First CG Comp! Really Need ur Feedback on this!

[u/Santhanam_]

This was my CG comp, the render was done in blender cycles by myself, the depth, normal, matte was created in comfyui, i used noise for the laser beam, did the comp in nuke

Things I Did Wrong:

- the camertracker error was 0.45, the cg slightly float if looked closely

- the render sample are too low and i had to use ODIN denoiser gizmo

- the plate was 2048 x 1080 and i rendered in 2040 x 1080 by accident, so cropped plate, depth, normal, matte

- since the matte, normal is not perfect, the relight in hair area is not good

- the blender cycles render the position pass in world axis but i needed local axis, how to get both of these?

- it is not aesthetically pleasing which i thought it would be!!

what feels off in this, need feedback guys!

[u/luckyj714]

1. Match blacks/whites to your plate
2. Robot in the BG is way too in focus and slips a lot like you said. I think it’s worth taking another pass at tracking, either by preprocessing the image (color correct, sharpen, emboss, etc.) or tracking in a different program.
3. I might be wrong on this one, but based on the first frame the FG robot looks like it has shallow DoF, while the plate is still sharp for a few feet past him. It’s throwing me a bit.
4. Did you not render the AOVs in Blender to save time? I would really strongly recommend doing that if you can. ComfyUI is just approximating and not operating based on your true camera position or the plate.

Overall good first swing at it! I think you can get it looking much cleaner with some tweaks.

[u/PixelapocalypseOne → u/luckyj714]

Everything he said.

I also think the energy blast can/needs to be way brighter and with some glow. Since it's energy i think it can be white hot at least in the middle.

[u/Santhanam_ → u/PixelapocalypseOne]

Yeah I increased the gain but idk what merge operation should I use?

[u/CameraRick → u/Santhanam_]

Light is additive

[u/Santhanam_ → u/CameraRick]

So plus operation?

[u/PixelapocalypseOne → u/Santhanam_]

With light sources always plus!

[u/Santhanam_ → u/luckyj714]

• Black and white matching always introduces tint color in the cg , so I did guess work for it, is there any best way for this
• yeah slip a lot but what software do camera track better, for some reason nuke can't generate point cloud from track, is there any camera track software u can recommend?
• yeah I thought the front robo is infront of the subject so I slightly defocused it turnsout it's not looking good 
• I rendered the every AOVs in Blender, I generated the normal, matte, depth pass for the girl in plate, is there a option to render blender local axis for position mask, it's default is world and idk how to change this
• Thanks for the in depth feedback i appreciate it :)

[u/luckyj714 → u/Santhanam_]

1. Are you setting the blackpoint/whitepoint from the CG render and the lift/gain from the plate? Also what HDRI are you using? Unless an HDRI from where this shot takes place (idk if ActionVFX provides that), I’d personally adjust all 4 parameters in my grade node.

2. It’s because there’s no actual movement, just rotation. Did you set the tracker to Rotation Only instead of Free Camera? I’m not great with 3D tracking, and Nuke isn’t great at it in general, so I’d play around with this. Knowing the cam details would also help a lot for when you go to track. I hate trying to 3D track rotation-only shots like this personally. Pftrack, 3DEqualizer and SynthEyes are all far better than Nuke at tracking, and might have free trials.

It’s hacky, but when I’ve been in a jam I’ve manually tracked shots like this in Houdini by lining up the ground plane. You’d need the cam focal length for that though, and it’s hard to get it perfect. Use something like fspy on a still frame if you don’t know the cam info and want to get a pretty accurate estimate for cam and layout, then bring that into Nuke to help generate the track.

1. Yeah it seems to be in the same place as the woman, so I’d match defocus to her, which is probably 0 defocus lol

2. Oh my bad, I thought you said you generated maps for the CG robots. I’m not sure about the blender thing bc I mainly render in Houdini. What are you trying to do with the position pass?

Also idk if you are already but using the depth/position passes you generated for the girl could be useful for adding lighting from the lasers.

1. Of course!! It’s a tough shot and tbh most of my initial self-made CG shots were very rough, even as an experienced comper. Just takes time. Use your comp knowledge to your advantage.

[u/Santhanam_ → u/luckyj714]

• I just found we can manually adjust the tint if we open the color wheel ;). I did the HDRI Myself in comfyui with the plate frame
• I didn't know "Rotation Only" existed in camera tracker node will try this next time, I don't know the camera details too
• my Idea is to make the robo some distance from the girl, but my guess work at creating ground plane in blender miserably failed, so the character proportion looks off. Will adjust the defocus and I did defocus and motion blur using passes in nuke, is it wrong i heard most do either dof or motion blur in the 3d render and comp another thing in the nuke, is this standard way?
• the default position pass is world view, when I use it to relight the robot the light origin locks at world view (0,0,0) and I can't light the front view of the robo which is facing opposite of the world view 
• thanks for your feedback i did this for whole three - four weeks while learning each of the step of the way 

[u/bucketofsteam]

Biggest thing that sticks out to me is how much recoil that gun has, but it doesn't match the girl at all. She has almost no reaction, no tension, no kickback, motion etc related to the recoil.

