Written by senior compositor, technical director and master trainer Steve Wright, this book condenses years of production experience into an easy-to-read and highly-informative guide suitable for both working and aspiring visual effects artists. This expanded and updated edition of Digital Compositing for Film and Video addresses the problems and difficult choices that professional compositors face on a daily basis with an elegant blend of theory, practical production techniques and workflows. It is written to be software-agnostic, so it is applicable to any brand of software. This edition features many step-by-step workflows, powerful new keying techniques and updates on the latest tech in the visual effects industry. Workflow examples for: Grain Management Lens Distortion Management Merging CGI Render Passes Blending Multiple Keys Photorealistic Color Correction Rotoscoping Production Techniques for: Keying Difficult Greenscreens Replicating Optical Lens Effects Advanced Spill Suppression Fixing Discoloured Edges Adding Interactive Lighting Managing Motion Blur With brand new information on: Working in linear ACES Color Management Light Field Cinematography Planar Tracking Creating Color Difference Keys Premultiply vs. Unpremultiply Deep Compositing VR Stitching 3D Compositing from 2D Images How Color Correction ops Effect Images Color Spaces Retiming Clips Working with Digital Cinema Images OpenColorIO A companion website offers images from the examples discussed in the book allowing readers to experiment with the material first-hand.

Table of Contents:
About the Author Acknowledgements Preface Chapter 1 - Getting Started 1.1 How this Book is Organized 1.2 Web Content 1.3 What’s New in the 4th Edition 1.4 Gold Mines 1.5 Tool Conventions 1.5.1 The Slice Tool 1.5.2 Flowgraphs 1.5.3 Color Lookup Tables (LUTs) 1.5.4 Nuke 1.6 Data Conventions 1.6.1 Floating Point Data 1.6.1.1 Banding 1.6.1.2 Clipping 1.6.2 Linear Light Space 1.6.3 HDR Images 1.6.4 Stops PART I MAKING A GREAT COMPOSITE Chapter 2 - Pulling Keys 2.1 Lumakeys 2.1.1 How Lumakeys Work 2.1.2 Making Your Own Luminance Image 2.1.2.1 Variations on the Luminance Equations 2.1.2.2 Non-luminance Monochrome Images 2.1.3 Making Your Own Lumakeyer 2.2 Chromakeys 2.2.1 How Chroma Keys Work 2.2.2 Making Your Own Chroma Keyer 2.2.3 Making a 3D Chroma Keyer 2.3 Difference Mattes 2.3.1 How Difference Mattes Work 2.3.2 Making Your Own Difference Matte 2.3.2.1 Making the Difference Image 2.3.2.2 Making the Difference Matte 2.4 Bump Mattes 2.5 Color Difference Keys 2.6 The "Blur and Grow" Technique 2.7 Rotoscoping 2.7.1 Control Point Coherency 2.7.2 Shape Breakdown 2.7.2.1 Hierarchical Articulation 2.7.2.2 Organization 2.7.3 Bezier or B-spline? 