some development that you do and all that stuff and that you did a lot of stuff not only um sharing in wikipedia but also on your blog and that that's actually how i came across your name many years ago um and at that moment i don't believe a lot of people knew you uh i'm talking about that phase in which you start developing a cloud with true vdb kind of situation remember that time this was around five years ago right yeah um but i was like yeah i mean this is this is something different uh and you're from from that point i could see your development and from that point you've been well at the moment you are basically the the king of blink script because you're the go-to guy for blink script uh and it would be great to to know um about your journey on that front like what triggered the your interest for developing things in the print script i think you know it all comes back to sort of a portion in time where i i wanted i guess at my old company we had um it started out with you know the first day when i started out uh at the job i was like i got a spreadsheet and my supervisor came up to me and he said like okay here's a spreadsheet and some time codes and some real names and you have to this is your shot so you have to like find this real name and you have to find this time code and you have to find this so you find the real name and timecode you look up where in like a big folder all the red files are you find the red file create a new new set the time codes make sure that the read in and read out is correctly um you make sure that you know you save the script correctly you make sure that you set the color spaces correctly everything just has to be set up and that took like five to ten minutes just to set every single shot up and if it's like you just need to like like do a clean frame like a freeze frame that you need to fix something like that it just takes a minute to fix the shop and it takes 10 minutes to to go through it and i had seen some fx phd tutorials specifically regarding um python at that time so i started out testing if this was something i mean i didn't know that mock python python but i tried i thought maybe i'll just give it a go and so i tried it out and it turned out that it was actually a pretty nice tool to have just for myself and my supervisor came up to me and asked you know i should probably not spend too much time on that stuff rather just you know working on your shots and within like three weeks within three weeks everybody at the studio were using that tool so yeah yeah so that that kind of just started the whole being interested in technical stuff and being interested in in development and being interested in doing first of all python python tools yeah the first thing i did and then i remember seeing the font we had these um these uh they had a 2009 it was a master class on youtube which was like very very technical like usually it's like uh we feature some we show what some people have been doing this feature film and so on uh and so on but this was just like go crazy and see what what's like the limit of what you can do inside of nuke like making crazy uh custom panels for qt and uh re-lighting just using expression notes that was kind of new to me at that point and that really triggered sort of my my interest in trying out you know see what the expression now can do first of all and just generally like computer graphics and at the point where the blank script note was introduced um i was before that i was hacking a lot of things like yeah you know you're not i guess i tried to do a volume render using deep and it was painful it was it was working it was painful and it was really really slow but actually you know actually finally getting into blind script that allows you to do those kind of things that you cannot do with with uh with just uh regular nuke notes that was just it was amazing and i just love having everything inside the compositing environment um not having to go anywhere else just you know yeah you solve yourself like a lot of things by yourself like you are like this swiss uh swiss army knife kind of a thing because you can do so many things inside nuke and it's true it's true uh and you touch a point and i believe it's really important which is the fact of experimenting a lot of people uh that i know they they are kind of afraid of experimenting without even trying to experiment for just for the because they they they put a limit on themselves and they don't even try something that probably they could have solved themselves by just trying and even if if the tryout fails probably that would trigger something in their brains to come up with something different in a different situation so i think it's very important i just wanted to underline that it is both a blessing and a blessing and a curse because sometimes it's like there is this shot and it's i mean i think of it like there is like some solution that could probably take an hour and think of a solution this could probably take like 15 minutes if i do it right and then you spend those 15 minutes oh my god this is not going to work um so sometimes it just it's you create like this magical tool it can just work across every single shot of that type in in a specific sort of shot range yes it's amazing and sometimes it just feels like you've wasted your time but it's i guess the curiosity is just of going through and i mean you you learn a lot trying to tackle small problems i love when people like say that oh my god we have this problem and we cannot figure out how to solve it it's like yeah give me that i have to you know see that's the mind of an engineer isn't it that's what our engineers do i really really really like to go into those and just like uh not going maybe too deep into those uh those topics but just just get like my my feet wet and just figure out okay this how does this work because i mean you can spend your entire life trying to learn just one topic and just being like that jack of all trades master of none just knowing a bit about everything without going too deep then you can sort of okay i can use the bit from here and a bit from here and a bit from here and then like combine it all and that's kind of my strength i guess yeah yeah not being too too much down into one like you know a little bit like a lot of boxes to pick from when you when i do my things which you know that opens like a lot of possibilities uh for for ss compositors because a lot of time uh what we do is solving problems so if you have you know multiple solutions for uh sometimes the same problem uh depending on the situation one can work in and not the other so i think that's super important uh for sure uh and actually um as i said uh when we're starting this conversation um i i personally started paying more attention around that time that you started developing that um uh clouds in your in your blog and i was like man is this season this is compositing this is a nuke right i was like you know i have to know how to do that and then i try it for a while and uh and i'm really normally i i don't let uh i don't let go a lot of things that i put myself into and there even though you know a lot of times i want to because it's been you know in some situations it's too painful to to just keep going and keep going on something that is not going anywhere and normally i don't yeah exactly i don't i don't uh let go of that but in this time i was like i don't have time for this i i really don't i really don't and i and i let it go but can you guide us briefly without being like too technical how do you come up with uh with creating vdp kind of a situation inside nuke on that example specifically yeah i mean the whole thing about sort of getting inspiration first of all was like playing assassin's creed yeah this consecutive suite unity and it had its beautiful light shafts and volume light stuff like that and i really wanted to know how how they did that first of all but also how we can recreate that inside the new because uh volumes usually takes a long time to render so really cool to have