Introduction

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

Visual Effects Today

1.1     Digital Compositing with CGI

1.1.1      CGI Compositing

1.1.2     Set Extension

1.1.3     Match Move

1.2     Compositing Visual Effects

1.2.1     Bluescreen Compositing

1.2.2     Motion Tracking

1.2.3     Warping and Morphing

1.2.4     Bullet Time Shots

1.2.5     Crowd Duplication

1.2.6     Atmospherics

1.2.7     Rotoscoping

1.2.8     Wire Removal

1.2.9     Scene Salvage

1.3     3D Compositing

1.4     Stereo Compositing

1.5     Stereo Conversion

1.6     Compositing Programs

1.6.1     Node-based Compositors

1.6.2     Layer-based Compositors

Chapter 2

Digital Images

2.1     Structure of Digital Images

2.1.1     The Pixel

2.1.2     Grayscale Images

2.1.3     Color Images

2.1.4     Four-channel Images

2.2     Attributes of Digital Images

2.2.1     Digitizing Images

2.2.2     Image Resolution

2.2.3     Image Aspect Ratio

2.2.4     Pixel Aspect Ratio

2.2.5     Display Aspect Ratio

2.2.6     Bit Depth

2.2.7     Floating Point

2.2.8     Multiplying Images

2.3     Image File Formats

2.3.1     Photographic Images vs. Graphics

2.3.2     Indexed Color Images (CLUT)

2.3.3     Compression

2.3.4     EXR

2.3.5     File Formats

2.4     DPI

Chapter 3

Compositing CGI

3.1     The CGI Composite

3.1.1     Scaling the Background

3.1.2     Semi-transparent Pixels

3.1.3     Summing the Layers

3.2     Multipass Compositing

3.2.1     Diffuse and Specular Passes

3.2.2     Occlusion and Shadow Passes

3.2.3     Reflection Pass

3.2.4     Creative Control

3.3     Depth Compositing

3.4     Multiplane Compositing

3.5     Sims

3.6     Particle Systems

3.7     Working with Premultiplied CGI

3.7.1     Color Correcting

3.7.2     Transformations and Filters

3.7.3     The Common Mistake

3.8     3D Compositing

3.8.1     The 3D Compositing Environment

3.8.2     Placing 3D in Live Action

3.8.3     Placing Live Action in 3D

3.8.4     Set Extensions

3.8.5     Camera Tracking

3.8.6     Small 3D Tasks

3.8.7     Conclusion

Chapter 4

Bluescreen Compositing

4.1     The Bluescreen Composite

4.1.1     Pulling the Matte

4.1.2     The Basic Composite

4.2     About Keyers

4.2.1     How Keyers Work

4.2.2     Despill

4.2.3     Color Correction

4.2.4     Scaling the Foreground and Background

4.2.5     Sum the Layers

4.2.6     The Final Composite

4.3     Helping the Keyer

4.3.1     Garbage Mattes

4.3.2     Procedural Garbage Mattes

4.3.3     Holdout Mattes

4.3.4     Degrain

4.4     Compositing Outside the Keyer

4.4.1     Merging Multiple Mattes

4.4.2     Performing the Despill

4.4.3     Color Correcting

4.4.4     The Composite

4.5     Shooting Bluescreens (and Greenscreens)

4.5.1     Lighting the Backing

4.5.2     Lighting the Talent

4.5.3     The Backing Material

4.5.4     Bluescreen vs. Greenscreen

4.5.5     Bluescreen Floors

4.5.6     Film Issues

4.5.7     Video Issues

4.5.8     Photography Tips

Chapter 5

Creating Masks

5.1     Key, Matte, Alpha, and Mask

5.2     Creating a Luma-key

5.3     Creating a Chroma-key

5.4     Creating a Mask

5.4.1     The Difference Mask

5.4.2     The Color Difference Mask

5.4.3     Geometric Primitives

5.4.4     Drawing Shapes

5.4.5     Painting a Mask

5.4.6     Combo Masks

Chapter 6

Rotoscoping

6.1     About Rotoscoping

6.2     Splines

6.3     Articulated Rotos

6.4     Interpolation

6.5     Keyframes

6.5.1     On 2’s

6.5.2     Bifurcation

6.5.3     Extremes

6.5.4     Final Inspection

6.6     Motion Blur

6.7     Semi-transparency

Chapter 7

Image Blending

7.1     The Mix Operation

7.2     The Multiply Operation

7.3     The Screen Operation

7.4     The Maximum Operation

7.5     The Minimum Operation

7.6     The Add Operation

7.7     The Subtract Operation

7.8     No-change Summary Table

7.9     Adobe Photoshop Blending Modes

7.10   Speed Changes

