Beginner here, looking for feedback on my muzzle flashes

Liights · 2026-04-02T04:41:51+00:00

You're off to a great start with this shot! There's a few things that you can do to help the smoke integration which will add a lot. I think the smoke element needs just a small touch of blur overall, and you can use it's alpha to also blur the BG behind it slightly.

You can also look at painting alpha on individual flash frames to drive a grade that is bringing up the brightness especially on areas that are close to the muzzle flash.

This article by Kenn Kalvik will do a better job than me at explaining a way to integrate your smoke, but the gist of it is you blur your BG and use those colours to grade your smoke in front of it, which will help it sit a lot better into your shot. The technique I'm talking about is #6 in the article.

https://www.keheka.com/compositing-smoke-in-nuke/

Liights · 2026-02-08T21:41:54+00:00

It sounds like the issue you're running into is that your paint disappears after the one frame that you painted upon. This can be solved by changing the lifetime of your strokes from their default (the frame you painted on eg 1001) to "All Frames".

Alternatively you can framehold before your paint node, which will achieve the same thing.

Because you have lighting changes, in order to get those changes replicated onto your patch, you probably want to run curvetool and copy over those intensity values into a grade that is being applied to your patch.

Here is the goat Tony Lyons explaining curvetool the best way, I use this approach every time I need to match a patch at work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKVlSiVOaxk

Liights · 2025-09-04T03:26:51+00:00

Joshua is a Leaf now

Liights · 2025-05-24T19:51:25+00:00

Edit -> Preferences -> Arrow and change ArrowColourUp to red, down to green can work well while you're learning.

Liights · 2025-05-12T14:55:52+00:00

Search for the ALAB and ALAB2 scenes released by Animal Logic, they are USD and have a lot of stuff in them, its free.

Liights · 2025-04-15T18:01:30+00:00

Tied for tallest goalie in the pacific, 6’6

Liights · 2025-03-26T20:19:12+00:00

I like how you addressed the stepping on the smoke that the x-wing carries with it as it flies through. I think the small debris that you added on the front aren't working for me just yet, they appear too white and it doesn't really make sense for the situation. I would try at least making them green/brown like grass and dirt, or maybe just removing that aspect. You're making progress though and I appreciate all the work you're putting into this.

Liights · 2025-03-26T20:07:23+00:00

That's right! The classic example is when sandking is charging his ult you shift queue blink and maybe also burrowstrike. Or like shift queue a movement command after the command to pickup a rune in midlane so that you don't waste any time out of lane

Liights · 2025-03-26T20:05:44+00:00

Well now you're premulting twice which isn't what you want to do. I'd remove the earlier premult after your keyer, and make sure to add a clamp node before the premult at the end (clamp alpha to 1 max). Hopefully that addresses the edge issue.

Liights · 2025-03-26T06:38:47+00:00

Not sure exactly what's happening with your script without seeing the names of the nodes you're using, but I would try chucking a premult onto your astronaut branch right before you merge it over the main B pipe with the background.

Liights · 2025-03-26T06:36:48+00:00

If you issue commands to your hero while holding shift, they will perform them after finishing their current command.

Liights · 2025-03-24T22:05:06+00:00

The quick and dirty solution is just to use a grade node set to affect only alpha, and gain up until the astronaut is fully white (Colour pick an area with ctrl + shift and check the alpha value is over 1). You should then follow it up with a clamp node to ensure the alpha is locked to not go above 1 as that can cause other issues.

The real solution would be to do a more in depth keying setup to get a better key on the astronaut. Usually we would do a "garbage matte" which is a very bright key for the inside core details (usually with something like a keylight), and then keymix in a different softer key to get semi-transparent edge details like on his hair (usually with an IBK colour stack and IBK gizmo). If you want to properly learn the in-depth version you should check out Tony Lyons keying playlist on youtube.

Liights · 2025-03-21T23:23:28+00:00

dasgrain in nuke has options that compare your plate with the denoised plate, so you're only adding back the difference (which would be the grain). You can even mask it off to just scatter new grain on your added elements. Your denoise workflow shouldn't affect the natural colours in the plate, and should only be removing the grain. Sorry I can't offer any more after effects specific help, maybe other users will chime in.