something that works a lot quicker and i was quite jealous that like video games doing this stuff in real time so actually um what i did at first is actually a bit something to do with the uh you had this week so i'm not sure if i should to the extent of what you can share to the extent without disclosing without disclosing yeah but i i was having this thing by by using the scanline reader to do this um uh to sort of do the groundwork for the volume render it was kind of setting the boundaries for sort of where is the box located like i get the point positions of the box itself and then um it's just about you know it might sound difficult but in my mind it's not very easy but just like shooting array from like the position of the camera and then just i mean you have like a vector from the camera and it shoots out and checks if there's anything it hits a long array and if you have like a volume noise so you have uh like the distance to a sphere or distance to a certain point in space you can like calculate how much density you you run through um yeah it's like the principles of a dot product basically that's what you're saying it's and the base coat is so so simple i mean it's my question is actually not so much on that front it's more about like the volumetric noise that you come up with that's what uh what uh what at that time cracked me up well honestly i i was like okay i can use a you know what's that the cms pattern to to generate something like a a cloud like that but um and and and then when i was reading it that was like i think i think that's the kind of the the way that you went through right with the cms pattern wasn't it yeah exactly because i mean the cms test pattern is essentially just like a a lattice uh 3d cube right um and you can with the expression though like say fbm and then you can say x y and z position and then your legendary uk and your uh okay got it got it um so if that xyz position if you just put in the the lattice red green and blue um they'll basically fill that in with noise so that's ah cool nice all right um mystery solved and of course yeah and then the issue because then you have a 3d noise but you really really want a 40 noise because you want to be able to evolve the noise so rather than just having a static noise you want to be able to have it move a bit yeah um so that's usually where you need like 40 knots and nuke doesn't come with a 40 noise by default you can like do some interpolation of two uh 2d noise to create 40 noise uh well but maybe maybe with an expression creating noise like that you can animate the seed as well no but the seed issues i mean the the seed usually is the c position so i mean in normal 2d noise you have the x and y and the c position ah the z that is that is the got it you got it right yeah um so yeah all right cool all right well yeah i didn't get that far like i said uh because uh because at the time i was uh i was doing supervision as well that's when i came up with that and i was like man this would solve uh i would like to try this for a bunch of shots that i have here uh for my team but i didn't get the time to to dedicate myself to that and then i let it go and which is something that is not very common for me because a lot of times even though i really want to let it go because it's taking too much of my time and of my dreams and you know all of that because that's that kind of thing sticks in your brain and they you know it doesn't it doesn't leave you there you know what i mean yeah and i'm sure you have the same feeling with a lot of thoughts i usually take that stuff with me home because i know man those kind of those kind of challenges i just need to like spend some more time on it and if there's no time for it at work i'll uh figure out to do it yeah at home because i mean usually like when i get those problems i just have to like dig deep into them because it's just uh it's just so gratifying to me it is it is it finds solutions yeah these kind of things and at the same time it's a bit annoying when you like come to like a complete stop where you cannot i mean you you don't you cannot find a solution or something like that or it's not possible inside of nuke that's a bit of a let down but at that time usually something else comes along and you're like ah there's all yeah that's exactly and i think i've shared this uh here many times uh a lot of times i want to quit because of the reasons that that and we've all been there because it's too painfully taking too much of your time he's taking too much of your dreams he's taking too much on your family time and all that stuff because that that stuff sticks in your brain and it doesn't you know it lives there for forever until you solve the problem um but normally when you think there's no solution this is a message that i want to pass to everyone especially the ones uh and more and more i i i know more people that want to learn python for example which i think it's a great um a great thing to to do in these times uh during these times because these times it's all about preparation for what's coming and you know it's about the time on investment of on ourselves and uh but usually when that kind of feeling hits of not being possible to solve there's this tiny door or this tiny light that you can see at the end of the tunnel and then you can dig deeper and deeper and deeper and then you go there you go you find the solution after a while so this happens quite often to me and probably happens to you i think it happens this is a common thing from from everybody that i've that developed tools uh this happens to a lot of people uh from my experience but that thing is just one of the other thing is not just not being able to find the right solution the other thing is just thinking that it's not good enough right you run into that one issue you have like fairly good like station for for solution but you run into like a small problem and you're constantly thinking oh my god this is not good enough like the valley of this despair what's it called it's just like ah i fall into that like every time i develop a tool it's like i run into that situation where oh my god this is not good and sometimes but it's it's something so small like you said it's something so small within the greater picture of what we're trying to develop but that thing is it gets in the way of of everything of the outcome of what you and it's super annoying it's really really annoying all right cool so i was about to to to ask you uh because of all you know your profile these days i'm sure you've been invited to go everywhere in the world and i think to work in every company pretty much from smaller companies to the big boys uh i think a few years ago i think i will correct me if i'm wrong but i think i remember you posting an image of an invitation from weta in which you have to say no or something like that right this was a long time ago so as you can see i've been stalking you for all of these years it was actually it was quite interesting because i mean back when i started you know it i started out you know i had a quite fun with uh for the my last um my last job but the thing is at some point like our chief um supervisor our main supervisor was fired and there was like a bad mood in the department i just i wanted to get you know away i wanted to get go somewhere else or something like that but i didn't have a reel i didn't have anything and i was like looking around i mean how are you going to promote yourself if you don't have a reel and you you're nobody and nobody knows about you um and i thought okay maybe i should learn like cinema 4d and this and that and you know a bunch of different things so i could like make a reel for myself um and i saw that a lot of people who i knew in the industry were people who not necessarily had the real um but they were just you know present in social media had a blog or they had us on social media or anything like that and it was usually those kind of people who like i know their name and i knew that their small i can on the forum i know you