[guillem ramisa]

I think it’s pretty weird too. It should be enough with the settings in the read node for Nuke to understand what format and aspect the image has and carry that information downards the node tree to operators that needs this kind of data, like masks and such.
I’m not that familiar with the inner workings of Nuke so I can’t answer why the reformat node is needed for this to happen I just know that following this rule solves the problem. So if you have a feeling that you’ll need to change formats later on in the process make sure to throw in the reformat node or you’ll be in trouble.
But (and I hope you read this theFoundry) it would be great if the read node could do that job saving us the hassle of adding the reformat node to every read node.

[guillem ramisa]

@theatomicwonder 24456 wrote:

Wait, I think I got it. I think my eyes need a break, it’s the Spline Warp tool isn’t it.

Yes, that’s the one to use. But in my opinion the spline warper feels quite crude and could need some fine-tuning and developing (hope you read this theFoundry)
It is also pretty hard to work with the preview and scanline render thing updating all the time when you are tweaking the animation… but that’s a problem that isn’t unique for how the spline warper works but more an overall “Nuke-thing”… that I don’t like.

K.

[guillem ramisa]

You need to add a reformat node right after the read node for that to work.

Cheers,
K.

[guillem ramisa]

If you track something inte the foreground it will have more movement than the background, this is how perspective works. So when you choose your tracking points you need to find something as close as possible to the thing you want to matchmove. Sometimes you can’t find a good track close enough and that is maybe your problem. You could try a little cheat to get around this and that is to scale down the tracked movement (you will have to edit the animation channel to do this) now the matchmoved plane will appear to have the correct movement. If this doesn’t work you can also use specialized software like boujou, pftrack or something similar to 3d track the shot but that is a whole other story. Good luck.

[guillem ramisa]

And these are the specs for the HD system:

Platform
2x dual-core Opteron® processor workstation

Operating System
Linux®

Editing Playback
Real-time 8-bit / 10-bit / 12-bit 4:4:4 SD, HD, 2K*

Graphics
NVIDIA® Quadro™ FX5500G with framelock

Video I/O Board
AJA 2K PCI-X HDIO, BOB

4:2:2 Video I/O
SMPTE-259M/292M SDI: real-time 8-bit/10-bit uncompressed 4:2:2 HD/SD video I/O*

4:4:4 Video I/O
4:4:4 HD/SD video via SMTPE-292 compliant HD-SDI dual-link signal for real-time 8-bit/10-bit uncompressed 4:4:4 video I/O*

HSDL I/O
HSDL I/O via SMTPE-292 compliant HD-SDI dual-link signal for progressive 2K file*

Image Support**
8-,10-, 12-bit integer / 16-bit floating-point RGB*

RAID Protection
Hardware RAID

Modular Keyer
No

3D Tracking
No

Keycode Support
No

3D LUT Support
No

System Architecture
64-bit

*10-, 12-, 16-bit and 4:4:4 HSDL capabilities available on certified platforms only.

** 16-bit floating point support with certain operations.

[guillem ramisa]

Yeah, I guess so. We have one of the earlier linux flint systems and they were only available in SD at the time. But as I mentioned above you can still comp in whatever resolution you want (8 bits only) and you’ll have realtime playback up to HD at least. Above that I’m not exactly sure, of course you can play short parts from ram but I wouldn’t recommend SD Flint for projects above HD anyways.
I don’t know if Autodesk is still offering SD versions, sounds weird if they did, wouldn’t make any sense to buy an SD system today. So the difference is all about hardware and performance really.

[guillem ramisa]

You can work in HD and play HD clips but you can’t output because the video IO is only SD. Oh and the SD version is only 8 bits. We have one of the older versions so I’m not sure if the later SD ones have more bits to play with. You can also work in even higher resolutions but might not have realtime playback then. Cheers.

[guillem ramisa]

In my opinion most vector based painters suck really bad. I understand the advantage of being able to track and adjust strokes afterwards but the feeling man, the feeling. It just isn’t the same as raster painters like the one flame has. It’s pretty basic and simple but it’s enough, you don’t need more. What you really need is “feeling” and that is hard to find I have discovered.
I’ve tried fusions paint and it sucks. Shake’s is ok in feeling (although vector) but it feels a bit basic and crude. Commotion could work, it is raster but it’s old software now and I didn’t like it very much workflow-wize anyways.
Silhoutte paint is supposed to be a specialized software for roto and paint. I don’t know if it’s any good. I downloaded a demo (for PC) and the paint module crashed on me all the time so I can’t tell how it works.
Nuke’s paint module is famous for crashing so that one sucks as well, and it’s bloody vector too. I know that they are reworking the paint module so please please – all of you guys out there – contact them and tell them what you want… and it should above all be “feeling” 🙂 Maybe hard to nail down what that is but I think they should take a close look at Flame.
Well what do we have more? Combustion… that one sucks too. It has really nice features like the ability to track strokes and so forth but man does it suck when it comes to…. you guessed it – feeling. It just isn’t possible to use a paint when you clone or paint a stroke and when you release the pen from your wacom board the whole stroke jumps one pixel to the left or right or whatever. How could you ever paint fine gradients like skintones or tiny details when it behaves like that?
Then we have Toxik. We have just received a copy of the 2008 version to evaluate. I’ve only just started to try it out and jumped into the paint module only once but it felt promising. I don’t know what technique is under the hood, raster or vector (maybe someone else knows)? I will have to get back to you when I’ve taken a closer look at this one.
And finally we have photoshop CS3 with it’s new capabilities of handeling movie files. It’s photoshop alright and the feeling is nice but I don’t know, the “animation timeline” feels like a poorly integrated add-on. It doesn’t work for me.
So I’m sorry to say that I haven’t found the perfect paint tool besides Flame’s. I will get back to you about Toxik though. And cross your fingers that Ron Brinkmann will put his spell on Nuke’s paint.

