NUKE 6.3 Tutorial: Grid Warp & Spline Warp Nodes Video Lecture | Create Visual Effects with Nuke - Professional Skills

hello everyone and welcome to this
introduction to the newly improved
splinewarp and grid walk nodes inside of
nuke 6.3 these nodes have been
overhauled in a major way leading to an
increase in speed stability and user
interaction when warping and morphing in
this video we'll be covering new
features of these nodes and
demonstrating some of their uses so
we're gonna dive straight in with the
grid warp which can be found in its
usual home in the transform tab under
grid warp and you can see when looking
at it straight away that you have your
usual source destination and background
inputs I'm just going to plug the source
in here at first glance you can see that
we have our usual properties bin with
some overhauled icons here for copying
and pasting our keys we also have some
extra options and our extra render tab
which we will be looking at a moment we
also have a new tool bin here for tools
for adjusting the resolution of our grid
and along the top here we have quick
access to a lot of our parameters so
straight away once it's plugged in you
can see it's automatically snapped to
the resolution of our grid we're looking
at some footage here that's kinda been
donated to us from FX PhD now let's just
start from the top and work across so we
have our output drop down here which
basically gives us the choice of showing
the output of just our sauce grid so
right now this is just our source
footage here then we can view our source
footage warped if we have a an image
plugged into our destination then we
have the ability to see the destination
image and then we have the ability then
see that warped and then if we turn on
morph here we get access to the mix and
walk values here for when you are doing
morphing I'm just going to put this back
to source Warped to start with now the
next feature you'll see across here is
we have the first three boxes here which
are relating directly to the visible
grid so these are toggles for whether or
not we are looking at our source grid or
our destination grid so if I just turn
off this a here you can see that I had
the choice of my destination grid so
never right now I'm viewing my source if
I turn that off I'm seeing nothing
that's my destination grid if I turn on
the a what this is going to do is this
is going to make the best choice based
on the output that I am choosing so if I
look at the sauce grid here you can see
that I'm viewing my source
there if I choose to see source warped
I'm actually going to see the result of
the destination if I see destination
that's going to show me the destination
grid and destination warped is going to
show me the source grid so you can see
how that works and most of the time
you'll find using this automatic toggle
here the best way to go we also have an
auto key button here which allows us to
auto key any changes we make to the grid
and then here we have the ability to
then ripple edit those points based on
whether or not we ripple across all of
our frames from the start of our
sequence or to the end or a user-defined
range if you put it into ripple mode you
will see much like on the road to paint
node we get a red outline just to make
sure we know we're in ripple edit and
any changes we make to any of our points
whilst we're in ripple mode are going to
be carried across every single frame so
if we have multiple key frames for
example on any individual point any
changes we make in a ripple mode will be
added to all of the key frames evenly
now the next thing we have is the
ability to see the labels of our points
we have a toggle here for our transform
handle and then next to that we've got
one of the biggest changes in both the
grid warp and the splinewarp nodes and
that is this persistent preview here so
if you remember before what would happen
is every time you adjusted your grid
warp what would happen is you would
first see a low res proxy version of the
warp you were doing then once you
released then it would snap back and
you'd have to wait for that scanline to
finish now what happens is as we move
our point we actually go into an open GL
view of our warp which is really nicely
detailed and works really smoothly and
is very interactive then when we let go
of this we have a very my new poss
depending on the intensity of the warp
before we snap back to our render so
it's holding that Open GL preview until
the scanline has finished so that really
does mean that this becomes a much more
interactive tool now next up I'm just
going to bring in a new grid walk node
here just to show you this is the
division slider so this is a nice quick
way of increasing the divisions of your
grid you can see it's totally
interactive and nice and fast if you
have made adjustments to your grid I'm
just going to quickly move some points
around here and a kind of arbitrary
fashion
making a very horrible image and now I
attempt to adjust the divisions here
nukes gonna give me a warning and saying
that if I subdivide this grid any
manually move points may not match in
the new grid but it's gonna do its best
to rebuild the topology using our new
divisions to get the best result so if I
hit yes here you can see that I now have
a much denser grid and pretty much the
same result as we had before with our
lower divisions so it does a really good
job of realigning the topology now over
here on this side you can see that we
have a whole set of new tools here so if
you remember before every time you
wanted to add resolution to your grid
using the add resolution button you
would have to click on it add some