know that was the people who i knew so i thought maybe you know sharing whatever i was you know because i was doing a lot of like small development stuff at that time um and maybe someone would think that that was interesting so i started sharing that stuff and i think it was about the time when i released the demo of stigt uh you know i got a first major you know invitation to come and work at like a major studio and you know when the first thing come around you're like you just you're trying everything you can to get that stuff i mean you you really want to go like how to get to the uk i mean should i like take my girlfriend with me and what about family and kids and all that stuff right it's uh it's quite crazy that first time and then it's like okay i can't do this it's not possible i'm like too rooted in denmark so it's it wouldn't be possible for me to to like move to another country or something like that um so when they just start coming in it's like because you feel so bad now you don't want to burn any bridges and you don't want to sound like a complete like i'm sorry no uh right now you really want i mean you you really want to to to like have the contact with people like so that was actually pretty hard to like find a good way to say no to people i can't imagine but i applaud you for that because uh this decisions uh are pretty difficult especially you know when we have so much passion about the craft that we do and then the big boys um come and knock on your door and they have to say for for any reason you have to say no but you still you still keep going and that's what you've been uh you've been you've been doing ever since uh you're still in denmark of course the industry in denmark uh it's it's smaller in comparison with the uk or uh you know and i just mentioned weta of course it's one of the biggest companies uh that we have in our industry so i applaud you for that because you know that doesn't i don't think weakens your position at all as you were uh kind of alluding at the moment like not being able to say yes and don't don't want to sound like a dick or anything like that but all in all i think that strength strengthens your position uh to be honest with you because you're you're the master of your faith you you you go where you want to go you still keep doing your stuff and the rest i mean they can't keep the knocking on your door until you you feel like uh you're ready i guess yeah yeah right yeah but i applaud you for that because i remember uh but this this was a true story right this sweater situation that i that i just mentioned right yeah yeah exactly i mean that was sort of i i had like a list of places that i wanted to go i was like on the sort of the top right so so that was like that was yeah that was a big one and it was it's so strange like i said it's so hard to say no but i still i i i'm still i'm in good contact with many of those people who have uh you know who have asked me for for precision at some point so um i i guess i've i have not been sounding like no i don't know no no i would say quite the opposite i would say quite the opposite uh to be honest with you because the you know i think that triggers even more interest if anything i'll be honest that's my take on it but uh yeah i applaud you for that because a lot of times it's very difficult so you you decided for for you know your own reasons uh to stay in denmark and you just mentioned uh the the fact that you changed companies at that time uh so what what's your what's your job uh like these days is it more about like film tv commercials it's a mix of everything before last position was a bit of everything i did uh i did motion grip design as well so design and feature film and some tv series but now we mainly do tv series and feature films we do most of the danish at least yeah i guess most of the laning feature films uh and we do a lot of different tv series we have done a bit for netflix here recently um okay which is quite nice that's usually it they're they're quite nice those projects because uh like they're a bit more uh like you know things with the things that blow up and uh you know everywhere and stuff like that i really like to to make something like if you do a lot of like cleanup work for a lot of time it's nice to have something where i can actually do something oh yes of course yeah yeah that's really cool uh but on that you know i i also have that thing with just helping out in the different departments because i'm sort of the bridge between sort of the uh the editorial department i guess from time to time and the viewers department and also like the bridge between the fairfax department and the grading department because they have a bit of knowledge about everywhere so so i'm like a good person to like be that the technical bridge um and talk to people all the way from like from the ingest part all the way down to the finishing delivery um so well that that that opens up a lot of uh ideas because the the needs are so different and uh you have to eat right exactly and it's so interesting to like some of the things that we're working with like uh like we were doing some small research projects some d alert on deep learning and i was like oh my god we could use it on the editorial apartment because that would be really awesome like there's so many things where you can yeah yeah yeah you can see that yeah like why do you waste that so much time doing this stuff we could like fix this thing and yeah so yeah okay cool let me just let me just uh remind people uh because they've been really quiet now i'm sure it's because they're so interested in in our conversation uh but uh guys if you have questions please uh post them and i'll be picking them at some point uh all right so don't uh i know that you wanna pay attention and please by all means please keep doing that but if you have questions please post them online so i think now it's time now to maybe talk about the point render uh that uh everybody knows at this point and that's that's how you you became uh like so well known right because uh but first of all because before we enter into that it's point render slash higgs right and and i've had some people asking uh what's what's with this name is it this name or is it the other name i i think for myself i always in my mind i always call it higgs because it's so much easier uh you know what i mean it's easier to remember but uh do you want to clean that up a bit yeah that was sort of the bad part you know bet on my part i guess because the way that i'm marketing it omar did it i did that promo video where i put hicks in the end like a big hex and that was kind of like telling that that tool was called hex uh the thing is it's actually my company that's called hex and the tool is called point render but point render i mean that's such a silly name but it just i had the name pointer and it the thing is developing tools like coming up with a name is freaking hard it's really really hard to come up with a cool name and something that sticks and when you sit around with that point window name for so long internally and you have to figure out a name like what should be calling something fancy and you just end up i can't find any good name for it just point render um and then people hear hicks and it's probably okay that thing is called hicks and so when people start writing articles about it and you know say that it's called hicks as well i guess at this point i have to to rename the company and then do something like that in order to uh okay so it's point trender right it's it's point breaker exactly okay it's called point brenda yeah all right cool um so so my next tool is going to be like hicks missed which is okay so i guess that's going to clear it up yeah okay i wanna call thank you because i want to talk about that as well uh okay so the higgs is the name of the company but the actual name of the tool is point render so uh thank you for cleaning that up because i think some people have some subnets about that uh and um and that's so the i've tried it uh once in