Hugo Deconstructs - Rival’s Kingdom Matte Painting - Nuke Compositing - Tutorial - 4K

everyone and welcome to another video of you ghosts asked my name is Lou Gedda and today i am bringing you another disc instruction video of visual effects today I'm going to dis construct a shot from a cinematic that I worked on a couple of years ago for fire dot smoke this was a cinematic for rival kingdoms for a game created by the company called space ape and it was a video game for iOS and Android devices at that time we worked on the visual effects and now the shot that I'm going to bring to the age for this construction is short 240 which is what we call the main character which is called Verna and it's a matte painting so today it's mostly about how to set up the math painting on compositing but first of all let me give a shout out to the math painter that created this table slat painting so if you guys want to check out his work you can go to Vimeo and you can go to check out the work of even Lindfors and he was the great matte painter that was behind this project and so have a look at his compositing wheel at what he's done the past year or so and use a compositor in sweden at the moment and also have a look at is matte painting real as well at campus i twelve even was one of my students a few years ago so very proud to use one of these matte paintings on my video so as you can see this is Photoshop and the reason I'm in Photoshop today is because I just wanted to show you a few things to keep in mind when you want to use a matte painting for a shot like this so first of all you have to be somewhat organized and this is something that even was very good at basically labeling all the layers and reason for that is because when you when you extract it in Nuuk use a shuffle and you want to know what you're doing also you want to be careful with what you have in terms of visual effects inside the layers so for example if you have very complex effects and they're not raised to rise layers they might not show up in Nuuk only laser eyes effects and certain effects are possible I don't know exactly the list of what everything is possible or not but I have in the past had a lot of issues with math paintings so as you can see this is a math painting of a very big mountain II and section with a lot of snow and I did requested for even to make the math painting as flat as possible because we wanted to have what a range for color collection since Photoshop doesn't really have a linear color space you can't really work with dynamic range very easily and also I wanted to use the Photoshop directly as you can see here we have several layers we I can start from from I'm actually going to just switch off everything here so I can show you how this was built of course keep in mind that this last painting is a simplified version of what even did back then because I did have to ask him to simplify certain things as wise you want to be able to extract them in Nuuk so as you can see we started off with a lot of sky which on inside it was like merging a lot of skies and photos then we had the Far mountains which was created by a lot of photos of mountains as well and the painting then we had he even though a few more mountains on the foreground and just created one of the things that I did request the math painter was to create to be the math painting from the back to the front it just so that it's easier to organize and so we come and start you have to I'm sorry you have to excuse my voice because I am under the weather and I have a cold at the moment so I'm sorry about the voice that I'm having at the moment so I'm already warning you about that if you hear some of these weird noises coming out of me today but unfortunately I got a cold in here you can see that you get the mountains they come in then we have a bit of fog as a layer then we have some more big mountains and a valley on the front which we're gonna ultimately it would have been a projection most likely then we have some more fog and then more background mountains more middle ground mountains middle ground mountains and then we start having a couple of very very foreground mountains now the most foreground mountains then have of course a lot of color correction to be placed inside this my painting then we have the most foreground Mouse painting which of course also has quite a lot of my painting and then a layer of fog on top that you can use or not use so this was how even back then organized the work on Photoshop let's leave Photoshop for the moment and just go into nuke and so that I can show you how this was then set up now inside of nuke as you know you can this is the script the actual production script that we used it's not a very big script it's you know simple enough and as you can see here on the top we start with a matte painting which is version 9 which was the Photoshop file that we had and then as you can see we slowly maturely dis construct every single layer and do a bit of color correction for each of them and then of course go into a 3d system and so that we can actually use it as a projection of course you know that the photo sure that nuke and Photoshop do have function so if you go here to the read node of the Photoshop there is a button here which is called breakout layers and so the breakout layers is very very useful when you move just want to do a 2d math painting if you want to do a 3d map painting it's a bit more difficult so for example if I press break out layers you can see that nuke tries it's best to recreate this structure that was in Photoshop and this is why it was so important to keep the names as you can see the names continue on backdrops the only thing I don't like about this is that they are so so close together so there's really no space and they're always using this new node called Photoshop merge now in a way this is a great way to have a 2d matte painting but if you want to put these on cards or in geometry becomes a bit of a pain because you have to kind of manually move everything out and but you know just wanted to show you and as you can see if I compare my original life painting which is this one and then I compare the result of this merging as you can see it didn't match exactly and most likely it has