2.7.4 Keyframe Strategies 2.7.4.1 On 2’s 2.7.4.2 Binary Multiples 2.7.4.3 Bifurcation 2.7.4.4 Motion Extremes 2.7.5 Motion Blur 2.7.5.1 Spline Placement 2.7.5.2 Edge Decontamination 2.7.6 Inspection Chapter 3 - Working with Keyers 3.1 Keyers 3.2 How Keyers Work 3.2.1 Calculating the Color Difference Matte 3.2.1.1 The Theory 3.2.1.2 Pulling the Raw Matte 3.2.1.3 A Simplified Example 3.2.1.4 A Slightly More Realistic Case 3.2.1.5 And Now, the Real World 3.2.1.6 Matte Edge Penetration 3.2.2 Scaling the Raw Matte 3.3 The After Effects Keyer 3.3.1 Step-by-step Procedure 3.3.2 Flowgraph of the After Effects Keyer 3.4 Typical Greenscreen Problems 3.4.1 Overexposed 3.4.2 Underexposed 3.4.3 Impure Greenscreens 3.4.4 Uneven Lighting 3.5 Preprocessing the Greenscreen 3.5.1 Denoise and Degrain 3.5.2 Screen Leveling 3.5.3 Local Suppression 3.5.4 Channel Clamping 3.5.5 Channel Shifting 3.5.6 Screen Correction 3.5.6.1 Step-by-step Procedure 3.5.6.2 Pictographic Flow Chart 3.5.6.3 Flowgraph of the Screen Correction Procedure 3.5.6.4 How to Create a Clean Greenscreen Chapter 4 - Refining Mattes 4.1 Gamma Slamming 4.2 Garbage Mattes 4.2.1 Pre-matting 4.2.2 Post-matting 4.3 Filtering the Matte 4.3.1 Noise Suppression with a Median Filter 4.3.2 Softer Edges 4.3.3 Controlling the Blur Operation 4.3.3.1 The Blur Radius 4.3.3.2 The Blur Percentage 4.3.3.3 Masking the Blur 4.4 Adjusting the Matte Size 4.4.1 Eroding a Matte with Blur and Scale 4.4.2 Dilating a Matte with Blur and Scale 4.4.3 Blurring Out 4.4.4 Sculpting Edges 4.5 Edge Masks Chapter 5 - Spill Suppression 5.1 Sources of Spill 5.2 The Despill Operation 5.3 Despill Algorithms 5.3.1 Green Limited by Red 5.3.1.1 Implementing the Algorithm 5.3.1.2 The Spillmap 5.3.2 Green Limited by the Average of Red and Blue 5.3.3 An Adjustable Despill 5.3.4 What About Blue Spill? 5.3.5 Refining the Despill 5.3.5.1 Channel shifting 5.3.5.2 Spillmap Scaling 5.3.5.3 Mixing Despills 5.3.5.4 Matting Despills Together 5.4 The Unspill Operation 5.4.1 How to Set It Up 5.4.2 Grading to the Backing Color 5.5 Despill Artifacts 5.5.1 Finding the Artifacts 5.5.2 Hue Shifts 5.5.3 Dark Edges 5.5.4 Fixing Despill Artifacts 5.6 Edge Grading 5.7 Edge Extension Chapter 6 - the Composite 6.1 Premultiply vs. Unpremultiply 6.1.1 Premultiply 6.1.2 Unpremultiply 6.1.3 The Double Premultiply 6.2 The Composite 6.2.1 The Over Composite 6.2.2 The KeyMix Composite 6.2.3 The AddMix Composite 6.2.3.1 How It Works 6.2.3.2 How to Build It 6.2.3.3 How to Use It 6.2.4 The Processed Foreground Method 6.2.4.1 The Workflow 6.2.4.2 What to Watch Out For 6.3 Compositing With a Keyer 6.3.1 Soft Comp/Hard Comp 6.3.2 "Cut and Paste" Keyer Compositing 6.4 Compositing Outside the Keyer 6.4.1 The Single Key 6.4.2 The Uberkey 6.4.3 Soft Key/Hard Key 6.4.4 The Additive Keyer 6.5 Stereo Compositing 6.5.1 Anaglyph 6.5.2 Stereopsis 6.5.3 Stereoscopy 6.5.4 The Stereo Conversion Process 6.5.5 Depth Grading 6.5.5.1 Scene