7.10.1     Skip Print/Frame Duplication

7.10.2     Frame Averaging

7.10.3     Optical Flow

Chapter 8

Animation

8.1     Transforms and Pixels

8.2     Filters

8.3     Pivot Points

8.4     Transformation Order

8.5     Keyframe Animation

8.6     Motion Blur

8.7     Motion Tracking

8.8     Stabilizing a Shot

8.9     Planar Tracking

8.9.1     How Planar Tracking Works

8.9.2     What Planar Tracking is Used for

8.10  Match Move

8.11  The Wonder of Warps

8.11.1     Mesh Warps

8.11.2     Spline Warps

8.11.3     Procedural Warps

8.12  The Magic of Morphs

Chapter 9

The Art of Compositing

9.1     Color Correcting

9.1.1     The Black and White Points

9.1.2     Gamma

9.1.3     Color

9.1.4     Color Adjustments

9.1.5     Pre-balancing the Color Channels

9.1.6     Gamma Slamming

9.2     Matching Layer Attributes

9.2.1     Grain Structure

9.2.2     Depth of Field

9.2.3     Shadows

9.2.4     Lens Distortion

9.3     Sweetening the Composite

9.3.1     Light Wrap

9.3.2     Edge Blend

9.3.3     Layer Integration

9.3.4     Artistic Embellishment

9.4     A Checklist

9.4.1     Color Correction

9.4.2     Lighting

9.4.3     Layer Attributes

Chapter 10

Scene Salvage

10.1     Dust-busting

10.2     Wire Removal

10.3     Rig Removal

10.4     Hair Removal

10.5     Scratch Removal

10.6     Light Leaks

10.7     Deflicker

Chapter 11

Working with Video

11.1    SDTV (Standard Definition Television)

11.1.1     Coping with Interlaced Video

11.1.2     Coping with Non-square Pixels

11.1.3     Coping with Color Sub-sampling

11.1.4     Coping with Edge Enhancement

11.1.5     Coping with Frame Rates

11.1.6     Coping with Timecode

11.2    HDTV (High Definition Television)

11.2.1     Image Size

11.2.2     Scan Modes

11.2.3     Frame Rates

11.2.4     Nomenclature

11.2.5     Anamorphic HD

11.2.6     The 24P Master

11.3    Title Safe

11.4    3:2 Pull-down

11.5    3:2 Pull-up

11.6    DV Compression Artifacts

Chapter 12

Working with Film

12.1    Capture vs. Display Formats

12.2    Academy and Full Aperture

12.3    Projection Formats

12.3.1     2.35

12.3.2     1.85

12.3.3     1.66

12.4    Cinemascope

12.5    VistaVision

12.6    3-perf Film

12.7    70mm Film

12.8    Super 16 Film

12.9    Fitting Film into Video

12.9.1     Letterbox

12.9.2     Pan and Scan

12.9.3     HTDV

12.9.4     Title Safe

12.10  Digitizing Film

12.11  Log Film Data

12.12  Recording Film

12.13  The Digital Intermediate Process

12.13.1     Editing the Film

12.13.2     Color Correcting

12.13.3     The Print Master

12.13.4     How DI Works

12.13.5     DI and You

Chapter 13

Digital Capture

13.1    Introduction

13.2    Image Sensors

13.2.1     Bayer Array

13.2.2     CCD Arrays

13.3    HDR Images

13.3.1     LDR vs. HDR Images

13.3.2     HDR Images on LDR Displays

13.3.3     HDR Cinema Clips

13.3.4     HDR Still Pictures

13.4    Log Images

13.4.1     The Virtue of Log

13.4.2     What is Log?

13.4.3     Working with Log Images

Chapter 14

Stereo Compositing

14.1    Introduction

14.2    Stereography

14.2.1     Stereo Cinematography

14.2.2     Viewing Stereo

14.2.3     Stereo Space

14.2.4     Convergence

14.3    Stereo Compositing

14.3.1     Prepping the Stereo Plates

14.3.2     Compositing Greenscreen Shots

14.3.3     Compositing CGI

14.4    Stereo Conversion

14.4.1     The Rubber Sheet Method

14.4.2     Separate Layers

14.4.3     The Semi-transparency Problem

14.4.4     Rotoscoping

14.4.5     Keying and Painting

14.4.6     Creating the Depth Map

14.4.7     Stereo Paint

14.4.8     Clean Plates

14.4.9     Depth Grading

Chapter 15

Life of a VFX Shot

15.1    Introduction

15.2    Sylvia Binsfeld—Writer, Director, Producer

15.3    The Dorme Storyboard

15.4    Svetlana Cvetko—DP

15.5    Nicholas Barnes—3D Generalist

15.6    Steve Wright—Senior Compositor

15.7    Conclusion

Glossary

Index