a while uh i have to be honest it's something that it's not something that um i use every day uh because you know especially for the special occasions like exactly those special effects like yeah exactly um but and i want to talk about some of the credit criticism that i've heard so far not criticism but some of the limitations that people talk about and i would like to address that uh if if you wanted if you can but you just mentioned that the higgs is the name of the company right so you have to set up a name of a company pretty much to sell that uh the tool and it's not a tool it's a tool set that that you have and you came up with a very competitive price so all the companies pretty much bought it right uh do you want to guide us a little bit of on on that journey because this starting out on something that you do you did for yourself trying out some things and then he came up it exploded kind of uh it was like an explosion kind of situation right it was yeah exactly i sort of had this and there are a few things that i really wanted to create that sort of tools and the problem was that it was a bit scary for me like creating a company and you know i thought you know maybe i saw three copies of the tool and then the like extra stuff i need to put in to like create the company get an account and you know figure out how to do the extra tag stuff how to do the bat and there's a lot of stuff that you need to go through in order to get this stuff working um and i was just afraid that that would suck out the sort of the enjoyment i'm actually working with projects yeah so i was actually not i didn't feel like doing it uh but there was one of the projects that you know it was not something that i planned on selling it's something i plan to put on new pedia but i just i couldn't find any good use for it you know it was quite fun to play around with it was this infrared emulation tool that allowed you to i don't know if you've ever seen infrared photos before i don't think the thing where if you take a photo with like uh infrared cutoff filter on your camera and every everything that's usually green will be completely bright white so if you have like a picture of a forest all the trees and all the leaves and all the grass will just completely like be glowy white looks very surreal um and i did sort of uh a mix of that where everything that glows up becomes very yellow and or very red or very blue and it looks very really amazing like a hue shift but just very fancy algorithm for that all right um and i couldn't there's no one who wants to use that so i developed uh i thought that maybe you know making some lots or something like that would be awesome and then i came across maybe i should try to create an app for it because i mean in an app form that would be really cool and so i created this app you know it turns out it was actually pretty simple to create a iphone app and so i started sharing some photos and videos of that and at some point some some of my friends and family wanted like what's this app that you're using and you know i figured okay maybe i should release this app so i created this thing put it on itunes and you know my friends and family and stuff like that they downloaded it and you know that was a nice thing i didn't earn anything of it like it was like a few bucks something like that not nothing too fancy and then at some point uh some woman started posting photos of it uh oh no and i went into a profile and it turns out that she was doing like she was working for apple and she was doing advertising for apple and we were talking and back and forth and lo and behold like at some point uh she asked if was okay that they did like a promotion piece about my app uh on their the apple instagram yeah of course you said of course yes yeah and so at some point you know apple they posted like uh like a post about it and a story about it and that day you know everything just changed because you know i i my phone literally like mailed it because there was like uh instagram notifications oh my god damn second and yeah at that point i just you know i was earning so much that i couldn't go under the radar at that point right it was literally like months of uh like months salary and like few hours or something like that so it was that was like the good excuse to get that stuff solved right so i uh cool i didn't know that sorry that's um pretty good pretty cool story yeah so i created the company and i got everything up and running and then i could you know add a little bit of funds to like buy a creative cloud subscription so i get like for creating the the videos and stuff like that um and then there's you know absolutely no excuse to uh not create the the new tools as well so i just started to get i decided to just go ahead and create sort of the website and everything for it and really work on finishing uh the tool itself and i got a good help from um i don't know if you know las vegas he previously worked at the foundry he was doing like uh he's doing the small promo videos on wikipedia for like what's his name again do like some of the tool breakdowns last yeah yeah i know i know i know i know he's name yes yeah he does the the tool breakdowns from the pds i know him yeah exactly he he asked if he could do like the the small icons and like the visual identity okay he was like uh yeah sure yeah what what what do you want for it and it's like i don't want anything for it and just you know give me a free copy of the tools and i was like uh are you sure about that i usually don't like people working for free but that's yeah he was absolutely certain and insisted on it so he created the the visual identity all the small icons and stuff like that it was really amazing and of course xavier like a good friend from ireland yeah xavier martin yeah he was helping me since day one like every time i got like a new build of the tool i posted it to him and it's funny when you create tools like that you know you you are the author and you think you know everything about your tools and you post it to someone like him and you get like some amazing screenshot return and it's like how how did you do that yeah because i've been i've been aware of that collaboration with xavier uh i've never met xavier but i know that you have this collaboration with him so for those of you that don't know we're talking about xavier uh martin is an fxcd working currently at ilm and and he's is pretty much your q a qa engineer right is is the guy doing the stress crazy i mean it's just also just the way that he i mean he's a houdini guy which is quite interesting but he still does some new stuff and this new stuff he does is like beyond so i think it's yeah it's cool it's cool a lot of shots that people probably have seen from the tool uh are actually his not all of them but some of them are actually his uh like with the taurus and all that stuff it's uh it is yeah yeah it was like the perfect promo like i'm nobody and there's like someone if usually some companies is like if someone from ireland posts something about something it's it's good enough for them right so having that as sort of a promo piece like on the first day that i guess that drives a lot of sales i guess yeah yeah of course of course but you come up with the so you know such a competitive price that there's really no excuse for people not you know having taken it's a no-brainer really yeah i was actually i was actually you know people were actually forcing me to push it up a bit because you know initially i thought way lower than that um even lower yeah even lower that that was actually uh you know some people actually said that that would be completely stupid uh i think that was actually a good price and i think you know it's general problem i guess you know with uh software licensing this that yeah i mean it is so expensive um especially just like nuke itself is so expensive you have houdini which is extremely expensive um and i think that's um that's usually the turn off when you have like a nice piece of software but you don't end up