This ONE Step Makes CG Look Cinematic (Most Artists Skip It)

An extremely important part on any CG shot is CG Compositing. Compositors are responsible for dialing in the CG / Adding VFX Stock Elemetns, or doing hundreds of secondary color corrections to achieve a final film look.
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Never heard of NUKE?:
Nuke pairs with any 3D Software - so if you're using Blender, Houdini, Unreal Engine, Maya, or any other 3D package, you should composite your renders in Nuke.
Most beginners start in After Effects - but if you want to go professional, you need to use Nuke.
NUKE Is what studios will hire you for.
...The kicker here, you can get Nuke for FREE (For Non Commercial Use),
No watermark, so it's great for building a portfolio or personal projects
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We have the most extensive Nuke training program online, designed to get you to a professional level:
👉(Get this new BONUS project, as well as an entire beginner course series).
www.compositin...
Advanced Courses for people looking to level up their game:
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VFX Assets to help you build your shots:
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[@CompositingAcademy]

p.s apparently reticles don't appear from the opposite side of the rifle like this and the internet told me so, but it's cool so I left it

[@rubyrude.infinite]

The reticle actually can be seen from the back sometimes. Much like looking through it normally, it appears at infinite depth not at the depth of the glass. This is always one of my pet peevs in games and cg. It can usually be fixed using a paralax shader.

[@BroodLing46]

Please do not, its completely ruins impression from the scene T_T

[@ConorMcConnell-s5l]

Great video, very helpful! The entire optic is backwards lol but it looks cool so it's a good choice and most people won't notice. Call of Duty does it all the time

[@NaderVaderYT]

as a gunnut I will crash the fuck out, I hate when people don't understand the things they are animating modelling etc

[@SusCac]

@@ConorMcConnell-s5l No it's not.

[@Jacob_Zirkle]

Great video! 1000% agree beginner CG artists don't factor in compositing and composition when thinking about final shot. I've seen too many artists just render straight out of blender and they're missing out on so many opportunities to elevate the shot.

[@1polygonewithme]

Yep very true very true

[@hanz_2187]

maybe 2025 is the year i finally make myself go through a compositing course after 7 years of thinking about it -.-

[@VFXforfilm]

Short and sweet :)

[@1polygonewithme]

Man this is gold would love more lil videos from you but thanks anyway 🙏👏

[@CompositingAcademy]

some bigger projects in the works, more is coming!

[@bennyboo82]

You present at the perfect speed, awesome instructor

[@DanielSamulewiczXXI]

We have to admit many of us were long waiting for this video! 🎉🫶🏻🇱🇹

[@slimecubes]

hey, thanks for the tutorial. also. love your online courses on compositing academy :)

[@javierep_]

This video is a real gift. Thank you for making this content because we truly appreciate it. I had a somewhat specific question, for the final grain result I imagine you used DasGrain or something similar, but where did you get the grain plate to implement it in your CG shot? I would like to know where to find plates with grain from ARRI or 70mm or 35mm film etc. Thank you so much!

[@CompositingAcademy]

Thank you I’m glad it helps🙏! This one I used a node called AlexaGrain on nukepedia. I believe it’s just procedural grain but someone matched it closer to a specific Alexa sensor, I’d have to check on my PC to see. A grain plate would be better though if you have one, might be a good idea to film one as an asset.

[@javierep_]

Thank you so much!

[@wolfetheanimator]

your raw is my composite 👌👌

[@CGToonStudio]

Make more of such CG critique..

[@epereyralucena]

that soldier cg ? bro looks good

[@CompositingAcademy]

Yep it’s cg!

[@NARUTZ]

@@CompositingAcademy what software did you use to animate and or model the soldierr

[@CompositingAcademy]

@@NARUTZ Blender! It's a good companion for compositors in my opinion. In studios compositors will mostly just use Nuke, but if you do your own side stuff Blender is free and there's tons of plugins and content around it.

[@NARUTZ]

@ cool thanks

[@MathiasJ89]

Was just looking for CG comp resources today! Hard to find. Any chance this could be sold separately or would you maybe want to do a full course on CG comp for different renders?

