The Art And Science Of Digital Compositing

The classic reference, with over 25,000 copies in print, has been massively expanded and thoroughly updated to include state-of-the-art methods and 400+ all-new full color images! "At ILM, compositing is one of the most important tools we use. If you want to learn more, this excellent 2nd-edition is detailed with hundreds of secrets that will help make your comps seamless. For beginners or experts, Ron walks you through the processes of analysis and workflows - linear thinking which will help you become deft and successfully tackle any shot." --Dennis Muren ASC, Senior Visual Effects Supervisor, Industrial Light & Magic "Ron Brinkman's book is the definitive work on digital compositing and we have depended on this book as a critical part of our in-house training program at Imageworks since the 1999 Edition. We use this book as a daily textbook and reference for our lighters, compositors and anyone working with digital imagery. It is wonderful to see a new edition being released and it will certainly be required reading for all our digital artists here at Imageworks." --Sande Scoredos, Executive Director of Training & Artist Development, Sony Pictures Imageworks The Art and Science of Digital Compositing is the only complete overview of the technical and artistic nature of digital compositing. It covers a wide range of topics from basic image creation, representation and manipulation, to a look at the visual cues that are necessary to create a believable composite. Designed as an introduction to the field, as well as an authoritative technical reference, this book provides essential information for novices and professionals alike. 17 new case-studies provide in-depth looks at the compositing work done on films such as Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Golden Compass, The Incredibles, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Sin City, Spider-Man 2, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Star Wars: Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith. Includes new sections on 3D compositing, High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, Rotoscoping, and much more! All disc-based content for this title is now available on the Web. 17 new case-studies provide in-depth looks at the compositing work done on films such as Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Golden Compass, The Incredibles, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Sin City, Spider-Man 2, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Star Wars: Episode 3 – Revenge of the Sith. Includes new sections on 3D compositing, High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, Rotoscoping, and much more!

The digital compositing process is being applied in many diverse fields from Hollywood to corporate projects. Featuring over 30 pages of color, this tutorial/reference.provides a complete overview of the technical and artistic skills necessary to undertake a digital composition project. The CD-ROM contains composition examples, illustrations, and development software.

The classic reference, with over 25,000 copies in print, has been massively expanded and thoroughly updated to include state-of-the-art methods and 400+ all-new full color images! The Art and Science of Digital Compositing is the only complete overview of the technical and artistic nature of digital compositing. It covers a wide range of topics from basic image creation, representation and manipulation, to a look at the visual cues that are necessary to create a believable composite. Designed as an introduction to the field, as well as an authoritative technical reference, this book provides essential information for novices and professionals alike. 17 new case studies provide in-depth looks at the compositing work done on films such as Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Golden Compass, The Incredibles, King Kong, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, Sin City, Spider-Man 2, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, and Star Wars: Episode 3 - Revenge of the Sith. This book includes new sections on 3D compositing, High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging, Rotoscoping, and much more! - Publisher.

This practical, hands-on guide addresses the problems and difficult choices that professional compositors face on a daily basis. You are presented with tips, techniques, and solutions for dealing with badly shot elements, color artifacts, mismatched lighting and other commonly-faced compositing obstacles. Practical, in-depth lessons are featured for bluescreen matte extraction, despill operations, compositing operations, as well as color-correction. The book is presented entirely in an application-agnostic manner, allowing you to apply lessons learned to your compositing regardless of the software application you are using. The DVD contains before and after examples as well as exercise files for you to refine your own techniques on. New to the 3rd edition is an entirely new chapter entitled 'CGI Compositing Techniques', covering how the modern CGI production pipeline is now pushing many tasks that used to be done in the 3D department into the compositing department. All technological changes that have occurred between now and the publication of the 2nd edition are covered, as well as new media on the DVD and corresponding lessons within the book.

This start-to-finish, complete guide to Nuke will give you the foundations on the state-of-the-art visual effects software used by professionals in the film and television industries. Along with the hard-won advice and techniques from expert compositor and teacher Ron Ganbar, each chapter covers a complete lesson in the fundamentals, with step-by-step instructions included so you can easily follow along and start using the program right away. The projects used throughout the book are based on real-world examples of professional productions and project files are included with each chapter so you can work through all the examples. After discovering how to use the tools and understanding the compositing workflow, you’ll learn about basic and advanced compositing techniques, color correction, RotoPaint, keying, and tracking, as well as more advanced topics such as CGI and the 3D engine. In addition, you’ll learn about: • Working with nodes and process trees • Using CGI passes in Nuke to control 3D render looks • Camera Tracking techniques to combine 2D and 3D elements • Camera Projection to turn a single frame into moving images • Gizmos and all about creating your own tools in Nuke • Stereoscopic compositing Ron Ganbar has been a compositor since 1996 and visual effects instructor since 2001. He currently works on a variety of projects as a gun for hire as compositor, consultant, VFX supervisor, and trainer. Ron was made a “Teacher’s Trainer” by Apple for Shake in 2005 and has written, taught, and evaluated courses for the National Film and Television School, Apple, Peachpit Press, Westminster University, and others. "As both a talented compositor (with years of in-the-trenches experience) and an excellent teacher, Ron Ganbar has the unique ability to make even the most difficult concepts crystal clear. If you want to get up and running with Nuke as quickly as possible then start by buying this book!" —Ron Brinkmann, author of The Art and Science of Digital Compositing

