How to be a good compositor

[metalrahul]

Hi guys,
I how to start with compositing, I just wanna get basics well and build rest upon it, so how shouldi start? As a beginner what should I concenterate more on? what books i should read!

cheers
Rahul.

[Anonymous]

great question.. and great timing…

So great you’d think we’d asked you to post that very question !!!

fxguide is working on providing a lot more training on compositing and visual effects. Right now we’d love to hear from everyone exactly what they would like to see and any major areas they would like covered… across any package.

You can start a list here or email us off line. Either way – we’d love to hear from you.

It is our aim to provide a wealth of new material to help you with all aspects of visual effects compositing – but in the end fxguide has always been user driven – so please let us know and we’ll incorporate your comments directly into our planning.

Mike
Co-founder fxguide.com

[Anonymous]

Hi Mike,
In regards to questions,

How much 3D should a compositor need to know?
Should a Compositor know about 3d matchmoving? or is that for the 3D dept to worry about ?
Something indepth about all the various Luts e.g 601 vs 709 etc would be good.

hope im not asking too much here
thanks in advance.

[gu3des]

Hi guys

I´m also a beginner in the area, just like you Rahul, and I also share the same doubts you´ve just posted.

I know the software issue is a very relative one.
I´ve taken a Discrete Combustion course (witch I loved), but soon after tried Shake after reading “The art and science of digital compositing”.
What I think (please correct me if I´m wrong) is that Shake (and other node based programs alike) are more difficult to use for the beginner, but extremely more powerful for the expert user.
More… although more difficult for the beginner, I think that they “ask” for a deeper compositing theories knowledge from the user, witch is a good thing because one must really understand what he is doing, and how the software is working to composite the scene. That may encourage the beginner to create a better and stronger knowledge platform to start working with.
I´m I making any sense here? Please comment…

FXGUIDE Crew… you rock! The Podcasts are an amazing source of info for beginners like myself (and probably to pros as well). They really put things in to perspective regarding pipeline issues, methodology and experience.
I think one of the major problems to a newbie is the fact that the pipeline process in VFX is somehow complex, and one never knows when and were does a project/work of a compositor “starts” and were it “ends”.

Suggestion: Video Podcasts? It wold be fabulous if we could actually “see” what you guys talk about in the interviews… even if they are just static pictures. 😉

Cheers for yall (and pardon my english)
gu3des 😀

[John Montgomery]

gu3des wrote:

Hi guys
Suggestion: Video Podcasts? It wold be fabulous if we could actually “see” what you guys talk about in the interviews… even if they are just static pictures. 😉

Cheers for yall (and pardon my english)
gu3des 😀

Thanks for the kind comments. Jeff, Mike, and I have looking at doing more video – based podcasts or quicktime movies (as the video podcasts are quite small in screen size). Most importantly want to make sure that the content calls for it and it provides a good boost to the quality of the podcasts. We’re really happy to spend the extra time creating these — and it can take a considerable amount of extra time — when it makes sense to do so.

Coming up later this week, we have a “making of” movie about a student film that I feel fulfills those requirements. Check in for that…

[AlanEBell]

I would love to start a faq page for each app specific forum. Having been a co-host on another site for several years it’s something that I think will benifit many beginers and veterans alike. I would be happy to work on something like that for the Combusiton forum if you are inclined to accept.

Also I think tutorials that show new users techniques for production based issues would be great. It seems few compositors that I hire and work with have a solid grasp on color space and bit depth.

Guest compositors and iterviews would be great too, but from a “Heres is how I do this in this situation” sort of deal as opposed to the general (but wonderful) manner in which fxblog.

Just my two cents.

And I am happy to get invloved.

Regards
Alan Bell
http://www.handmadedigital.com

[Anonymous]

AlanEBell wrote:

I would love to start a faq page for each app specific forum. Having been a co-host on another site for several years it’s something that I think will benifit many beginers and veterans alike. I would be happy to work on something like that for the Combusiton forum if you are inclined to accept.

Also I think tutorials that show new users techniques for production based issues would be great. It seems few compositors that I hire and work with have a solid grasp on color space and bit depth.

Guest compositors and iterviews would be great too, but from a “Heres is how I do this in this situation” sort of deal as opposed to the general (but wonderful) manner in which fxblog.

Alan that would be great – we havd FAQ on flame and on discreet gear generally but we’d love LOVE one on Combustion. I am on a feature right now as the post supervisor and the VFX team are all on Combustion.

I think what would be good is actual ‘lessons’ that explain approaches and techniques – plus some general stuff on film/LUTs / Colour theory etc ?

Would you agree? Perhaps as video rather than podcast ?

Please lets keep talking … this is gold top hear from you guys.
Mike

[Anonymous]

Awesome news all round !

Although there seems to be more and more information becomming available on compositing there really seems to be a lot of undiscussed information. Specifically in the realm of film compositing and advanced techniques. I know that this site has gone a long way to making this better.