to do with maybe some merges and pre multiplications that we changed as you can see there's a mask being involved so you would have to go and through this structure and just try to find out what the issue was now just showing you this to show you because in reality what I ended up doing doing was dealing with this matte painting like if it was a full CD winner as you can see coming from Photoshop you have all the layers and these are the typical layers that you would find on a CD render like an e XR render so you see labeling again is a very important matter here now of course there are some limitations in Nuuk when you look at things through this view it doesn't show you a pre-multiplied image you have to press the a button to see the Alpha Channel and it's quite funny that when you press the a button you can kind of see some of the club's you work of painting that usually math painters do which is okay we can remove these things it's not a big deal but a lot of times there's a lot of simples perón see issues and these things are usually doubt done because of you know Photoshop artists usually don't know how new copyrights and they don't really look at there are subtitles it's I think looking at alpha channels is something that only compositors in Nuuk and infusion and shake really started to do when you work in Photoshop on that respected oh would you look at the Alpha Channel maybe that's a video someday but it's it's something really interesting when I start talking and teaching people that come from Photoshop and After Effects anyway I digress so let's continue looking at to this construction at this so I starts with the math painting and as you can see I first off start like basically shuffling everything so I've made it like a little structure using dogs so that I could shuffle one stream the other stray in the other stream the other stream of the stream so let's start with the top so I start with a sky so I start by shuffling the sky and I do remove all the basically remove all the other layers so that I only have the sky I do a crop of course for so that it becomes a bit faster a little bit of Glade another grade and then do a pre multiplication on the other hand there's also a bit of grading happening on the side I do for multiplication then I mix them both so because I wanted to keep a bit more contrast from the sky now that of course went into sky card as you can see here it comes in as a card like that now the absolute result by the end of this would be for you to see this that's the objective is to actually basically have a projection it's not really projections like more like a simple 3d setup of the math painting and if you look at through the camera's perspectives you can kind of see that that's the math painting and all of its parallax now we could have done projection systems and everything for the floor we could have done projections for the mountains but because the camera moves so little there's not enough airlocks to really do that so I don't often do things that are not needed continually on as you can see this guy went to a card now if you continue looking at this side here it's always the same thing we then have the mountains then we crop them we grade them and then we kind of plus them with the sky and then we pre multiply them to have just the mountains now the reason I pre multiplying them with the sky is because I want to keep a bit of the haziness of the sky this was something that in photoshop was much easy to do so I use a bit of the sky pre multiply it all off of the mountains and then kind of gray them and merge on top so that you can I get this kind of haziness em of the sky also I have a luma key here pulling up only the highlights of the mountain this is on the other hand basically using a grade node to just push out the highlights of the snow and that's because when when hit by sunlight snow is quite reflective so I wanted to recover some of that loss and of course we multiply it all together and then of course put it on a card now this process will be the same on every single piece that we have here so again same thing here for mountains we have these are mountains here do a little correction we do the grading I merge it with the sky so we can get some of the fogginess and especially some of the merging so that the sky looks like it actually merged together because it's very difficult on the 3d system to make some things is on top but also behind and without using deep compositing and because this is a matte painting Photoshop you know you can't really do that so so I basically merge it together then pre-multiply it just like I did before and then merge it back again so this means that I have the sky I and promote the sky I use the Alpha channel of the mountains to then cut the sky and then I merge it together and this merging will just give me the haziness of the mountains and then of course I do a bit of grazing like I did on the other mountains I basically use the mountains do a bit of a key to pull up the highlight from the mountains and then use this as my mask to bring back highlights on the mountain so as you can see now we have the snow all back in and then last but not least the pre-multiplication and now you can see we have the mountains with the haziness and sky and still all the brightness of the actual snow as well this then of course goes all into a card just like that and don't forget that all of these things continue to be set on cards and then they get merged inside scenes in the 3d system so that you have progressively all the layers layer by layer and again I am like I can Photoshop I start from the back and work my way to the front after I do all of this to every single layer here which is always the same process by the end of it I should be getting this so this is now my matte painting completely organized in 3d so that when I move my camera forward and backwards or sideways I have a bit of parallax now from this moment on I start doing other things and so in here I have a bit of a fog layer so this is basically just a little layer that I have laid using a radial blur and a noise this is nothing more than a noise operator the noise operator the noise operator is animated and so that it has a bit of light to it and then I'm