resolution and click to select again add
more resolution now we can just hit this
plus key here and we can just
interactively add resolution on either
axis we also have the ability to then
remove in the same fashion we then have
just skipping this one for a moment we
then have if we select points we then
can subdivide in either one axis or the
other axis or if we select again we can
subdivide in both axes so that's a nice
quick way once again of interactively
increasing the resolution of our grid
now one of the other really useful
features here is the ability to draw a
new boundary for your grid warp so
rather than having to scale it around we
can just select this and say I want to
just grid warp this lady's face here
which is what we're going to be doing in
our next example anyway I can now just
drag a grid over it let go and that is
going to give me a new mesh and I'm just
gonna have this make a resolution of 3
so that's nice and easy to view now if I
want to just change my mind about where
that grid is I can just draw again and
it's going to replace it then I can just
draw again to replace it there you can't
have more than one grid at any one time
but it does automatically rebuild it
somewhere else for you so that is also a
very very quick way of having an
interactive method of laying down a grid
now just moving over into our properties
here we still have our keys section here
only it's much neater we have the
ability to copy and paste our keys from
our source grid to our destination grid
we can still resize our source and
destination
here too the size of our image we have
access to the output again as we have
here and we also have our warp and mix
tabs here we can also now add masks in
we have our transform parameters as well
on top of so that's another global
transformation here and we have that for
source and destination and the ability
to source our destinations
transformation from the source grid and
I render tab we can change the
submissions this is the accuracy and
detail of the mesh in between our
different points so the high this goes
the smoother you may find your warp to
be but it may also slow down the
processing of it and then we always have
the ability to change our filtering if
we require a bit of sharpening or
smoothing when we do our warp so that is
the main properties of it so now let's
look that's an example of using it so
let's say we want to use the grid warper
to augment our lady's face here maybe
making her lip look slightly more
swollen or maybe her cheek or our
eyebrow so what I've done is I've done a
very quick rudimentary track of our eyes
and now I'm going to bring in our grid
walk node like so so first thing I'm
going to do is I'm going to use the
interactive grid drawing tool here to
draw a grid around her face and I'm
going to go to my first frame and I'm
just gonna clear my trackers parameters
for the minute select this grid and move
it down now I'm going to change over to
the source for you here so I don't
actually see any of the warp that's
happening so I'm gonna move this into a
good place and then the first thing
we're going to do is I'm going to adjust
the topology at this grid to fit her
face nicely so I'm just going to start
moving points around to get them into a
position that I think is useful for us
so it's gonna I select the edge of our
mouth here just pull these down a little
here and I'm gonna start interactively
adding in some extra lines so maybe one
here one for the boundary of that
especially if I'm going to adjust our
eyebrow I do a very quick rough
representation of how one might do this
so very much like a model of a face mesh
in 3d I'm just laying out her features
here so I want one for the bottom of her
mouth one for the top four mouths
I just wanna curve these round a little
here so I'm just now gonna add a line we
were down the middle here for her nose
the middle of her lip I'm gonna add one
across the center here for the tipper
nose and I'm gonna say that that is
probably made with the exception of 1x1
down here a good number of grids I could
just be greedy one more so now I've got
this grid for her face what I can do is
go into transform tab and using the
fairly new link to parameter I can just
go in here and say I want to link to
tracker ones translate now if we look at
this I now have a grid that is tracked
to her face globally like so so now if I
wanted to I could go in here and just
make some with Auto key on I could just
make a few adjustments so maybe hear her
mouth open so I'm going to want to sort
of have that represented like so maybe
pull this down and just keep just sort
of noodling this until I get a result
that I kind of unhappy with and it's
going to leave it like that for now so
now what I want to do is I want to have
a look at this source warped so if I
look at this obviously it's going to
horrific lis warp her face so all I'm
going to do is I'm gonna copy my source
grid and paste it as my destination grid
so now you can see that my source warp
grid where I'm viewing the destination
here now matches which means that
between my source and my sauce walked I
don't have any defamation so now this is
where the fun stuff starts so I've got
my grid track to her face I've got a
nicely laid out topology I can go in
here now and I'd probably do this with
the ripple edit turned on so I'm going
to put this onto all frames I'm
come in here and I'm gonna start by just
maybe spreading out her lip a bit here
and here trying to make that look as
uncomfortable as possible maybe just
spread out over here a little I'm
actually just gonna add another point in
here interactively you can see how easy
that is to do because I might just want
