The NUKE MARI Bridge using footage from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Matt Brealey, Creative Specialist at The Foundry shows us how to the NUKE MARI bridge can help you address common and time-consuming challenges faced when using 3D projection techniques to build digital environments. This tutorial uses footage from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen © Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved. Thank you Digital Domain.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• nuke
• mari
• bridge
• 3d projection
• tutorial

[xacuk]

I see in the "old" method of camera projection you are using some expressions and animation, could you explain please what expression are you using to switch between the different projection cameras and what are you animating?

Thanks.

[TheFoundryChannel]

Hi @xacuk! The animation on the camera is simply the translation/rotation values obtained through camera tracking the original footage, whilst the expression is simply freezing that animation on the correct frame so that the multiple projections line up accurately. As you can project multiple images onto a single piece of geo, there is no need to mix/animate between the cameras over time in this particular shot. Hope that helps!

[molgamus]

How come you used a constant for the coverage map?

Would there be a problem using the roto of the girl with a time echo + hold? The inside of the roto is the area you want to spend time painting on.

Is there any way to make sure you don't loose resolution? So that you don't paint over areas that is higher resolution than the buffer.

[TheFoundryChannel]

Hello @molgamus Currently this is a manual process, just as it is in NUKE.

[daylightTrending]

@TheFoundryChannel I'm confused by this response. While creating a clean plate, the point of making a coverage map is to show the parts of the object that need to be projected onto (so you don't waste time). To do this, should you not use the the roto (not the constant)? Probably just an oversight.. but thanks for the awesome video - I learned a lot.

[TheFoundryChannel]

@daylightTrending You're absolutely right! However, in this example we chose to show that you could either paint only the part that's needed for this single shot (in which case you'd use the roto), or treat the entire room as a full texturable asset - in painting the whole room you could view it from any angle, and use the final asset in any shots that take place in the same environment.

[daylightTrending]

Another neat idea might be to use the coverage map setup to "paint" the original plate (with girl roto'd) onto the geo, through the animated matchmove camera.

[TheFoundryChannel]

@proconpictures When a camera is sent to Mari it will create a projector in the 'Projectors' palette, simply double click on this and it will reset to its original position.