buying it because yeah it's expensive that's kind of the price thing and the other thing is usually if the price is too low it means that at some point um the developers behind it kind of don't really care about it and then it kind of just dies out like i mean optical flash it's kind of i mean it's get updated like every every year or something like that which is quite unfortunate um so really it has to be something i mean the good thing about doing a blank script thing is that you don't need to maintain it as much i mean i don't need to make a new version for every new version of nuke yeah exactly it stays there yeah and that really does help a lot i mean if i needed to update it for every single workshop new version of nuke i might make to like make a maintenance version of something like that yeah but since in but since it just works on every version of nuke there's no need to do that so i think you know having a good price and uh [Music] you know it might be the single license might be good but the the the site license might need to be a bit i'm trying to figure out like what is the good pricing point that you need to have in order to make that sustainable yeah like if you wanted to have like a full-time job doing that um and the market is actually it was surprisingly big compared to what i actually thought initially i got i was thinking like okay maybe i sell two or three copies of this but yeah it's hundreds and hundreds of copies right so yeah there's no need to worry about that stuff it's just about you know finding the right price for for each of those tiers yeah but again as i said and i told you this even before this conversation um pretty much every company that i've been working with after you release that everyone uh has a copy of it because it's a no-brainer because the price is such a good price that is a no-brainer um and and not only you you come up with such a complete a competitive price you've also took another step of uh complete altruism which is you let the the source codes being an open source i mean that's kind of crazy isn't it because i think you know from myself i learn a lot from from other sources that kind of have open code themselves so for me that just makes so much sense to to bring that on because i mean again i i mean if i were to learn like everything there is to learn about rendering it would take a lot of time so usually it's like i read up on something and there's someone who wrote that just snippet and i take that and i like modified yeah figure out how that should work within sort of the context of my render um and so sometimes i just read through it and try to make something from uh from the ground up but it's you usually take like it's even when you do python tools like on newpedia you take like oh this yeah of course and that thing works perfectly there and it's just like that thing of sharing that on um and there's so little uh i guess um there's a little code blank script code on the net at this point and i just think it would be so beneficial for the industry as a whole if there's for sure there were like more code out there so that was another thing you know i really wanted to to promote this uh well i think that's that's that's kind of awesome no no please go ahead no i mean that's also like a win-win because that means that the foundry like also that they pay more attention to it and work a bit more on it because i mean the last uh nuke update they they did some significant changes to to the blink script framework and that's i mean that's really lovely to see that kind of attention be brought to it because it seems like they were really hesitant to do that before nobody was actually paying attention or or actually taking it as as a viable uh kind of resource to do you know the kind of things that uh you come up with uh and by the fact that now you know there was a person that really took it seriously and pushed the boundary so much uh and the advantages are are are you know in your face of course you know it's it's something that uh i think again it's a no-brainer that they would develop the framework even even further you know yeah but i think i was just i was just about to say that the fact that you left it open source i think it's it's the ultimate altruism attitude that you could have taken and i think everybody all of us should be really thankful for for having people like you in the industry that are willing to share you know um it's not secrets it's all about like knowledge uh because people will say oh this guy knows this secret or that guy knows that secret i mean it's not about it it's all about you know uh diving into uh like with your hands and head and the entire body into something that uh you don't even know what's what will be you know and then it turned out to be quite good and as you just pointed out we all learn with everybody and uh and the fact that you are now giving it back i think you know it's it's quite awesome to see so thank you and like you said like all those there's a lot of shortcomings like there's so much thing so many things that you cannot do when you're like those are some limitations with playing script and that means that a lot of things that you cannot do and so having it open also means that if you like like you say there's some people who find some shortcomings that maybe if they cannot just to be able to mess around with the code maybe they can like create their own versions of the tools yeah which will like aid kind of their sort of experience with the tool itself so yeah yeah yeah exactly uh and and just uh touch the point that uh i alluded in the beginning of our conversation which is some of the created criticism which is a really strong word um but i would like to give give you the opportunity to address that which it is it looks really beautiful uh it's really fast uh and and all that but in the film production type of pipeline um it doesn't give us the control that we require to achieve a certain effect and by myself experimenting with it a little bit yes i understand what people say about that but i think the concept or the starting point it's a completely different one i think it's a great thing for example to achieve very specific things um that you don't even know how they will turn out it's it's it's kind of a surprise so it works really well for for things like mogra motion graphics and stuff like that but on the field environment because it's such a you know a fixed kind of a situation that we have all the time because you know there's too many shots the client a lot of times they don't even know what they want they just want to to look beautiful really and then some of these situations cannot be adopted or some of these looks cannot be adopted on on on a global scale like that right yeah that that's that's the usual problem like you find one look that you need to replicate across multiple shots and they have like different angles and the model is like moved around and stretched and something like that and that means that at some points well might look good from that one direction but it doesn't look good from that direction then there's and specifically the way that it's that it's sort of the way that it's rendering means that there are some shortcomings like in the way that you perceive perspective because everything is like one pixel in size that means that you don't really perceive perspective in the way that you normally do because like some things would like be darker or brighter depending on how far they have from cameras and would be like bigger or smaller and that means that if your thing turn around it looks like you don't know if it's turning one way around or yeah yeah yeah i get very so so that's some of the problems that you end up with uh i mean we there we had some issues as well with uh when when using production uh because we were using it as sort of a hero element um and it was working fine for like ninety percent of the shots and there was like those ten percent wages it completely didn't work because you know you you couldn't get the perspective