Put the essential concepts and techniques of digital compositing to work for you without the need of a single mathematical equation. Compositing Visual Effects is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of film shots, figures, illustrations, and diagrams to help the visual reader gain a valuable vocabulary and understanding of the full range of visual effects, in which digital compositing plays a key role. Beginning with an inspirational tour of the scope and magnitude of digital compositing, you get a solid overview of the kinds of digital effects routinely executed today. See how CGI is composited with live action, how set extensions are done, and what a match-move shot is. Following that you learn each of the key applications of digital compositing, which include bluescreen compositing, bullet-time shots, motion tracking, and rotoscoping. The subsequent chapters dig down into each of the major digital compositing applications, introducing the fundamental concepts, and processes behind them. Learn what is easy and hard, possible and impossible, and what to expect when working on a job that entails digital compositing. New to this edition are 4 new chapters on: * 3D compositing, with lessons on what camera tracking is, how it is used to put CGI into a live-action plate, as well as live action into a 3D scene. * Stereo compositing, with descriptions of key stereoscopic terms and concepts, lessons on compositing shots that were filmed in stereo (both bluescreen and CGI), as well as the stereo conversion process when a flat 2D movie is converted to a stereo 3D movie * RED and Digital Capture with Log Images, including log image formats. This is a very hot topic these days. Colleges hang around video because it is cheaper. Film is still big in the real world of production. * Tracking an entire project from start to finish This is in addition to robust updates on topics such as: * planar tracking, Z compositing, working with Anamorphic HD formats, mocap, and more This edition also includes a companion website with images from the book for you to work with in your own compositing exercises. An accessible introduction to a complex subject for novice and aspiring compositors, from experienced author and compositing whose compositing credits include Night at the Museum 2, Shutter Island, Solaris, Traffic, and more Full color presentation illustrating the art and techniques of the practice, provides inspiration along with instruction New to this edition is a companion website, new chapters on 3D compositing, stereo compositing, RED and digital capture with log images, and more will have you understanding the latest in compositing technology in no time

In this latest book in the critically-acclaimed [digital] series from New Riders you’ll learn all of the techniques and skills that will take you from beginner to visual effects (VFX) professional in just one book. Seasoned visual effects producer Jon Gress has refined the teaching of the skills and techniques presented in this book for over a decade to distill them down to the most effective methodology, delivered in a way that’s both fun and easy to understand while being state-of-the-art for industry professionals. You’ll start with a solid understanding of the basics of visual effects and compositing, the fundamentals of bluescreen and greenscreen keying, 3D texturing, cloning, wire & rig removal, rotoscoping, 2D and 3D motion tracking, and matchmoving. And then experiment with a wide range of 2D, 2.5D & 3D visual effects, including 3D CGI, crowd replication, face replacements, faking shadows, reflections and Z depth, atmospheric, smoke, cloud & heat FX, sky replacements, day-for-night and digital 3D HUD FX. Building on this strong foundation of compositing and visual effects, you’ll be prepared for the advanced section of the book which teach skills, such as 2D, 2.5D & 3D digital matte painting and projections, film colorization, particle systems, fluid and rigid body dynamics, full digital environments, digital destruction, advanced lighting and rendering techniques, stereoscopic 3D, 2D to 3D conversions, and expert 3D and Photoshop extraction and modeling techniques that can only be described as magic! Throughout the lessons, you’ll glean insider advice on cutting edge methods that even experienced professionals will find amazing. You’ll learn everything you need to know to begin working in the world of visual effects as an industry professional. • All the info you need to go from beginner to professional in one book • Easily accessible teaching style from an instructor who has helped launch the careers of some of the best-known Hollywood visual effects specialists • Includes companion graphics files and videos to follow along with the lessons

Digital Compositing for Film and Video is a hands-on, practical, how-to guide that addresses the problems and difficult choices faced by the professional compositor in real-life situations. It presents techniques, tricks, and solutions for dealing with badly shot elements, coloration artifacts, and mismatched lighting that bedevil actual compositors working on real shots. Readers are offered in-depth practical methods for matte extraction, despill procedures, compositing operations, and color correction--the "meat and potatoes" of all digital effects. Compositing is the artistic blending of several disparate elements from a variety of sources into a single image while making all the component elements appear to be in the same light space and shot with the same camera. When confronted with a bad composite any observer will recognize that something is wrong--the artist will know what is causing the problem, and the technician will know how to fix it. A good compositor must be both an artist and a technician. Written by a senior compositor with over ten years' experience in both feature film and broadcast television, this book offers a broad range of alternative solutions that will save hours of fiddling with composites trying to get them to look right when the basic tools aren't working. A companion CD-ROM provides examples of the many topics covered in this book. Loaded with practical tricks, techniques and alternative solutions to the common thorny problems faced by today's compositorsCompatible with Adobe PhotoshopWritten by a senior compositor with over ten years of digital compositing experience