Also props to Allan for his tut on creative cow about log files in combustion. I recently had to build a film pipleine around combustion and the information was really useful !

Mike, Jeff and John if you want any additional contributors I would be happy to offer up anything that I can !

keen to see how this evolves..

– Tahl

[Anonymous]

aneks wrote:

Awesome news all round !

Mike, Jeff and John if you want any additional contributors I would be happy to offer up anything that I can !

keen to see how this evolves..

– Tahl

Well Yeah man – we’d love a FAQ on Shake to be honest – I have been working on one – but could we do one together – or could you draft one and send it over, I could review it and send it back?
Thanks man

Mike

[metalrahul]

Hello everybody,
The most basic problem i am facing is lack of footages for keying,rotoscoping. And I don have any idea about how proffesionals work on those complex shots, like just curious about their workflow. And I am gonna relearn combustion cos I know the tools well but don know where to apply them. its complex, this is main problem with editing, compositing and all other feilds in flim industry, even if we know something we need to lot to learn from experience inorder apply them properly.

So my point is plz provide concepts and theory rather than techniques. Your article about Art of Keying and tracking was awesome, I expect more articles explaining the wokflow of vfx artist.

Cheers
Rahul.

[Anonymous]

metalrahul wrote:

Hello everybody,
The most basic problem i am facing is lack of footages for keying,rotoscoping. And I don have any idea about how proffesionals work on those complex shots, like just curious about their workflow. And I am gonna relearn combustion cos I know the tools well but don know where to apply them. its complex, this is main problem with editing, compositing and all other feilds in flim industry, even if we know something we need to lot to learn from experience inorder apply them properly.

So my point is plz provide concepts and theory rather than techniques. Your article about Art of Keying and tracking was awesome, I expect more articles explaining the wokflow of vfx artist.

.

So Rahul in summary – you’d like to get concepts and theory + perhaps actual footage to test on ? and not just tips and tricks.

OK I think we can work on that… in terms of packages…
Flame
Shake
Combustion
After effects…
Digital Fusion?
others ?
Or is it theory of colour difference keying etc – and it doesn’t matter which package?

We are really listening to this thread very very closely guys – so please post if you can.

Mike
co-founder fxguide

[Anonymous]

First off great work guys. And I think more or less all is covered. While general approach is good to see all-around workflow and the BIG picture I do agree some case studies would be more then welcome. I think those situations reveal more of the problem solving issues and more tips and tricks then any other method.
Now the thing is…it takes lots of time to do something like that. Doing good comps is much faster then writing about it, but it revels individual approaches to problems and ideas behind some creative brainstorming. So BIG THANK YOU to all of you who find the time and will to do it.

Including Eyeon Fusion to the list is a must.

I do think that node based compositing is much more intuitive and when knowing one system or better having deeper understanding of compositing, adaptation to same workflow in another package is really short time. The one thing that cant be learned from books is training your eyes. You can get directions but you need to do it your self and it never stops. At least not for me 😛

BIG THANK YOU to all the good people from FX guide AND vfxblog 😛

[dp]

greetings

ok now we’re making some progress… i basically suffered from the same symptons as raul when i started “learning the kit”.

Anyone can learn how to use a flame / combustion / shake however the real issues are how and when to apply the various techniques.

fortunately i work in a post house so i have access to various archives and interesting shots but it wasnt always like this.

what would be awesome is if there were a download area which contained actual footage ( tga sequences etc ) pertaining to complex/ brain twisting shots that required a clever solution. This could be set up as a “Problem” and “Solution” kind of thing where instead of offering a walkthrough you allow the budding VFX artists to ” stretch their heads ” – a seperate link could take you to the ” solutions ” area where the shot has been broken down complete with a walk through. what you may find happening is that people may have found an easier way of doing it! and a discussion could arise from that

after all… there’s more than one way to skin a cat…

I suppose an area like this needn’t be tailored to be application specific
its more the theory that matters. If people attempted it in combustion then im sure a discussion would be staretd on the combustion thread

conversely for flame and shake

could work maybe?

[gu3des]

Hi again guys

I completely agree on that issue about the importance of more info regarding actual compositing theories rather than specific software tips, though they are still very important and should continue on their specific forums and tutorials.
What I mean is keeping things as they are in terms of software specific issues, but create a new area of actual compositing theory and workflow.

I reinforce the importance of the creation of a “footage bank” were beginners can access quality footage to experience with (track, key, etc.). I myself only have access to MiniDV green-screen footage, you can imagine how frustrating that might be to key for example.

great to see things “happening” 😀

[AlanEBell]

I generally don’t do self promotion, but sense people are asking for footage here goes:

Handmade Digital sells a 3 disk set of 2K cineon files for the purpose of learning and self promotion. We plan to add to the set in the future.

You can find the set and information on it at http://www.handmadedigital.com

We ship worldwide.

Regards
Alan Bell

[Author]

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