so we needed to cheat a lot to get that stuff working um but yeah i totally get that's kind of like it is specifically made for these like mograph element like these um i don't know what the what the right term i for them well i don't know either because i'm not a motion graphics guy but but magic a lot of people have been using them for like the magic effects and stuff like that like for for spells and for yeah yeah yeah yeah g blasts and stuff like that so i guess for those things yeah because those things are you know there's there's a ton of reference but references for magical effects but what normally clients want is something that they've never seen before and it's really looks like really complex and all that stuff so for those kind of things i think it works really well uh because every effect can be a slightly different effect um but i mean if you're not asking me to defend you or anything like that but what i can say about that is you know the tool serves the purpose of of why or and yeah of why it was built i mean it was not built take for for taking those those uh challenges it was built for what it does so it's not really criticism um or it shouldn't be criticism by people saying that it's just you know different tools serve different purposes and this tool serves a certain type of purposes you know so uh different tools yeah we all have different tools and and i've been saying this a lot which is you know as compositors especially as a supervisor i always tell to my guys like you have to face yourself as a suici army knife because different problems will require different solutions and sometimes the solution is a good a very the best solution for one problem in your in in a whole sequence but cannot be replicated for other sequences and uh sometimes the other way around but it doesn't look so good so it's like you have to trade you know the good and bad uh and so the tool serves the purpose of why and how it was built that's that's all i can say and that's i mean a lot of that is also on my part like trying to promote it in a way where it tells like in what situations it makes good sense to use it and what's yeah situation that doesn't i mean i've learned a lot through through this i mean this is my first tool so it's like you you constantly learn there's also like the thing about educating people i was quite slow at getting the the first tutorials up because i was making so many changes in the beginning to the tools after releasing them i found all these problems because people were like writing back and i was just like okay i need to fix that i need to fix this um so i figured out if i did the tutorials i would need to redo them like a few months later yeah so i was like okay let me let me just fix these things up and so coming up with tutorials that was a bit slow as well so there's like there's a constant like that thing of you constantly learning about you know the the things that you make and how to improve them and definitely something like that like trying to teach or explain to people in what cases this is really good for and what are sort of the yeah uh usually the shortcomings of the tool because that means that when people want to like create a certain effect they know from the get-go that should they approach it with this tool or shouldn't it be exactly right because that's usually the problem right you had this tool you bought it and you're not sure if it can solve the problem that you're on so yeah yeah you're not really sure um if it's the right tool to to try it out and then you try it out and then there's this one thing that it cannot do and it's like why did i even bother well but the thing i i would say that uh the more people play with a certain tool whether it's this tool or any other tool you know the better they will know the tool when it breaks what it makes uh and how far they can push it so it's the actually the only way of of coming up with the with with that kind of uh approach whether you know in a certain situation i would use this or use that and that's actually the reason and i think i've seen i've said this here in this um show before and that's the actual reason why i normally or very rarely i use tools from from uh uh you know an open source or anything like that because probably i wouldn't understand them to the to the point that i want to understand them so i don't know when they break or when they you know yeah basically when they break so i from the very beginning of my career i started developing my own tools until now and i have a huge tool collection but um and and that's the reason that's the reason but if you want to use somebody else's tools and there's a great tools out there of course yours is one of them of course you know there's no other way to know exactly when it breaks rather than try it as much as you as much as you can you know but again but but i really really love the workflow and i would hope that that that kind of workflow would end up somehow new because that thing of working with images as data like you want to like move the positions up at a great note and then grade it up a bit you want to add some texture to it just multiply it like like a bit of like houdini like the way that you treat data that you can treat data as anything um and i kind of miss that from nuke because the the point where they could do that and where you just treat it's 2d data but if you have a pipe the particle system like it's the particle system and you have your data inside the particle system you cannot add a great node in there you cannot add a ramp or like a custom texture or something um without having it in the the particle emitter node um or now you can actually with the blank script node now you can that's right yeah exactly and but but that kind of way the same with geometry like being able to modify geometry using uh an image something like that just the way of thinking of data and images data and images as like the one one thing yeah that's what i really love about the point runner i guess yeah yeah of course of course uh just touch a point that um it's uh i think it's so important for you you know for people that are watching the show that would like to know more about data and how they can manipulate data and i think the best starting point is to know linear algebra because if you know linear algebra uh you know how cg is is made basically and then that will open up so many doors for you man i mean i mean everybody that is there is watching the show please learn and this is one of the reasons why i picked up the technical highlight of the week as being that very simple paper and it's you can only extract that information if you know at least what a vector is if you don't know what a vector is i mean there's no point but even if you know what a vector is from school or whatever and then you know how to do multiplications and dot products and all that but if you cannot relate that with cg of with what we do and now you can break and manipulate the that kind of um uh you know data uh i mean you wouldn't extract anything like that so there's no other way around there's no easy way out apart from you know reading some books and and do some research yourself because it's the only way it's the only way and if you know linear algebra i mean trust trust me and and i think you can you can agree with me if you know linear algebra and if you know how that can be translated to cg i mean a lot of doors will open in your mind it's amazing and it's just like you save so much time and you don't need to fiddle around with oh this note usually does something like that it's like okay i need that no because that's exactly what i need to fix this problem yeah um so yeah knowing that stuff it's yeah and sometimes and sometimes you hear people uh you know talking about you know whether it's cross product or dot product and they and and then they don't really understand what it is and and why it's so important and what you can do with it so if you know these concepts if you heard about these concepts please really dive into them to