Transition 6.5.5.2 The Dashboard Effect 6.5.5.3 Window Violation 6.5.5.4 Miniaturization 6.5.5.5 Divergence 6.5.6 Stereo Compositing 6.5.6.1 Dual View Display 6.5.6.2 Split and Join Views 6.5.6.3 Disparity Maps Chapter 7 - Compositing CGI 7.1 Multi-pass CGI Compositing 7.1.1 Process Verification for Your Renderer 7.1.2 Render Passes 7.1.3 Lighting Passes 7.1.3.1 Render Passes Workflow 7.1.3.2 Beauty Pass Workflow 7.1.4 AOVs 7.1.5 ID Passes 7.1.6 Normals Relighting 7.2 EXR File Format 7.2.1 Film Scans 7.2.2 Linear Lightspace 7.2.3 Arbitrary Image Channels 7.3 HDR Images 7.4 Deep Compositing 7.4.1 Deep Images 7.4.2 The Layering Complexity Problem 7.4.3 The Depth Compositing Edge Problem 7.4.4 The Re-rendering Problem 7.4.5 Deep Compositing with Live Action Chapter 8 - 3D Compositing 8.1 A Short Course in 3D 8.1.1 the 3D Coordinate System 8.1.2 Vertices 8.1.3 Meshes 8.1.4 Surface Normals 8.1.5 UV Coordinates 8.1.6 Map Projection 8.1.7 UV Projection 8.1.8 3D Geometry 8.1.9 Geometric Transformations 8.1.10 Geometric Deformations 8.1.10.1 Image Displacement 8.1.10.2 Noise Displacement 8.1.10.3 Deformation Lattice 8.1.11 Point Clouds 8.1.12 Lights 8.1.13 Shaders 8.1.14 Reflection Mapping 8.1.15 Ray Tracing 8.1.16 Image-based Lighting 8.1.17 Cameras 8.2 3D Compositing 8.2.1 3D compositing from 2D images 8.2.2 Pan and Tile 8.2.3 Camera Projection 8.2.4 Multiplane Shots 8.2.5 Set Extension 8.2.6 3D Backgrounds 8.3 Alembic Geometry 8.3.1 The Simple Case 8.3.2 Scenegraphs 8.3.3 Advantages Over FBX 8.4 Camera Tracking 8.4.1 Step 1 - Feature Tracking 8.4.2 Step 2 - The Solve 8.4.3 Step 3 – Build the Scene 8.4.4 Placing the Geometry 8.4.5 A Large Outdoor Scene PART II THE QUEST FOR REALISM Chapter 9 - Color Correction 9.1 The Behavior of Light 9.1.1 The Inverse Square Law 9.1.2 Diffuse Reflections 9.1.3 Specular Reflections 9.1.4 Bounce Light 9.1.5 Scattering 9.2 Gamma 9.2.1 The Math 9.2.2 Why Do We Need Gamma? 9.3 The Affect of Color Operations 9.3.1 Lift 9.3.2 Gamma 9.3.3 Gain 9.3.4 Offset 9.3.5 Saturation 9.3.6 Color Grading vs. Color Correcting 9.3.7 Increasing Contrast with the "S" Curve 9.3.8 Histograms 9.3.9 Channel Swapping 9.3.10 Premultiply vs. Unpremultiply - Again 9.4 Matching the Light Space 9.4.1 Brightness and Contrast 9.4.1.1 Matching the Black and White Points 9.4.1.2 Matching the Midtones 9.4.1.3 Gamma Slamming 9.4.2 Matching Color 9.4.2.1 Grayscale Balancing 9.4.2.2 Flesh Tones 9.4.2.3 The "Constant Green" Method of Color Correction 9.4.2.4 Daylight 9.4.2.5 Specular Highlights 9.4.3 Lighting Direction 9.4.4 Quality of Light Sources 9.4.4.1 Creating Softer Lighting 9.4.4.2 Creating Harsher Lighting 9.4.5 Non-linear Gradients for Color Correction 9.4.6 The DI Process 9.4.7 A Checklist Chapter 10 - Sweetening the Comp 10.1 Layer Integration 10.2 Interactive Lighting 10.3 Edge Blending 10.4 Light