to spread this area around a bit make it
look a bit more painful maybe I just
want to lift her eyebrow up without
adjusting her eye maybe make this look a
little more swollen like so so now I've
made some quite subtle adjustments maybe
a little less softer than I probably
would do in reality but just so you guys
can see you can see this is before and
this is after all using that persistent
preview so I got a really nice feedback
and then when I play through here you
can also see that the grid warp is now
quite a lot quicker so that's just
caching through like so and you can see
now that we have a more injured go we
also have in here a mask input so if I
bring in a roto node like say and draw
that out maybe let's just cut right
across to face something quite brutal
and plug that in as a mask you can see
now that only inside that mask are we
getting our warp so if I move this over
you can see that I'm masking out that
warp this works nicely with a feathered
mask as well if you really want to blend
in your warps another big improvement
with both the grid warp and the
splinewarp in fact is the ability to
attach trackers to any of the grid
points or spline points you wish and
still have a record or way of checking
to see which of these points is attached
to what so I am just going to bring in a
grid walk quickly like so I'm just going
to chuck this on source for now just to
show my point and I've got a tracker
here that is tracked to the corner of
her eye I'm just gonna slip my grid warp
select my point and go link to tracker 1
track 1 you can see instantly I now have
a grid walk point that is tracked to her
eye and then if I
click on this and go back to link to and
go to the tracker dialog I can see what
I'm currently connected to so tracker 1
translate so I have a way of knowing and
also changing what that is connected to
so that was a big deal I think and that
is another massive step forward with the
grid warper and that's pretty much all
of the grid board features so now we can
move on to the spline wall
now the spline walk in 6.3 is quite
different beasts to what we've been used
to so I'm just going to pull one of
these in from the transform tab and the
splinewarp there we go now as you can
see straight away the property's been is
it's been expanded to have a layer stack
here we've got I am a tool bin here and
we've got a lot of our properties at the
top far fewer accessible nice and easily
so I'm just going to quickly run through
some of these properties many of them
are similar to the grid Wolff and then
we'll get into showing what some of the
tools use so we've got the same sort of
tools in the grid Wharf it's Auto key
point labels transform handle toggles
ripple edit the same output drop down
here for source Warped and source etc
etc we've got a very similar
manifestation of our three toggles here
between auto toggling the curve that we
want to see based on our output here or
manually toggling which ones we want to
see we also have our persistent preview
so once again that opened gel persistent
preview that we've just saw in the grid
warp that really enhances user
interaction we will then also have the
ability to toggle on and off shapes
contributions as well as lock them down
as well so let's just start off
straightaway by getting in here and
drawing a shape so we can start seeing
what we've got we've got our usual roto
candidates in here so I'm just going to
start with a Bezier and I'm just going
to draw that like so and at this point
you can see that we don't have any
change between our source and our sauce
Warped now if I go to source whoops and
I just zoom in straight away I'm just
gonna select a point maybe here and I'm
gonna stretch this out now you can see
not only are we getting a warp but we're
also getting this new UI feature that we
haven't seen before which is this dotted
line now these dotted lines show you the
connection
between your destination good which
we're currently adjusting here and the
sauce grid that it comes from now this
means that if I turn off the automatic
toggle here you can see that I can see
the source grid but often having those
two grids becomes quite confusing on
screen so we can turn off our source
grid and just have our destination grid
but still have some kind of idea as to
how far we've moved our points so we can
obviously adjust our point it's freeform
like this or you can also click on this
dotted line and then basically just
slide left and right to slide at the
point along that connecting line so you
basically returning it back to its
original position so that's a really
nice useful way of being able to adjust
your warp but once you've found a good
position for it then on top of that
boobs have another way of understanding
the connection between our two splines
so I'm just going to turn on the other
spline here but first I'm actually just
gonna warp all of this stuff up so that
we've got some difference like so and
I'm gonna turn on our source grid now
now there's a toggle here which is
called correspondence visibility if I
turn that on you can see that we get
these lines they're connected between
our source and our destination grid so
we have them at their beginning and then
equally spread out at two points along
them these are our correspondence lines
now on our toolbar here we also have a
correspondence tab where we can add
modify or remove correspondence points
so let's start by I'm adding a few so
I'm just going to add a few extra
correspondence points between and what
these correspondence points are if I
just hop over to modify is it's
basically saying that at this point on
my sauce curve I want to be