know exactly what what they are and how you can visualize them in space because a lot of these times a lot of these things and a lot of times we learn all of these things in school but it's like so generic that you don't even see a single application on how to use them and that's that's a problem yeah that's the problem finally learning what all of this stuff how it actually works yeah it was through comping like yeah why didn't we have like some visual representation of all this kind of man we do because i'm with you on that 200 and if there's a like i'm i'm a very critical guy of of uh the way that i well it's my fault of course but because i wasn't paying attention but if if they would give us like a practical approach of things i mean your interests would change immediately i would say uh but because these things are really easy to visualize in space if you if they really want to to show you that you know and actually that reminds me of something that uh recently maybe i will post this in um in a few weeks in here why not uh i just built the tool very simple thing in which you can draw vectors in space inside of the 3d spacing nuke that can be rendered into 2d so you can place vectors any way you want you can know the cross product you can know the dot product and you can visualize in space how these things react with each other so uh we'll see if i if i make it available for everyone here i normally don't share my my tools publicly but i'm a bit of shame that uh you just mentioned that you you you well it's an open source kind of a situation that you have there and and i'm not saying myself so maybe i will share this one with with the viewers because i think it helps uh or should help everyone um to understand how light works or cg overall works uh in a such a much better way so let's see what uh people are asking i think there's some things in here uh let's see if this is a a question so josiah curiosity is the upcoming maze tool yeah we haven't talked about that is it the upcoming misstool uh and on steroids version of spot flare or something completely new the images you've posted about this looks awesome i was about to ask you that and i forgot because you've been teasing this new tool for maybe a couple of weeks or so do you want to talk about about that a bit it's interesting with the spot flat thing because i mean i started up with spot flare and then i did the volume tool and then the data point right here but i finished point render first and now i'm doing the uh render and then i'm doing the the spot fly in the end so spot flyer and the miss tool is completely different um spotlight is like a lens flare generator thing uh so we're working on that uh but the mist yeah that's kind of going back to that thing with the assassin's creed unity with all the amazing guard race you know i really really wanted to create like a way to do proper volumes inside of nuke i started out with the same approach that um oh boy that other volume render that came out uh a bit later um oh what's his name what's his name it's a bit no no no no it's uh it's matthew i don't know uh his site is called gizmos and games uh i think i can come across with it yeah it's really cool he also shares a lot of stuff he's really amazing guy um that was kind of the same approach like doing like uh that that cms test pattern like volumes oh yeah now it's for the new tool it's like completely free so the camera can go anywhere and that's like volumes over there so it's like the idea of doing volume lights like being able to set like some spotlights here and like a light here and having it all sort of interact with a volume where there's like some sort of density and there's some scattering of the light and um a bit gamey in the look but that's kind of the thing you know you can do a lot of things inside a advanced render but you have to pay with the time it takes to render so the approach here is just having something that renders very fast fast yeah it still looks fairly i mean it it looks quite funky i think so i would i would um back to differ like i don't think from what you've you've posted i don't think it looks gamey looks sci-fi that's what it looks right yeah if sci-fi is gaming all right i'll take it like like when you do those kind of tools you really have to like push the thing up to 11 right so it's just everything is just completely foggy uh but but yeah so yes it's not necessarily as realistic as having something go through like eddie or something where it's much more about you know creating something that's realistic this thing is much more about getting something out quick um beautifully quick and beautiful you want a fatter faster iteration time um yeah yeah i really love quick and beautiful real time since i've been um yeah cool all right cool thank you for for for the the highlight um what is you about because i was about to to forget to ask that uh actually about your upcoming tool do you have any dates by the way uh on are you about to release that is it going to be released in the same way as as the point render actually yeah it's going to be the same way and everything the thing is you know it's it's uh where the point render is the cool thing about point render is easy for me to extend so it's like you have your lights kind of the geometry and then you have the radar itself there's no steps in between uh that also means that it's simple for me to to develop so it's almost done um actually i maybe got some maybe i'm going to get some help from some guys at beta testing it up and stuff so i guess that's kind of the good way of of getting uh like some suggesting people all right cool that's good and the best it's kind of like in the uh completely opposite of what we're doing like instead of a low end like smaller departments so it's good to have that kind of feedback kind of how it fits in like a bigger more structured pipeline yeah yeah cool all right thank you very much once again uh so people are asking for the note fights so unless people some other people by the way ma mas agreed to do this so that's going to happen but i just don't want to ask anyone if there's any other question if if there's any other question please keep them coming and then probably going to address like one or two uh at the end uh and uh and that will be it okay so we're gonna do the the the usual note fight uh are you ready yes yeah all right let's do the note fight right now [Music] okay the counter is on all right so all right let's start with the simple one all right chromatic aberration chromatic aberration we have that tool it worked what's it called the problem it's actually just called chromatic aberration uh i don't actually remember who created it uh okay that's a really good question but but it's it's like this camera it's just called chromatic aberration on our pipeline yeah okay let's skip that one yeah refraction refraction can be a tool let me just uh i would probably do that myself yeah just you know do a bit of simple like some st map stuff and uh like the eye distort and do a bit of blur to to get like some some uh some softness all right depending on kind of what update cool uh the spill what's your favorite the spill process or this peeler you know yeah i mean key light is always good i'm with you on that 100 yeah all right neutral grades do you use anything special for neutral grades so what neutral grades no neutral grades i actually have this personal tool that i've developed for like completely flattening the image reducing everything just making sure that everything is in range um i mean something that i've developed myself i could probably put it on wikipedia i guess uh cool i think a lot of people would like that all right d flickering d flicker i think yeah i mean depending on kind of the situation because usually when it's like a small segmented part i usually use a bit of uh um like a vector generator stuff yeah it's like generating vectors from some of the previous frames and trying to work out a medium yeah upcoming frames and then just sorting them together um to