Wrap 10.5 Creating Shadows 10.5.1 Edge Characteristics 10.5.2 Density 10.5.3 Color 10.5.4 Faux Shadows 10.5.5 Shadow Warping 10.5.6 Contact Shadows 10.6 Atmospheric Haze 10.7 Adding a Glow 10.8 Grain Management 10.8.1 Grain Characteristics 10.8.2 Regraining Techniques 10.8.2.1 Regrain Tool 10.8.2.2 Lifted Grain 10.8.2.3 Grain Rescue 10.8.3 Grain Management Workflows 10.8.3.1 Live Over Live 10.8.3.2 Live Over CGI 10.8.3.3 CGI Over Live 10.8.3.4 CGI Over CGI 10.8.3.5 Still Photos 10.9 Managing Clipping Chapter 11 - Camera Effects 11.1 Lens Effects 11.1.1 Lens Distortion 11.1.2 Depth of Field 11.1.3 Vignetting 11.1.4 Lens Defects 11.1.4.1 Spherical Aberration 11.1.4.2 Astigmatism 11.1.4.3 Chromatic Aberration 11.1.5 Glows and Flares 11.1.5.1 Lens Flare 11.1.5.2 Lens Filter Flare 11.1.5.3 Diffraction Glows 11.1.5.4 Veiling Glare 11.1.6 Grain 11.2 Lens Distortion Workflows 11.2.1 CGI Over Live Action 11.2.2 Live Action Over CGI 11.2.3 CGI Over CGI 11.2.4 Live Action Over Live Action 11.3 Matching the Focus 11.3.1 Using a Blur for Defocus 11.3.2 How to Simulate a Defocus 11.3.3 Sharpening 11.3.3.1 Sharpening Operations 11.3.3.2 Unsharp Masks 11.3.3.3 Making Your Own Unsharp Mask 11.4 Rolling shutter PART III THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW Chapter 12 - Digital Color 12.1 Color Spaces 12.1.1 Primary Chromaticities 12.1.2 Units of Measure 12.1.3 Transfer Function 12.1.4 Gamut 12.1.5 HSV and HSL 12.1.6 Log and Linear 12.2 Working in Linear 12.2.1 What Exactly Is Linear? 12.2.2 Color Operations 12.2.3 Transformations and Filtering 12.2.4 CGI 12.3 Metadata 12.4 OpenColorIO 12.5 ACES Color Management 12.5.1 The ACES Workflow 12.5.2 The ACES Gamut 12.5.3 What About Video Productions? Chapter 13 - Image Blending 13.1 Image Blending in Linear Light Space 13.1.1 Image-blending Operations 13.1.2 Compositing Operations 13.1.3 Matching the Look of sRGB in Linear 13.1.3.1 All sRGB Color Space 13.1.3.2 sRGB Within Linear 13.2 Alpha Compositing Operations 13.3 Image-blending Operations 13.3.1 The Screen Operation 13.3.1.1 Adjusting the Appearance 13.3.2 The Weighted Screen Operation 13.3.3 Multiply 13.3.3.1 Adjusting the Appearance 13.3.4 Maximum 13.3.5 Minimum 13.3.6 Absolute Difference 13.4 Adobe Photoshop Blending Modes 13.4.1 Simple Blending Modes 13.4.2 Complex Blending Modes 13.5 Slot Gags 13.6 Retiming Clips 13.6.1 Constant Speed Changes 13.6.2 Variable Speed Changes 13.6.3 Interpolation Methods 13.6.3.1 Nearest Neighbor 13.6.3.2 Frame Average 13.6.3.3 Motion Estimation 13.7 VR Stitching 13.7.1 Workflow Overview 13.7.2 Removing Lens Distortion 13.7.3 Building a Matching Computer Rig 13.7.4 Projecting Onto the Panosphere 13.7.5 The Stitching Process 13.7.6 Coping with Parallax 13.7.7 Exposure Correction 13.7.8 Visual Effects Chapter 14 - Transforms and Tracking 14.1 Geometric