[@CompositingAcademy]

That’s something I have considered, although there is a CG Lookdev class that teaches a ton of cg compositing concepts and how to develop images (nk606). Mainly right now I am finishing up the compositing bootcamp - we have a few more film shoots to complete so that has to finish first. For getting this by itself you can email [e-mail] , there’s a bonus section this is part of so it comes with 11 other mini projects.

[@suhelpal1843]

Thank you very much are there any more updates for any new compositing courses. Loved your compositing basic courses❤

[@sajeelshukla]

really cool video. One question: which software are you using for annotating /drawing on screen?

[@CompositingAcademy]

this is called 'Livedraw', you can grab it from github here: github.com/antfu/live-draw

[@gs1994100]

Great intro. Want to buy full course. Could somebody tell me why do all that work when you can have it done in 3d from start?

[@CompositingAcademy]

I'll paste my response from a comment on X: A few reasons why lots of small changes are better in compositing most of the time: There's a lot of secondary grading across multiple objects, which if you were to do that in 3D means you'd have to adjust materials and create a lot of lights that are light linked to specific objects. Sometimes an asset is instanced across scenes, you wouldn't want to have to create new materials for every single object potentially. For lighting, While light linking isn't bad, sometimes in compositing you can do 10 or 20 grades in a matter of minutes, and those color corrections are all 3D Tracked using position data with 1 click. It's faster than moving lights or messing with materials, and you can get the exact shape where you want to affect things. This means you can add light without accidentally spilling onto other things very quickly. For animated elements, if you want videos of smoke or fires - etc, you need to composite it. You don't want to try to align things in motion baked into a 3D render generally. Even in this scene the small lights behind can still be adjusted / retimed very quickly because it's not rendered in. Also, a scene like this where the haze is thicker can fight with the intensity of lights. Thicker haze will block lights so you keep having a back and forth battle increasing intensity / or decreasing density, and it's very difficult to dial in a look quickly. Rendering them separate you can also adjust the contrast of the volume and add color into the edges, etc. Depth hazing is almost always faster in compositing, especially for large scale environments where you want a lot of artistic control. Lastly for lens effects, diffusion, color bleeding, black lifting, you gotta comp it for the most part. For keying & blending real footage with VFX, you need compositing as well, and there's a ton of concepts there. There’s a bunch of other cool stuff you can do with 3d compositing as well but this post is already long, this video gives a broad overview using blender + nuke: kzbin.info/www/bejne/e3WzoH2rm8uomLcsi=3n9JAWW4GbxPk2F5

[@xanzuls]

very helpful dude, thanks for sharing.

[@NirmalVfxArtist]

thank u

[@AstroEarthly-e8e]

Is Nuke a one time purchase? because on their site it has only subscriptions

[@CompositingAcademy]

They have a free non-commercial version here: www.foundry.com/products/nuke-family/non-commercial Nuke indie is $500 a year

[@vizmartin]

What software/plugin you use for drawing pencil like that?

[@CompositingAcademy]

this is called 'Livedraw', you can grab it from github here: github.com/antfu/live-draw

[@vizmartin]

@CompositingAcademy thank you guys

[@debjitdey5901]

Has this project been added recently or already it has ?

[@CompositingAcademy]

It’s available now with a few hours of additional tutorials related to it

[@debjitdey5901]

Can you please give me some suggestions ? I'm interested in FX and Lighting departments although beginner (nerd). From where i can start at first, Houdini is my first goal then after nuke or vice versa ? I know that fields require mastering them both.

[@CompositingAcademy]

@@debjitdey5901 in general FX and Lighting are very different disciplines, unless you want to be a generalist in smaller studios. Bigger studios = more specialist, smaller is more generalist. So I would say you should clarify which direction you want to take then make tactical decisions based off of that

[@ALEX24686v]

Cool

[@digiscience3508]

I bought the compositing course two years ago, is it the same or you have other courses aswell?

[@CompositingAcademy]

There’s been some bonus projects added, feel free to email at [e-mail] if you can’t find them. For other courses there are a few different ones available here: www.compositingacademy.com/nukecourses

[@drendelous]

i got nauseated by the mouse movement

[@itscoldcoldwinter]

my eye its looking to the red dot thing

[@epereyralucena]

you can also use a tonemap node on the bg to diminish the nuclear highlight left of frame.