Nuke offers a New deal
New Deal Studios’ VFX legend Matthew Gratzner shares his experience of creating a VR project using Cara VR for Nuke
New software
It would seem that all software in 2016 needs a set of VR tools, which led The Foundry to work with key studios to develop its Nuke plug-in Cara VR, such as New Deal Studios who created a unique music video for indie rock band Galvanized Souls. However, a 360˚ VR video raised some technical and creative issues. “Initially, I was told that you can’t cut, it has to be first person and you can’t move the camera – I had no idea how to tell a story and a narrative without doing those things,” says Matthew Gratzner, director and co-founder of New Deal Studios.
“In virtual reality, you can’t just cover everything on three cameras and assemble the film in post, you really have to understand how the camera is going to move, and consider the actors and how the scene is blocked out. Directors have to have vision with VR, and effectively see the film in their head before it is even shot.”
Matthew and his team started working early on with The Foundry to draw-up a wish list of tools that would be The video is full of references to bands such as Van Halen and The Beastie Boys, which helps in VR as the video can jump anywhere Nuke supports the compositing of multi-camera action, ideal for VR workflows ideal to help with the creative process. “Within a few months, The Foundry came back to us with some great tools that were still being developed – these tools actually saved us on the video and made our lives so much easier.”
The Foundry has taken the existing Nuke functions, such as CGI elements, set extensions and creative colour control, and added new toolsets around stitching and geometry correction – specifically needed when creating VR films – and Cara VR is born. “It was amazing, as I had this whole projection/ re-projection workflow that I had created initially and The Foundry had one node that replaced that entire process. It made the process significantly faster,” says Jeff Jasper, Cto/digital effects supervisor at New Deal Studios.
“There were elements that had taken a significant amount of time to render and with The Foundry’s help we were able to render virtually instantaneously and it was far easier to work with.” In VR the challenges can be enormous; issues such as stereoscopic depth and stitching depth can hamper a project greatly without the right pipeline.
“Without Nuke and The Foundry’s VR tools, it would be such an immense challenge that I think it would be nearimpossible,” reflects Jeff. Download the interview video at creativebloq.com/vault/3dw209
Nuke’s New Vr plug-in
Creating 360° using Nuke’s Cara VR… Firstly stitching, with the calibration of a multi-camera rig to calculate the physical layout of the cameras and lenses, as well as merging the multiple video sequences into a 360˚ view for liveaction content. Secondly plate corrections, to match the colour between cameras, stabilisation to remove horizon roll, as well as the break-out and manual correction of stitches to create a seamless immersive experience. Thirdly compositing workflows, to assist Nuke artists working in a spherical image space, with tracking, paint for rig removal, and ray-trace rendering to place virtual elements into the real environment. And finally headset review, with a live connection direct to an Oculus Rift enabling artists to preview corrections in context.