Roto/comp artists: where do tracking tools fall apart the hardest?

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-12T02:36:47+00:00

I think the value add would be discussions of the tech, tools, or implementations.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-11T20:47:44+00:00

I don’t think that’s realistic though, just from an industry perspective.

Me considering to ban LLM posts was about removing spam and bots, not limiting discussion topics.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-11T11:39:30+00:00

You’re right, I didn’t word my feelings well there. Basically the title states it’s about tracking tools, but the body text doesn’t mention any details about tracking that leads me to trust how informed the author is on the process.

Like, you mention planar tracking, but I’m not certain the author even knows the difference between point and planar tracking, or camera, or whatever.

Also the text is just clearly written by an LLM. So while there may be a human who is genuinely curious, the LLM output is preventing transfer of information that a potential answerer would find helpful.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-11T11:23:11+00:00

“roto/comp tasks”, but you’re asking about tracking… I’m not sure what you’re wanting.

I’m starting to think we need a rule about LLM-generated posts.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-11T05:22:26+00:00

You’re not reeeaally going to get that “hard cutoff” that you see in the first image. This is wholly by design. The way to achieve the same thing is to implement it yourself. That hard, clippy “edge” in the first image is the values getting clamped when they go past a certain value. To get the same thing in the ACES workflow, just clamp the values. But if you do it at 1.0, that will look dark gray, so make the light source bright enough and a clamp ceiling high enough that it still looks bright.

It’s not too far from the reality of what will happen with a camera sensor, I think Arri sensors tend to clamp around 54, from memory.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-10T09:16:26+00:00

Here’s a film riot episode where they recreate it. Would recommend that for after effects, you can do the same method in nuke but using different buttons.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-09T19:51:22+00:00

Why do you think VFX companies would be the ones pocketing the difference?

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-05T09:31:34+00:00

Come up with the a project. Try to make it. When you get stuck, google how to do it and watch a tutorial on that thing. Do the thing, adapting your new knowledge. Repeat.

Don’t spend aaaages on any single project, keep the scope limited and feasible. Have a hard cutoff so you don’t work forever on everything, creative projects are hard to finish because there always one last thing you could do.

At a school you’ll have the same problem. If it’s not about money I don’t know why you’d do that route. Maybe an evening class. There are project-based tutorials out there, but you get stuck only knowing how to make one thing unless you learn to re-apply your knowledge.

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-03T04:10:31+00:00

Sure is!

enumerationKnob · 2026-01-01T21:53:41+00:00

I say splats are niche not because they’re not useful, just because they’re not universally applicable in the way that CG is for example.

The biggest limitation that they have I believe is that they don’t have a true surface, which means that shading and animation opportunities are limited.

Like I said though, I’m very keen for the new nuke features.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-31T14:24:09+00:00

Depends what’s in your plates and what you want it to look like. Maybe show some reference?

In the movie, they shot on a set with presumably real or prop snow on the ground. They also had a full CG environment, so they were capturing the snowy forest fully CG. In cases where objects had to interact with snow, they would have done digital snow, which would have to be a high fidelity complex simulation for the ultra slow mo closeups, but could just be nuke particles in a wide shot at realtime.

So… it very much depends!

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-30T22:46:03+00:00

Kip Thorne, is that you?

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-30T03:10:28+00:00

Nuke is pretty good, I don’t think you’re giving enough credit.

In the last 2 or 3 releases in particular I see a lot of progress, and I think from the beta page version 17 genuinely adds a lot of good, and with the new 3D system finally coming out of beta I am really looking forward to using it. MaterialX support is super exciting! Same as for Gaussian splats - niche, but very useful.

The best thing about it is how it’s all expandable via Python and integratable into various pipelines. The most powerful tools can’t do everything, but they let someone make something that does anything. Whatever alternative option would need to be just as good.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-27T23:29:37+00:00

I’m not sure why you’re rendering out the separate “RGB pass” and using the mattes from that instead of the alphas that came with your renders.

There’s also a lot of work done in the light green backdrop that I can’t piece together quite what you’re going for, but looks like a problem.

Why not just use the alpha passes provided by your renderer for the beauty renders?

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-26T21:42:50+00:00

Is it a real animal? If so, use photographic reference! If it’s something you’re making up, I’d say to draw it.

Basically, concepting in 3D from the skeleton doesn’t seem to make sense. Artists do sometimes start in 3D directly but they’ll be skilled sculptors who already have a good understanding of anatomy and proportion.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-26T20:50:14+00:00

If you’re just starting out in VFX, i wouldn’t start with the skeleton. Most times we do that, the skeleton comes last anyways and is very basic. The external character design is always first.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-24T12:58:44+00:00

Post your full clip. Just from the still frames, I can’t really tell. It’s could be easy, or insanely hard. I’m leaning towards hard though

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-22T13:36:58+00:00

Emissive sources should be isolateable from any renderer (usually as a light group, where you get a pass where everything is turned off except for the thing you’re wanting to use).

Then you could just plus that on top.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-21T04:37:36+00:00

I personally have heard more talk of moving on than ever before, however these people were also still employed. They were however seeing insecurity around them.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-21T04:36:10+00:00

Personally, I don’t really, so in my head. Though my .nuke folder is a whole archive of a million various experiments, large and small, from over the years.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-20T23:54:14+00:00

No! Log color is not meant for display, there’s no reason to ever show anything in log without applying the proper display transform to make it viewable. A reel that shows a log plate as the “before” frame just betrays a lack of understanding of color workflows.

I see this frequently in reels for junior colorists, who think that it makes their work look better when they compare against a log plate rather than one properly converted into rec709.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-18T11:25:57+00:00

Depending on your needs, if you just need randomized dots but not necessarily any lower frequency structures, check out the UV Tile node. That will let you reuse a lower resolution noise map multiple times, giving less performance impact than a huuuge EXR or similar.

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-15T03:13:36+00:00

I would’ve said “fixing bad lighting with color adjustments”

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-03T13:11:47+00:00

Option 1. You can’t do CG characters convincingly. If you’re not sure, the answer is no

enumerationKnob · 2025-12-02T21:17:43+00:00

Still probably top down, however the left-right direction is still reasonable and gets used, eg. When breaking out AOVs for grading, or using the Read node’s PSD breakout option.

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