create like a deflector oh nice one and then some time blur nice one uh dry to wet dry to wet that's actually a good question um [Music] kind of depends on the challenge there's the usual thing of like keying out the highlights and blowing those out but i was just have so many issues like so many times where that didn't work so yeah it's probably something about buying the highlights and trying to like be eroding some of the dark parts okay cool reflections that's reflections that's actually that's one thing that we did with all the time that would be nice to have like uh like one click solution um but that's that's usually for me like reflections on hard circles that's usually like manual labor like replaced and yeah but it's something i really really want to find a good solution for okay i guess deep learning could be a good one there you go cool uh matting grain matching grain yeah uh usually i guess that's kind of the a lot of a manufacturing process we have dwelt a bit into that at work with like doing automatic grain matching uh as sort of a tool but usually that's for me also just like like looking at the highlights in the past and we use that screen for the brightness so yeah this is the second time that has been mentioned yeah yes quite amazing cool all right last one all right yeah crowds wow yeah i mean yeah the particle system wow it can be really frustrating to work with from time to time you know when you just set up like a good deal of cards and you uh you know that they've done a few good tutorials as well uh the foundry and but it's uh with the new controls of the big script there's [Laughter] yeah all right that was a good one that was a good one thank you thank you it's very interesting i really i really really like that new uh bling script part uh that they're added to because there are so many things it was there was so much potential inside of that that the the particle system itself and there's just so many times where you hit the wall and you just couldn't push it any further because there's like rotation was bound to the velocity of the particle so if the particle wasn't moving you couldn't rotate it it was like why um so finally having that kind of full control over the particle system it's so amazing yeah cool that was a real that was a really nice uh nice one and it's uh the reason let me just remind everyone that he's probably new to the show the reason i i do the note fight it was out of fun really uh we started you know as a not as an official thing or anything it was just for fun and then people really liked it and it's uh the intention i guess at this point is to know different ways of achieving the same the same things and that's uh that's i think really important especially for new people that are maybe kind of biased just because the way they they you know they learn certain things that they they think there's only one way of doing things and it's actually the opposite especially in compositing we fake things all the time so this is a you know a way to for you to for all of you to know that that's the the actual the case and everybody works uh differently and adopt different solutions for the same kind of situations all right cool uh let's see if there's any any less questions uh too cool and much fun cool nice to to hear that nice to see that for every question mass would probably develop something himself yeah i couldn't do for example to do it fight myself because i think for all and actually probably all of those things i i have tools that do that uh kind of thing probably i would i would that's similar similar to the way that you that you did yourself yeah so yeah it was fine do we use any tools that we don't have in our i like our own arsenal of tools because i mean like like you say it's such a good way for people to like like a grain node you i mean if the people use uh grain master something that's great that could be interesting right so yeah it's a good way for people to to learn about something new yeah uh yes but don't get me wrong i i once in a while it's it's rare i have to say it's very rare and people that are on this show at the moment have been working with me for the past years or something know that this is true but it's also true that sometimes i i use uh somebody else's tools just because you know it's quicker it's already something that it's you know simple enough for me not to be worried about whether or not it's gonna break uh and actually one of them i just remember it's one of your tools uh that it's uh one of the very first ones which is the spot flare that someone mentioned yeah just because you know you know those strickenness that that the tool gives you and i think it's probably one of the first versions if not the first version really uh just because you know it's something simple looks good does the job carry on and use it you know what i mean so there's actually one exception which is one of your tools uh but other than that i normally use my own uh for the reason that i just explained well once again mass thank you very much uh i learned a lot i learned not to do up to mention your name which a lot of people think it's maths but it's not it's mass yeah yeah right there you go that's how about actually there you go you see a very it was similar it was not exactly the same all right listen uh once again thank you very much and um i hope you return at some point uh for for the time that this show will uh will last for i don't know i think i want this to the show that the last four yeah it's amazing i really like that you take your time and do this stuff because yeah i really i mean generally there's people who like the whole community like all of the people contribute it's so fantastic there's also like all the blogs and and you know i really would love for someone to like make a list of all the different like personal websites of people who actually have like community blocks because like i said there are so many times when you like stumble upon something like somewhere and you can't really remember where it was yeah well i keep i keep my own list i have to say yeah yeah i give away like a public list of something yeah something like that maybe maybe why not maybe why not one day uh well i can share mine why not one one of these days well thank you once again mata i will take more of your time people should be very thankful for all your developments and for your contribution to the industry it's been really really amazing and such an altruistic kind of attitude that you have all around so thank you once again for myself i'm i'm thanking you personally and i think everybody should do the same uh thank you once again i'm sorry for the glitch in the beginning it was actually my fault i thought it was not but it was actually the fact that the machine just just needed a good old restart anyway so thank you once again mars and thank you for your patience and uh hope hopefully um we catch up with each other at some point uh in the future this time in person maybe why not when this whole pandemic that would be cool right uh please stay on so we can have like a final chat between us too this is uh you know as i said uh last time one of the perks of being the host of the show i can do extended i can have extended conversations with the guests but thank you everyone to that watch this one i hope you liked it and uh i'll see each other uh next week don't forget the tech challenge this week i'm gonna be posting um this on discord channel must probably will join the discord channel as well and i have one thing to disclose to you guys okay i'll just remember now the there's actually a connection between the tech challenge and our guests this uh this week that's the only thing that i'm gonna say all right that's the only thing i'm gonna say so take care guys and see you next week alright [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: Comp Lair

Views: 1,595

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: qW7FrnTl8Jo

Length: 86min 57sec (5217 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 18 2020