Introduction to Compositing in Nuke

Beginner-Friendly Workflows, Tips & Tricks with Tommaso Lunardi

This introductory Nuke workshop teaches the basics and fundamentals of compositing. Senior VFX Compositor Tommaso Lunardi offers a beginner-friendly approach to compositing in Nuke for artists in a studio environment or students assigned their first compositing task using this powerful tool. Tommaso aims to help junior artists build their skills as highly organized compositors in a demanding industry with high expectations. 

In this 2-hour workshop, Tommaso demonstrates each technique and process using concepts applicable to a real production environment, backed by years of experience and examples from a decade in the film industry. He covers Nuke's best settings and preferences to make a compositor’s life easier; how to analyze elements and the plate provided; how to prepare a script and materials; keying and understanding alphas; edge refinement; color restoration; and integration techniques.He also teaches how to build backgrounds and fully understand how elements in a comp should be used and structured, both technically and creatively speaking. He then dives into cleanups, tracking, and roto painting; demonstrates integrating additional VFX elements and overall refinements; shows how to restore the plate's grain; and explains how to set up the script for final touches and render materials for review.In each lesson of this workshop, artists will not only understand how to use each technique and know when to use it, but will also learn why some approaches are more useful or quicker than others.

A real production environment values a perfect combination of quality, speed, and consistency, and with this workshop, artists will learn how to quickly set up a script without getting lost in the high amount of information.The materials featured in this workshop are easily and freely available on websites including ActionVFX, Vecteezy, FootageCrate, and Nukepedia. Tommaso’s Nuke script is also provided as a downloadable project file with this workshop.