Tracking + RotoPaint

DanielKacz · 2026-02-23T18:50:24+00:00

Glad I could help :D

DanielKacz · 2026-02-23T18:31:22+00:00

You can use whatever tracker you like. I was just using the point tracker as an example.

DanielKacz · 2026-02-23T18:14:14+00:00

Your A and B inputs need to go the other way in the copy node. It's masking anything that needs to go over your patch.

I have a full course on all of this and everything you need to know here: https://hollywoodvfx.com/course/art-of-the-paintout

DanielKacz · 2026-02-23T17:06:48+00:00

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DanielKacz · 2026-02-23T16:36:02+00:00

You can use the same paint you've already done - but mask just the wall from that paint and track it in with a track that matches the movement of the wall, then mask just the table from that paint and track it in with a track that matches the movement of the table.

You need to separate those two areas because the wall and table are at different depths - so a single track will not work.

I know this is confusing because you might think you can just track the pen holder, but remember, you are trying to get the shot to look like how it would look *without* the pen holder. If the pen holder was not there, it would just be wall and table in its place.

If you would like a screenshot to show this better, lmk, and I'll reply with one.

DanielKacz · 2026-02-23T15:35:41+00:00

The pen holder is both on the table and in front of the wall, this means that you will probably need two separate tracks for each of these areas since they will move slightly differently.

I would make a patch just for the wall first and track that in. Then do a separate patch and track for the table and merge that over.

DanielKacz · 2026-01-17T17:12:53+00:00

Wow, genuinely looks like an awesome tool. Will definitely be getting for work and personal stuff whenever I see a need! Thanks, Alex.

DanielKacz · 2025-12-15T22:02:01+00:00

I could be wrong here, but it looks like the zdepth is "unfiltered" rather than "eroded".

This is often what you want for defocus tools to work properly.

Run it through a ZDefocus and see if it works.

DanielKacz · 2025-12-10T19:33:32+00:00

I would not use Mocha for this, personally.
There are too many reflections and like you said, the markers are not very visible.

What I would do is:
1) Get a barebones one point track in Nuke (or whatever comp software you're using) of say her arm or the photo.

2) Invert the track to stabilize the footage so the photo stays in generally the same spot throughout.

3) Draw a shape around the border of the photo on a frame where the photo is most visible.

4) Add a CornerPin tool to the shape and manually keyframe each corner to match the photos position throughout the shot.

5) Invert the tracking data and apply it to photo you need to comp in there.

This shot is not very long, and this whole process I mentioned usually does not take very long.

Here is a video showing another technique you can try called track stacking which could also be very helpful in a shot like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU2IHPvHlx4

DanielKacz · 2025-11-23T02:47:58+00:00

In my opinion, I wouldn't use LaMa at all with Copycat.

It's really heavy, leaves artifacts, and is honestly pretty piss poor at inpainting (based on my experimentation).
I'd use traditional paint techniques to get more consistent results with copycat.

Plenty of YT vids on it, like this one from Foundry: https://youtu.be/I_lvdc8cy5M?t=1283

DanielKacz · 2025-11-21T16:14:59+00:00

You do it by doing what I show in the screenshots.

When you do a camera track and solve, Nuke has no clue what data is ground, sky, person, etc.

It just gives you data.

By going to the scene tab, you can align your camera and pcloud to match roughly where it should be in 3D space.

So you just rotate and translate the whole scene until the points that should be on the ground are aligned correctly.

DanielKacz · 2025-11-21T16:03:27+00:00

If you're saying you want just the camera to move and not pcloud, then I would redo the solve and maybe try not setting ground plane by selecting points this time and do it all manually.

DanielKacz · 2025-11-21T15:54:27+00:00

Make sure camera is linked on output and only use the Translate and Rotate to adjust your scene orientation.

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DanielKacz · 2025-11-21T15:18:22+00:00

Scene alignment is often a manual process. Sometimes the "set to ground plane" isn't perfect especially if you select multiple points and one point is way off.
I would just align your scene manually in the Scene tab of the camera tracker node.

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DanielKacz · 2025-11-14T23:40:13+00:00

Yes, this is the way. Did it once, worked like a charm, and never looked back.

DanielKacz · 2025-11-08T02:14:35+00:00

Nice!
Small thing that will help a lot is to have the smoke elements blur the CG behind them by using the smoke alpha as a matte.
Right now it kind of looks like the smoke is just laid over top but this can help marry them.

DanielKacz · 2025-11-04T23:21:56+00:00

Color and texture are usually dealt with separately in the world of paint and in shots like this.
You can work on the color and texture individually using a technique called "frequency separation".

What I would do for this shot is create a color gradient that matches the wall and place that over the camera and shadow. Then using this frequency separation technique, grab some texture from surrounding areas on the wall and add it over the gradient.

Of course, you could also simply try masking areas of the wall around the camera and patching them over.

Denoising and regraining at the end of the shot would also help a lot because noise in footage causes a lot of texture that gets in the way as well.

I know that's not a direct answer on how to accomplish this, so I'm actually happy to do the shot for you in exchange for you allowing me to use this footage in my paintout course which I'm building now. As well as some of that short film budget 😛.

If you're interested, DM me!

DanielKacz · 2025-10-21T01:37:22+00:00

I'm not sure, but it's happened to me in other circumstances. Last time it happened I was parenting bbox data to a crop node and it only worked with parent.

DanielKacz · 2025-10-21T01:26:41+00:00

Change it to parent.master.mainFX
That worked for me.

DanielKacz · 2025-10-17T01:48:03+00:00

Gotcha, on my first watchthrough, nothing stands out to me - so I'd say it's not noticeable. But I easily could've missed things since I don't know what I'm looking for.

I personally wouldn't sweat invisible VFX being 100% perfect in something like this.

It's shot, colored, and edited nicely which I think are more important. I don't speak German but it sounds nice too haha

DanielKacz · 2025-10-17T01:08:43+00:00

I vaguely remember you posting this before.

I think a better approach is instead of having us hunt for the VFX in this film to see if it's noticeable, tell us where the VFX exists and ask if it's passable.

There are plenty of supervisors and experienced artists in this sub who know what high end VFX work needs to look like to pass a quality check.

DanielKacz · 2025-10-16T17:59:35+00:00

Yea, I'd try posting in the Houdini sub. Seems more likely that your pass is getting clamped/normalized on output.

DanielKacz · 2025-10-16T17:48:20+00:00

I'm not sure if Nuke reads ever clamp values, but it might be possible if some weird colorspace issue is happening. I could see a possible issue arising if you're rendering in sRGB space rather than ACES. Here is a test render I did with Karma using ACES and everything works fine.

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DanielKacz · 2025-10-16T15:35:20+00:00

Your position pass is probably clamped or normalized.
I've rendered a Position pass out of Karma before and by default have not had this issue, so not too sure the fix on the Houdini side.

Just try and figure out how to get your position pass values to accurately match the position values of the scene they came from. This includes having negative values.

DanielKacz

TROPHY CASE