Tracking – iPhone screen
Nuke Homework: Transforming Screens and Reflecting on the Process
For one of our recent assignments, Gonzalo tasked us with tracking and altering the screen of the source footage. This exercise served as a comprehensive review of my Nuke skills.
To start, I made use of the Green Despill nodes that Gonzalo had provided in the file (he would cover them in detail later). This decision was driven by my desire to avoid merging the green-spilled fingers. I also added a roto layer for the fingers, including an additional negative layer for the outline to introduce a shadow effect. Following this, I stabilized the original video using the Tracker node.
Once the stabilization was complete, I added a Roto node to define the screen area. I then imported an image featuring cute animals and resized it using the Reformat node, aligning it to the roto area using the Transform node. Two Transform nodes were employed—one for matching the image and the other for animating the screen.
After merging the image with the original video, I incorporated the “DropShadow” node to enhance its organic feel.
The final touch involved adding a tracker to the original video and using it for matchmove data, introducing a subtle shake reminiscent of the original. Given a slight cropped area during the matchmove, a Transform node was added, and a slight scaling up was applied.
The culmination of this work was the exported output through the Write node.
Honestly, this project felt relatively light compared to the complexities of Roto running man. Nevertheless, it presented a valuable opportunity to review and reflect on what I have learned and what I find still difficult.
Despite thinking that I had a solid grasp of concepts like Premultiply and Reformat, their application in this project proved challenging. I encountered difficulties when merging the image onto the screen, realizing later that I had forgotten to reformat. While Roto served its purpose in aligning the image, I am certain there might be alternative solutions. This experience has undoubtedly contributed to refining my Nuke skills, and I think it will guide me toward more effective approaches in the future.