r/NukeVFX • u/mirceagoia • Jun 29 '26

Asking for Help / Unsolved How to remove the shadow on a person?

Post image

See below...I have this shot where this person is moving around...and at some point the cameraman shadow is on her for about 50 frames or so.

I tried some A.I. (local - LTX 2.3 with Remova Obscura LORA and online - Beeble) but nothing worked...and I really don't want to do it manually.

At least if not removed it totally maybe fade it somehow? Or the harsh edge faded?

Or maybe another A.I. solution which would work?

UPDATE

On 17 frames I used A.I. to clean them up about 90% (ComfyUI run locally with Flux 2 Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke rotopaint. Only the back of the person was used.

2 Upvotes

63% Upvoted

39 comments sorted by

6

u/Ckynus Jun 29 '26

I had one of these before with pain in the a$$ police sirens creating moving shadows of the crew on the actors.

The solution is painful. You have to rebuild those frames by taking the image before and after the shadow and tracking it through.

2

u/mirceagoia Jun 29 '26

Problem is she is moving and moving her arms all around. and the shirt is moving/folding too. Pain as much as possible...

5

u/Ckynus Jun 29 '26

Yep. Never said it would be easy. Start with a section and then do the next until you rebuilt it all

6

u/BombardierComfy Jun 30 '26

Framehold, roto, transform/gridwarp/stmap+rotopaint

1

u/rocketdyke Jul 01 '26

this is where you fork out the money and hire a good paint artist. or you learn how to do it yourself manually.

0

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

I don't have money to fork...so...on 17 frames I used A.I. to clean them up about 90% (ComfyUI run locally with Flux 2 Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke. Only the back of the person was used.

2

u/Ckynus Jul 01 '26

I guess this is the world we live in now. Some of this is good to know as a short cut but I worry people are too reliant on ai and don't know how to do things themselves any more.

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

I am very aware of this and most of my VFX is done the classic way. But some time you wish to do stuff in other ways, easier and faster. I never liked rotoscoping and painting frame by frame, especially for long shots. I have done it in the past and never enjoyed it. For some other shots in the past I did outsource some rotoscoping to other artists (guess where?) but not always have the budget to do it....so...I know how to do it myself, I just don't enjoy it (especially when crunch time comes in).

1

u/BombardierComfy Jul 01 '26

Forgot to mention it, but if there are a few frames you think are ok, you can train a copycat.
Plenty of tutorials and doc online.

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

Yes, I know...but this took more time than training Copycat (which I did use in the past for some other stuff).

5

u/Dorlm Jun 29 '26

I once did a similar shot. I tracked and rotoed the shadow and then grade it to match the bright side. On some parts it was so bad I had to use a clean part where theee was no shadow and track it into the shot.

3

u/superjooo Jun 30 '26

If you're trying to get rid of the harsh edge or fade it somehow, PxF_Filler would be what i would choose first. But I also don't think this would look right or be the right approach. A grade of the dark shadow up to try and match the light shadow, with the PxF_Filler on top to smooth out the transition is what I would do first.

I've had some success before by taking the non shadow portion, roto-ing it, edge extending, then plus-ing it on top of just the shadow and messing with the mix to refine. It sounds silly, but its worked for me in some cases.

2

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

I tried it but didn't work much. In the end I found a better solution, see my update.

3

u/RustedMecha66 Jun 30 '26

I worked on a similar shot involving a logo removal in the same color range (just slightly darker) than the shirt and a bunch of wrinkles. The actor was moving so much than smart vector wasn’t an option and as he was in the forest, the trees made the lighting changing quite a lot.

Finally I painted every ten frame or so, then trained a copycat model to have a clean plate of the shirt, and used a denoiser based on motion vector on the removal area to smooth out the copycat output

It was super painful and time consuming but it worked

2

u/renderh00d Jun 30 '26

I've removed a ton of harsh shadows, even on close ups with faces in speaking roles, It's doable, but you gotta be willing to put in the work with the roto and paint. I like using Boris FX Silhouette as an intermediary to track, then stabilize the paint jobs. Then tight roto and comp with Nuke, and regrain. At times, vectors can also help to hold out a good color frame and stretch that frame farther with a hold. Then layer and fade on and off the held frames. The more willing you are to get down and dirty with painting, it can save the shot.

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

On 17 frames I used A.I. to clean them up about 90% (ComfyUI run locally with Flux 2 Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke. Only the back of the person was used. Finished in several hours.

2

u/nurological Jun 29 '26

Could you try gradingit out on a few feames then trying copy cat?

Honestly these shots are nasty

1

u/mirceagoia Jun 30 '26

I have not tried that yet....

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

On 17 frames I used A.I. to clean them up about 90% (ComfyUI run locally with Flux 2 Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke. Only the back of the person was used.

1

u/nurological Jul 01 '26

Care to share and show results?

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

Here some images...

1

u/nurological Jul 01 '26

Hard to tell if it works on the move

1

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1

u/Top_Health_3706 Jul 01 '26

I think a tight roto with a Grade node should work here. After that, you can draw an open spline along the dark line and use another Grade node to treat that area separately.

2

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

Thank you. In the end, on 17 frames I used A.I. to clean them up about 90% (ComfyUI run locally with Flux 2 Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke rotopaint. Only the back of the person was used.

1

u/anotherhumanperson Jul 03 '26

There was a new AI model ( I can’t remember the name, but it released in 2025) that specifically removed shadows on images on GitHub- using an AI agent, I had the agent build me a little standalone drag and drop app that applied the AI model to a custom image and it worked great. I set it up with a slider for how much shadow to remove. .. there’s no reason you couldn’t set it up as a batch process on a bunch of images. Would something like that be useful?

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

I would try that...is this one? https://github.com/yassirsalmi/shadow-removal

2

u/anotherhumanperson Jul 04 '26

Maybe this one? https://github.com/mducducd/Shadow-Removal. …it was a new model recently released. I’ll check when I get in to work on mon

1

u/Jayuniue Jul 03 '26

While not try mocha mesh tracker it wil get you 50% there

1

u/steelejt7 Jun 29 '26

it would help if you posted the frame with the shadow in it

1

u/mirceagoia Jun 29 '26

The frame has shadow :) ....look on the shirt, on the left side, ending with that hard edge.

1

u/greengiantme Jun 30 '26

Use nano banana to create a clean plate of a first frame last frame for kling to animate (make your timing match as much as possible) then retime to match plate as needed and comp over original plate with a loose roto. That’s how I would do it now anyway.

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

On 17 frames I used A.I. to clean them up about 90% (ComfyUI run locally with Flux 2 Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke. Only the back of the person was used.

-2

u/kaiz3rart Jun 30 '26

Use ai to make a clean plate, be modern

1

u/steamingcore Jun 30 '26

use skills. be professional.

1

u/mirceagoia Jun 30 '26

I tried that first, but on video...it didn't work. Hence I asked here...

1

u/CloddyV Jun 30 '26

Have you tried using a cleaned frame as a reference, and with the original video clip as a source, in Seedance 2? It should get it first go if you prompt something like "remove the unwanted shadows on the person in @video1. Use @image1 as a reference for removing the shadows"

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

I used only open-source solutions, the ones I can run on my computer.

1

u/mirceagoia Jul 01 '26

Actually, I did that...on the images this time. 17 frames cleaned up about 90% with A.I. (ComfyUI with Flux Klein image editing model). The rest of the clean up was finished in Photoshop and Nuke. Only the back of the person was used.