Transforms 14.1.1 2D Transforms 14.1.1.1 Translation 14.1.1.2 Rotation 14.1.1.2.1 Pivot Points 14.1.1.3 Resize vs. Scale 14.1.1.4 Skew 14.1.1.5 Corner Pinning 14.1.2 Managing Motion Blur 14.1.2.1 Transform Motion Blur 14.1.2.2 Motion UV Motion Blur 14.1.2.3 Speed Changes 14.1.3 3D Transforms 14.1.4 Filtering 14.1.4.1 The Effects of Filtering 14.1.4.2 Twinkling Starfields 14.1.4.3 Choosing a Filter 14.1.5 Lining Up Images 14.1.5.1 Offset Mask Lineup Display 14.1.5.2 Edge-detection Lineup Display 14.1.5.3 The Pivot Point Lineup Procedure 14.2 Image Displacement 14.3 Warps and Morphs 14.3.1 Mesh Warps 14.3.2 Spline Warps 14.3.3 Morphs 14.3.4 Tips, Tricks, and Techniques 14.4 Point Tracking 14.4.1 The Tracking Operation 14.4.1.1 Selecting Good Tracking Targets 14.4.1.2 Bad Tracking Targets 14.4.1.3 Tracker Enable/Disable 14.4.1.4 Offset Tracking 14.4.1.5 Keep Shape and Follow Shape 14.4.1.6 Pre-processing the Clip 14.4.1.7 Coping with Grain 14.4.1.8 Tracking Workflow 14.4.1.9 Cleaning up Tracking Data 14.4.1.10 The Stability Test 14.4.1.11 Reasons for Failure 14.4.2 Match-Move 14.4.2.1 2D Transforms 14.4.2.2 Corner Pinning 14.4.3 Stabilizing 14.4.3.1 The Repo Problem 14.4.3.2 Motion Smoothing 14.4.3.3 Stabilizing For Rotoscoping 14.5 Planar Tracking 14.5.1 The Planar Grid 14.5.2 Drift Correction 14.5.3 Exporting Data 14.5.4 Roto Assist Chapter 15 - Digital Images 15.1 HD Video 15.1.1 Frame Formats 15.1.2 Anamorphic video 15.1.3 Scan Modes 15.1.4 Working with Interlaced Video 15.1.4.1 De-interlacing 15.1.4.2 Scan Line Interpolation 15.1.4.3 Field Averaging 15.1.5 Color Subsampling 15.1.6 Keying with 4:2:2 Video 15.1.7 Frame Rates 15.1.7.1 24, 25, 30, 60fps 15.1.7.2 23.98, 29.97, 59.94fps 15.1.8 Timecodes 15.1.9 Video File Formats 15.1.10 Telecine 15.1.10.1 The 3:2 Pull-down 15.1.10.2 The 3:2 Pull-up 15.2 Digital Cinema Images 15.2.1 Digital Camera Advantages 15.2.2 The Bayer Array 15.2.3 Sensor Crop 15.2.4 HFR – High Frame Rate 15.2.5 The DCI 15.3 Film Scans 15.3.1 Grain 15.3.2 The "Safe-to" Window 15.3.3 Apertures 15.3.4 Aspect Ratios 15.3.5 Film Formats 15.3.5.1 Full Aperture 15.3.5.2 Academy Aperture 15.3.5.3 Super 35 Formats 15.3.5.4 Cinemascope 15.3.5.5 Working with Cscope 15.3.5.6 "3-perf" Film 15.3.5.7 VistaVision 15.3.5.8 65mm/70mm 15.3.5.9 IMAX 15.4 Log Images 15.4.1 What Are Log Images? 15.4.2 Why We Need Log Images 15.4.2.1 Human Vision 15.4.2.2 Data Compression 15.4.2.3 Working with Log Images 15.5 Light Field Cinematography 15.5.1 How It Works 15.5.2 The Impact on Visual Effects 15.5.2.1 Deep Images 15.5.2.2 Arbitrary Depth of Field 15.5.2.3 Depth Maps 15.5.2.4 Stereo Through a Single Lens 15.5.2.5 Volumetric Optical Flow 15.5.2.6 Position Pass 15.5.2.7 Point Clouds 15.5.2.8 Mattes 15.5.2.9 Normals and Normal Relighting 15.5.2.10 Camera Tracking 15.5.3 When, and How Much? Glossary Index