corresponding to this point on my
destination curve and all of these are
fully keyframe able fully editable
correspondence points so you've got two
levels of adjustment there you've got
the actual spline points that you've
created and then you've also got these
correspondence points between them to
also help you manipulate and adjust the
my new show of your warp so they're
really really nice features the next key
feature in the splinewarp is the fact
that we can have multiple spline warps
all within one node so we have our layer
stack over
here so I'm just gonna go over into my
Bezier drawing mode again so I could
here select to have a spline walk for
her mouth I could then do an ellipse for
the nose area here and as you can see
I've got three warps all happening
within the same layer stack I can then
use the visibility to turn on and off a
contribution of them like so as you can
see so I've got these three warps all
happening now all within the same layer
stack just remove these now another
really useful feature is using this
layer stack to have multiple masks
adjusting the contribution of your warps
so what I'm going to do is I'm going to
draw an ellipse around the eye here like
so and we're gonna draw intersecting
with the original splinewarp here and
what I'm going to do is instead of
having this ellipse set to standard I'm
gonna go over here and there's these two
toggle buttons here one is a hard
boundary and one is a soft boundary if I
turn on the hard boundary like so you
can see that the warp is very very
rigidly only happening within that area
so if I adjust this you can see I'm
getting a very hard boundary to my warp
if I change that over to a softer
boundary you can see that it's adjusting
the contribution but it's not totally
fixed to within that line which gives
you a softer fall-off then you can also
have multiple masks like this so I could
draw another one for this eye which I
could set to be a hard mask for example
and all of these are just adjusting the
contribution of these warps so that is
another really useful feature it's that
ability to have multiple layers of warp
within one splinewarp node with multiple
layers of masking within that as well so
I've just reset in here
so I can show you another tool in the
spline walk so I'm gonna bring a new
splinewarp node now this new tool is the
pin tool and it's really really funky
and incredibly useful and can be used a
number of different ways so I'm just
gonna first of all draw a spline down
the center of
and then I'm just gonna make a warp
adjustment to it like so and now what
I'm gonna do is I'm gonna select over
here the pin tool and I'm gonna start
dropping down pins and I'm gonna drop
one here and we live our eye and I'm
gonna drop one on the other side of her
face here and what you can see is where
I'm dropping these pins is actually
creating a region around that pin that
is limiting the effect of the warp from
this spline so if I put another pin down
here by a mouth another pin here you can
see that now that walks only really
happening in that center area
I'm just gonna give you a little demo
here so if I move this around you can
see that there's a definite limiting
region here and here you can see that
you still have a bit of a walk change
further out so if you want to pin that
down you can just drop a couple of extra
pins and then we can even try dropping
some really close here and here so we
really start limiting that warp down the
center of her face there so that's one
way of using the pins it's a really nice
way once you've laid down a warp spline
for you just to go in and then just make
really tiny adjustments to kind of limit
areas that you don't want to be warped
now the second use for it is actually as
its own warping tool so I am just gonna
delete that and bring in another spline
walk
so this time what I'm gonna do I'm just
gonna drop some pins around and I'll put
some here here and here and then I'm
gonna put some around the outside of her
hair like so it's a nice interactive
quick tool and now you can view this as
basically like you've laid out a grid
warp but without any connecting lines
and without needing to be any particular
shape and you now have if I just move
this around you now see that you have a
point that is much like a grid warp
warping but it's also limited by the
surrounding points you still get your
offset line here so you can see where
you've come from so your source to and
from using the dotted line so now I've
got these I can select all of these
outer points and do something really
horrific here so I can just scale up the
outer part of the face
and then if I wanted to limit the effect
on our guy I could then drop some extra
pins around so that we were really just
limiting a small area that's a pretty
strange effect we can undo that and
obviously with the way we've laid this
out we can also then select the inner
portion and just kind of scale in the
center of our face just to really make
things look weird so you can see there
you've got two ways of using this pin
tool you can either use it as a limiting
feature so it's basically gonna limit
the area of your warps or you can use it
as its kind of own point based grid warp
which is really fast really interactive
and you know with the persistent preview
does give you a really really fast
feedback so hopefully you can see that
you've got a fully featured tool set
here the warp is have taken a little
giant leap forward and they've improved
in terms of their stability their speed
and their interactivity so hopefully you
guys can sit down and have a play with
these now six three years out and reap
the benefits thanks for watching