merging it with a stencil so I have a bit less hole on the back and then I use it as a card and then I put it on my treated system and this goes to the front of the mask painting so basically this is just giving me a bit of atmospheric layers on top I do the same thing with all these three here so I have a map basically this is a render from my absence no you don't need to do Maya to do this you can use stock footage of course and I multiplied it a bit and then of course put it on a card then goes in here to this piece of snow as well and that piece is smell all these or stock footage and CG renders of snow and then they all get put and this is sorry for last but not least this one is not a CG render this is actually a piece of stock footage which and unfortunately has fields but doesn't really matter I'm dissolving it in and using field select to remove the fields of the footage and then I merge it together so that I could remove create a sense of storm now all these cards get combined on the scene and then they get put in this scene so as you can see here on the front I have some snow on the very front foreground then I have some snow on the background as well so I am trying to make a sense of depth with all the slow then this all goes into this scanline render and of course this will produce this here so I put my final camera you can clearly see that this is what I see from the 3d system and from the 2d system I see my fully matte painting all organized and all ready to go and now from this moment on I'm also bringing in a bit of the actual snow back so using a luma key just to bring in the highlights of the snow in here I have a volume ray this volume ray is just a little hint of volumetric light it comes in on the side of the image just to give it a bit of sense that there's a lot of snow coming so I just use that volume right there and then on this side here I have yet more snow this time not on 3d and these are just 2d layers that they are all kind of merged together and they together all do this they do just like a very subtle snow dropping on the very very front of the lens and and then this gets merged together on top of my map writing and then and after that I put a bit more snow on the sides and this is from a fog layer that partic like basically this is a live-action plate the fog which I basically use to just ramp up the atmosphere as the scene so it's always about subtlety so and also it gives a sense of movement into the image which is always good you might be thinking of it this almost doesn't affect anything but if you take it away you'll notice that it's not there so and then last but not least i merge the foreground mountains on it so now from here I have a bit of colour correction just a little bit more yet a little bit more on the sides especially because I want to create a sense that there's a lot of scale and Momentis into the scene yet another bit of colour correction all of them using - rohtul local shapes on the sides and local shapes on the middle here and I have a vertical correction in the middle to create a bit more light before the CG is put in and then of course I put in the CG you've seen many of my tutorials already so you probably there's no mystery here the CG is laid like I usually always do them I start with shuffling in all the CG so this is the raw view of the raw Arlo blender we got this is the actual model from the developer so the games developer gave is the model to use then of course we rendered it with all the different passes we have the diffuse passes we have the emission passes we have the specular the indirect specular and of course with subsurface scattering but it's can we have some of course OCC we have some depth pass normal pass position pass usually pass I have in indirect issues comes in the direct specular now director specular has a bit of color correction I do yet another color correction just get some specular highlights coming in more color correction all of them with some some grade nodes using subtractors and some wrote those and then some more color correction so that it gets merged on top so as you can see this just gives me like a sense of shine on top of the VCG then I put the indirect and then of course I put the emission the emission of course has a bit of a glow so that it gets merged on top of the axe that it basically diffuses a bit inside the axe and then sort of scattering which is the skin tone on her then from here I have a bit of a snow thing so this is something just to give it a bit of detail this is something that couldn't be achieved in 3d because we ran out of time so I basically shuffled the UV pass I use some some random frost layer and then using the FD map I can create the frost layer using the URIs of the character this is care force uses a mask emerged and it's all about settled that's luckily you can see it merges just ever so slightly on top of everything so that you sense that she is getting frosted by all this snow again I would highly recommend to do this in CG but we couldn't do it because we ran out of time then I have some color correction overhaul using the ambient occlusion pass I removed a bit of saturation put a bit of fog on top of her which she can merge a bit better and then and I have yet a bit more grade a bit more color correction a bit more grade and and a bit more fog this time to kind of you see I use the depth pass I invert that pass use it as a mask to just give a sense that she's a bit engulfed on fog and then I finally do a pre multiplication then I have my axis which I'm doing it separately because I want to control the glow so I have one big glow which is much larger and one very small globe which is much more powerful they both get merged together and grade it down and up and then they get screened on top then of course I have my color edge extension so basically I shuffle to that path I color correct like that path giving me really rough edges use a color edge to extend those edges indefinitely and then use the ZD focus nodes to basically fix the deficit and then of course put in also some live-action breath so this is a pieces live action that I got from effects elements and I grade it put it on top and and then of course this goes into a card as well because we