Cheers,
K.

[guillem ramisa]

@thaiquangnguyen 23722 wrote:

no body can help me ?????????????????????

Read this article:
http://www.apple.com/pro/profiles/stardust/index.html

[guillem ramisa]

@memo 23423 wrote:

Yea I know flame/smoke would be ideal… but unfortunately they’re a bit above my budget!

Fusion and Nuke seem sooo close (running on an 8core/raid) to what I need that its frustrating not to be able to go that one step further and finish the whole spot in the same app!

All that I really need extra (or what I havent figured out how to do yet) is to be able select a bunch of nodes and group them (analogous to a nested Combustion composition), then give that group a start time – is something like that possible? Or is there any other way a 30 second video like http://www.msavisuals.com/ti_3gsm07 could be done in one Nuke project?

Fusion and Nuke (and Shake) aren’t really targeted at what you need. They are “one shot” based applications suited for collaborative environments like film compositing. As you’ve found out these applications aren’t very good at handling a full conform. For that you’ll need to go about it the same way as you already do and use something else like final cut or premiere. And let fusion or nuke handle comping of single shots.
I can’t really find another way for you to do this without stepping up to some highend system like FFI or maybe avid. But that was out of the question anyways.
You will never be as fast as you can be on flame but on the other hand you won’t have the same costs so you can spend more time per job or hire more people to help finish everything on time. And have more fun too because you won’t be working alone.

Cheers,
K

[guillem ramisa]

@memo 23423 wrote:

Yea I know flame/smoke would be ideal… but unfortunately they’re a bit above my budget!

Fusion and Nuke seem sooo close (running on an 8core/raid) to what I need that its frustrating not to be able to go that one step further and finish the whole spot in the same app!

All that I really need extra (or what I havent figured out how to do yet) is to be able select a bunch of nodes and group them (analogous to a nested Combustion composition), then give that group a start time – is something like that possible? Or is there any other way a 30 second video like http://www.msavisuals.com/ti_3gsm07 could be done in one Nuke project?

Fusion and Nuke (and Shake) aren’t really targeted at what you need. They are “one shot” based applications suited for collaborative environments like film compositing. As you’ve found out these applications aren’t very good at handling a full conform. For that you’ll need to go about it the same way as you do already and use something else like final cut or premiere. And let fusion or nuke handle comping of single shots.
I can’t really find another way for you to do this without stepping up to some highend system like FFI or maybe avid. But that is probably out of the question anyways.
You will never be as fast as you can be on flame but on the other hand you won’t have the same costs so you can spend more time per job or hire more people to help finish everything on time. And have more fun too because you won’t be working alone.

Cheers,
K

[guillem ramisa]

@gravity 23446 wrote:

Thanks, but that is exactly what I don’t want to do…
I am sure one can extract the timewarf data from the afe/omf and use it as timewarp in another app. If someone knows about small utility like that….

Doron.

Not possible as far as I know. You either have to match the timewarp manually or get the editor to use cuts instead.

K.

[guillem ramisa]

@Timor 23392 wrote:

hi Keyser,

i did write a reply but appearently it was killed by the forum makeover so here i comes again:

as far as i know only imagineer makes a planar tracker. funny thing is: i just checked their website and they announce a new program called mocka which is appearently “the big brother” of motor and is definitely cheaper then monet!
http://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mocha/
there is also a free beta for download, so make sure to check it out.

(in my reply i pointed out that this i NOT a 3d tracker to avoid more confusion. most people take “tracking” programs always as matchmoving software)

hope this helps, if you find any other software capable of planar tracking during your research, let me know.

timor

Yes, thats exactly what I was wondering. I think it’s funny there isn’t more going on with 2d planar tracking. I think there could be many interresting approaches with new motion estimation technology. Imagineer is going in the right direction but I’d like to see more players in the game. What if thefoundry could put some of their knowledge in a new tracker for nuke for example.

[guillem ramisa]

I already asked this question but I think it got lost in the fxguide total makeover. So here it goes again…
All of the trackers mentioned above are 3d trackers (apart from monet). Does anybody know any new or interresting 2d trackers or are imagineer the only ones following this path?

K

[guillem ramisa]

degrain before you key. migth work.

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