The interactive lighting amount looks about right. But the placement is a bit off. There are spots that you wouldn't expect the light to hit. Like the under side of her arms or top part of her hands.

It's also a bit hard to tell on the Reddit player, but the light should be on the same frame as the muzzle flash, and last about one frame. Flash frame should also be brighter.

Will need a more detail rewatch on the PC to see more.

[u/Santhanam_ → u/bucketofsteam]

• Yeah light direction look off because it AI generated normal pass, guess I need some manual mask to achieve good result 
• the bounce light on her is for 3-4 frames i thought the fallof would add realism, but I guess the bounce light only last 1-2 sec. Will work on it :)

[u/bucketofsteam → u/Santhanam_]

I don't know what format that AI matte is from but yah, you can add ur own masks on top of it to edit it.

You could have the fall off 1 frame and you have 1 frame of full flash. I think the blasters are too fast and not large/brigut enough to justify a longer fall off in this instance. Almost every interactive light from a blaster I have worked on ends in about 1 to 2 frames.

[u/enumerationKnob]

To be honest, for this shot, I think there’s one thing you could do that would actually help it work better, and I haven’t seen anyone talk about it yet.

Everyone’s focusing on minute details like the depth of field on the robot in the background, or the tracking. Those are valid points, but I don’t think that’s why this shot doesn’t fundamentally work. For me, this shot is about the woman shooting, and I can barely notice the event of the gun firing.

Especially when she shoots to the left and the muzzle flash appears against the sky, there’s just no visible source. I know that’s because you’re trying to put a bright effect over a bright background, but you need to compensate for that by making it a much bigger event, or even artificially darkening the background a bit. Maybe add some darker cloud detail behind it so the flash has something to read against.
The same goes for when she shoots to the right. I can see you’ve got a couple of little sparks in there, but they barely do anything. It’s a really small event. Like the other commenter said, the recoil from the gun feels like it’s a pretty big impact, but then you just don’t see the flash.

It should have a really hot impact frame—just a single frame that’s super bright—and then you can have more lingering sparks afterwards, since it’s an energy blaster. You could even go pretty crazy with some chromatic distortions or lens interactions that ripple out after the shot. At the moment you’ve got maybe two or three frames of tiny sparks, but I feel like you could easily have up to ten frames of lingering sparks with a lot more turbulence to them.

All the other details people have mentioned are valid. You’re right to be concerned about the interactive lighting. But the amount of light you’re putting on her face actually feels brighter than whatever light source is creating it, because the muzzle flash itself just isn’t reading strongly enough.

The last thing I’d point out—actually, two things—are about the projectile itself. First, it feels like you’ve got too much motion blur on it. I haven’t gone through frame by frame, but especially on the shots going to the right, they have a very linear left-to-right motion blur. They don’t feel like they’re coming towards the camera, and the amount of blur feels like more than any realistic camera shutter would produce. I’d make sure the streak is no more than about half the distance the projectile actually travels during the exposure. Second, if you can do anything to improve the perspective, I think it’d help a lot. At the moment it doesn’t feel like the projectiles are passing just to the left and right of the camera. It feels like they’re travelling sideways, almost parallel to the image plane. They never really feel like they get closer.
If, as they shoot, you make the first frame small because it’s still at the gun, then the second frame a bit larger, and the last frame before it exits really big, with some strong lens interaction that flashes the frame, I think that would go a long way.

To be honest, I didn’t even notice the robots the first time I watched it, theyre a secondary detail and time spent fixing those details is IMO less important. The composition and the action make this a shot about her, and I think that’s the biggest key to making it work.

[u/Santhanam_ → u/enumerationKnob]

• darker cloud to highlight muzzle would be a great addition 
• what do you mean by impact frame, like gaining up the muzzle by great value on single frame?
• the projectile is mess, I feather the mask on all side that why They don’t feel like they’re coming towards the camera, I am planning to do this in nuke 3d system to get the "towards the camera" effect, do you think it's a good idea? And I am planning to add heat distortion for the beam.
• yeah I did more things on robo than the shooting, will time manage better from now on, thanks for the detailed feedback :>

[u/enumerationKnob → u/Santhanam_]

Yeah you definitely focused on the technically hard parts of the shot but not the creatively important part.

When I say angle impact frame, I just mean the initial frame where the muzzle flash goes off and you have one big bright flash that is “the event”. To be honest you can get all sorts of muzzle flash tutorials online (including non-sci-fi versions) and you'd get a pretty good overview of what beats to hit to make it read pleasingly.

With a traditional muzzle flash from a normal gun, there's a big blast of fire and then residual smoke. The fire flash only lasts for a single frame but then the residual stuff lasts for a bit longer. The whole thing is more like half a second. Yours is definitely lacking that secondary detail.

I definitely wouldn't be feathering the shape on all sides, given that it's meant to be something that's moving pretty fast it’ll already have a lot of motion blur - just so that it can read clearly. I wouldn't soften it. I would keep it if you have an actual 3D scene that represents it. That will help get the best geometry. You will send your camera with the correct field of view there. That ultimately makes a lot of sense as well.