rendered as a still well that is still she animates but it was rendered almost by the still as a static camera and then we scan line it into a card so she is positioned on a card just like the rest of the map painting then this goes in here so we basically merge her together with a matte painting then I use Tweety light wraps I have one light wrap for the larger diffusing I have a very small light wrap for the very subtle diffusing and then I have a middle light wrap for a more random diffusing I merge them one by one on top of my image making her more embedded into the image and then I basically merge on top last but not least and key mixing as the basically the force that should have been covering your feet using a roto then I have some more snow some more snow more snow and even more snow all graded together and placed on top of everything then I have some final tweaks we have some volumetrics coming out of the axis they're tracked in of course and then they get created in they was last minute to request from the client I'm very keen on them but we put them in of course clients or paying so they have to put them in a bit of more snow on top of everything this is yet the same snow that was using the shore I used a field kit to dentalized it and then I grade it and basically time offset it so it could be different from the other snow emerges on top merges on top yet with more snow elements and then I have a final color correction making it a bit more blue because it have to look more like the game then I have yet another color correction which was lacking more than anything yet I have a bit of a color lookup just to make it a bit more filmic now this color lookup is making nothing more than a list on the gamma especially on the blue areas here and then I have yet more color correction a bit more color correction using a radial mask in here a bit more color correction on the side using a roto shaped bit more color correction then I use a blurred version of the image and merge it on top to give it even a bigger sense of diffusing because usually when it's snowing it's very diffused again don't keep any of these tips and any of these color Corrections that I'm doing they're not really how you should do a real live action plate of course this is a highly stylized map painting so keep in mind that I'm basically doing a creative composite it's not really like a full real composite that's not the idea at all I should have mentioned that on the beginning and before you start thinking why is he doing all these crazy things and then you know I have a bit of a flare which is nothing more than a white object that just is on the mountains there so it gives a sense that the Sun is trying to sneak in a bit of a crop to control my bombing boxes bit of a even more graving even more grazing even more grazing especially to pump in the middle and even more grating as you see I'm a fan of radials and now keep in mind that we didn't went to grades on this project I did the grading directly on the composite which is also unusual but because I have total control creatively on the project because I was directing it then I just figured why not graded myself I mean it's supposed to be stylized anyway so it's easier to degrade inside of nuke because then I have access to all these layers and then I put fake lenses herschel on top just to give it a bit more realism and stretch into the lenses a bit but I call it chromatic aberration just to give it a bit more Photography feeling into it again highly stylized so I'm not even looking at how much more gray chromatic aberration should put then I use the luma pictures grain on top just to give it a feeling as a filmic look I kind of like the luma pictures whenever I'm not using an actual plate of grain I usually use a little pictures Grainne note and gives you me very good results that's pretty much it so that's how the shot looks you know on all its glory again like I said it's a highly stylized shot it's not for the wheel it's not meant to be for the wheel it's meant to be a glorious moment presenting this character Burma on the game so it's that's the purpose of this shot so yeah so I hope you've enjoyed this this construction is rival kingdoms shocked 230 2040 I think it's 240 240 sorry and hope you've enjoyed that and and before we go I just wanted to give my sincere thanks to all my supporters in patreon I've reached ten supporters right now which is very very good news and so I would like to read their names and for your viewing pleasure since that I really enjoyed that you've been supporting me for all these months and I hope to get more support so I would like to thank Ricardo Ferrera I would like to thank Carlos constant so I would like to thank an e coli Valencia I would like to thank Louisville Jones I would like to thank hyung Zhang Vint I'm really sorry if I'm pronouncing your name wrong I really don't know how to read your name and I also would like to thank Justin gross there I would like to thank Minh pink wrong like think Aaron Durkin I would like to thank a few Zener scum like to thank shoe sheep shape on really sorry if I pronounced any of your names wrong I'm trying my best I'm Portuguese so you have to bear with me so thank you so much for the support you helped my channel continue afloat and the more support I can get in patreon the more of these videos I can make as I usually say I am full-time director and visual effects supervisor so I can only do these videos on my spare time so if you guys want to see more of these videos at the moment I can connect only currently make about them one per month maybe two per month but I would love to do more of these videos so the more supports I guess the more patreon funding I get the more I can do these videos for you guys as always think so much for supporting me thank you so much for following me on youtube at Hugo's desk and and I hope to see you guys very soon and thank you so much bye-bye [Music]

Channel: Hugo's Desk ™

Views: 29,008

Keywords: Tutorial, CG, 3D, 2D, Nuke, NUke Studio, The Foundry, Hugo's Desk, Hugo Guerra, Compositing, Learning, VFX, Visual Effects, FXPHD, Linda, FX, Escape Studios

Id: TNTwFgi6LZ4

Length: 26min 34sec (1594 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2017