3D in Nuke

However, this is the first show where I've really gotten into using the 3D part of Nuke, using projection geometry to achieve a look. Sure, in Inferno and Flame we had them too, but it was never really as powerful as it is now, and most of the time it was faster to just fake something in 2D. Now, the processing power is just getting there, and things are getting spicy. On several previous shows, I've used cards and bicubics to layer atmosphere and debris to get a look, as evident from Flags of our Fathers and Pirates. A different show, which totally bombed at the box office, was The Dark Is Rising. On this show, which comes out on DVD in a couple months (it should totally be sooner, to make their money back), I was tasked with a number of shots which involved wrapping the darkness around a shot-on-location environment. Time was tight, and we needed to come up with a way to get some effects created without it going through a render pipeline. The FX guys did an awesome job of tossing out a plethora of different variations of the darkness crawling, and I placed as many of them as I could into the scene, without it looking too hokey. It turned out pretty well in the end, given the limited amount of passes I had! Using Nukes 3D comp system, I was able to layer and distort maybe 6-8 FX darkness layers into almost 20-30, while also adding live action elements shot on the stage to blend some more realism into the shot. You'll have to wait until the DVD comes out to see my work, but for those that saw it in the theater, the shots I worked on were: The Rider (Christopher Eccleston) riding over a hill, dragging the darkness with him, covering the town in the background. Two shots of the Rider in close-up, emitting the darkness from his cape. A shot of London with Big Ben, with the darkness swirling through the streets and covering the city in gloom. This last shot was a quick one, almost a week to work on, if I remember correctly. I took what I had gained from doing the first shot of the town, and applied it to this one, using bicubics and image planes in 3D as well as a bunch of roto, to get the final look.

Needless to say, working with a 3D compositing environment for that show was excellent, and really increased the productivity of the comper using it. Mummy is going to be the same way, where there will be increased communication between the comper and the other departments to get the shot looking the way Rob wants it to look, plus extras.