The course covers work done as part of post production for the 12 episode Russian TV series "Wings of the Empire". It's a companion course to AFX230 and artist Kirill Pleshakov covers the complete process of using Nuke the composite the war camp background.
This includes compositing of the 3D tents, projecting textures on proxy geometry that is built from scratch inside Nuke. Most of the course covers layout in Nuke, via cloning the real elements in the shot and balancing the composition until the camp looks and feels alive. There is a lot of secret compositing techniques and a minimum amount of using a 3D package.
Postproduction was done completely at Studio Scandinavia in Russia and Pleshakov was throw into the project where he saw his role grow over time. It was one of his first jobs in the industry and he learned problem solving in order to get his shots done in any way possible. The company continued to grow over time, throwing harder and harder tasks at him until he was assigned to do this shot. He actually completed the scene at home, where he could dive into the shot and concentrate completely on the project without interruption.
Kirill is a Producer and VFX Supervisor from Saint-Petersburg, Russia, currently working with the director Alexey Talizin in their full production cycle studio Movie Magic. Kirill spent most of his career compositing and supervising in Special FX studio Scandinava which is famous for creating miniature tanks in
Panfilov's 28 Men movie.
To complete the eagle composite inside After Effects on top of the output of the final Nuke comp from this course, be sure to check out
AFX230: Compositing in After Effects: Eagle Flight Project.
Guerrilla Nuke Compositing: War Camp Project
Watch our overview of the course
Class Listing
Class 1: First Steps
Camera solve and ground layout.
Class 2: Tent Geometry
Modeling the proxy geometry of the tents, layout, and projecting the tent textures on the geometry.
Class 3: Cleanup
Cleanup and initial compositing of the tents.
Class 4: Adding detail
Mapping additional textures and attaching simple geometry to the tents, making them more detailed.
Class 5: Soldiers
Cloning the soldiers, including using roto-paint to create differences between them.
Class 6: Ground details
Focusing on ground effects, merging soldiers with the ground, compositing shadows, and mapping roads.
Class 7: Even more cleanup
Cleanup, stabilizing the ground, and extracting the foreground smoke.
Class 8: Flags and other details
Stabilizing flags and adding them to the soldiers. Starting to lay out further details of the shot, including cloning the barrels.
Class 9: Fire and Smoke
Mapping bonfires on to the ground, adding smoke to them, cloning the benches.
Class 10: Cannons and more elements
Stabilizing the cannons, cloning the carts and watch booths.
Class 11: Integrating the details
After cloning the rest of the details, merging them with the ground and making procedural shadows for them.
Class 12: Finishing Touches
Polishing the shot, correcting all the glitches, rendering the final render.