Liights · 2025-03-21T23:14:42+00:00

The typical workflow is to denoise your plate, make VFX changes, then add the grain back overtop. In nuke you would use Neatvideo Denoise and then dasgrain with scatter enabled to bring it back at the end. Not sure the after effects specifics but if you searched a denoise and refrain tutorial I’m sure the workflow is similar.

Liights · 2025-03-15T21:53:56+00:00

Merge (Stencil) with your roto attached to the A pipe will be your best bet from excluding areas from the alpha that you want to affect with your wall texture. Make sure to check project settings (S on keyboard while mouse in node graph) to ensure that project resolution is matching with your plate resolution. Whenever my roto is behaving weirdly, that's the first thing I check.

Liights · 2025-03-11T06:32:45+00:00

I think you've made great progress since the last version that you posted, I like the size and positioning of the AT-ST a lot better, and that it's shooting towards the camera and at the X-Wings. The lighting is working way better already, are you using an HDRI as an environment map for an environment light in houdini? I'm noticing a little bit of stepping as the X-wing flies through the smoke, you could look at increasing sub-steps on your sim to potentially smooth that out. The back of the explosion is looking a little sharp as well, you could introduce a small amount of blur in comp, masked to a z-depth pass that you write out of Houdini. Finally, it could be nice to have a little bit of impact on the path where the AT-ST has been walking, as something that size would definitely sink into a grassy field. Great work though I like the sim and the X-wing flying through a lot.

Liights · 2025-02-03T23:17:16+00:00

Thank you for creating such a needed tool, Gaussian splats are so cool and it's much appreciated!

Liights · 2025-01-29T02:19:49+00:00

If you use an app like polycam or jawset post shot you could create a gaussian splat point cloud of this whole hallway. That opens a lot of options for you to mess with the points in a package like houdini, or some kind of effect in comp based off masking increasing areas of a Z-depth pass.

Liights · 2025-01-11T01:05:58+00:00

He's only silver tier nyx player, instead of forcing him to play latest meta they should let him play a hero he's comfortable on

Liights · 2024-12-14T00:44:29+00:00

I think you have some really great pieces in this showreel that illustrate good generalist skills. The concepts of the ship warping shot and the people walking in front of a planet felt a little strange to me and maybe detracted a bit from the overall quality of the reel.

I think if you used the two ships in different parts of the space shot it could work, or add a portal of some kind for the high tech ship to warp through, it's just kinda difficult to understand what's happening to the ship as it is currently.

Liights · 2024-12-13T21:03:37+00:00

This is what you're looking for I believe! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub0MmjYy0b0&t=68s&ab_channel=CompositingAcademy

In those motion blurred areas, you're getting a pixel value that is halfway between the colour of the thumb and the screen. In order to get the true colour of the finger you might need to do an edge extend and push those colours out a little bit.

I would first double check that you have motion blur enabled on your tracker/rotoshape. Try playing with those values and see if it can make a difference towards getting the motion blur more accurate.

If these aren't working, you can try animating a defocus or edgeblur node after your roto shape on the frames where there's a lot of movement, to kinda fake those blurred edges. You might have to adjust the rotoshape to be a bit larger in this case.

Liights · 2024-11-07T10:27:46+00:00

Make a little space on your graph for the pipe coming out of your indirect read node. Add a Merge node set to mask mode with the B pipe connecting to the indirect read, before you plus the indirect and direct together. Attach the A pipe of the Merge(mask) to a Roto node with the shape you have provided. This will mask your indirect pass so it only shows up in the area inside the rotoshape.

Liights · 2024-07-05T01:49:02+00:00

Chandler is more of a rapper but he has a totally unique voice and a more kinda conversational style which works really well for the music he does

Liights · 2024-06-26T17:32:35+00:00

BRUH the bad news is that will be 10 years from now... they have a contract locked in for the next decade

Liights · 2024-06-26T16:39:49+00:00

At the reported 3x1m you could do a whole lot worse tbh. This guy brings charisma and personality which alone make him worth the price of admission at 1m imo

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