BACKBURNER + WINDOWS 7

Stupid issue with Windows 7 occurs when you try to run Backburner or any of it's components. The fix? DELETE THE PREFERENCE FOLDER.

User\AppData\Local\Backburner

That little evil folder has taken a good 6 hours of my life to figure out. -____-

(EDIT: 2012.JAN.19): Checking the Backburner logs, it seems like there's an issue with Backburner not being able to obtain the MAC address of the machine it's on.

"Error obtaining valid MAC address" shows up as the last line in the log, so I did a bit of browsing and found this:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/ps/dl/item?siteID=123112&id=5580803&linkID=9241497

As an experiment, I plugged in an ethernet cable after dumping the preference folder, and BAM everything worked. My guess is that Backburner needed a valid connection to a network while creating the preference folders. Otherwise, it just goes "Sorry homie... you're not even connected to the internet, so I won't even bother getting up in the morning."

NUKE: LINKING TRACK DATA

Based on the FXPHD NUKE 102 training:

Use a secondary TRANSFORM node on top of your manual transform to apply tracker data.

WORKFLOW: DE-AGING

- Tracking based Roto
- De Noise
- Soften Patches
- Bring by Detail by Keying or Grading
- Composite Detail back on top of Soften Patches

WORKFLOW: ROTO

Use MOCHA to do planar tracking based rotoscoping, then import in to Nuke.

NUKE: De-Noising (Noise-Capturing)

Found a really cool way to capture real video noise to use in VFX or motion graphics endeavor: Using Nuke Furnace: De-Noise (F_DeNoise) node.

It seems not only to be able to reduce noise, but also grab the noise pattern and spit it back out.

http://www.imagineersystems.com/videos/nuke-beauty-tutorial/view

MAYA: Insert Projection Before Deformers

Keep deformers in the history stack if the UV map projection would be better off projected flat. For example, a curved surface that uses a BEND deformer. The UV projection will be done before the bend deformer, giving a perfectly flat UV projection.

Essentially works as if you had the foresight to project the UV map before actually bending the surface. =)

MAYA: Wordpad Location Replace Layer Texture Issue

My usual workflow is to do the work on my workstation, then pass it off to the render cluster that looks for files on the designated "Z:\" drive. After I move the files over, I do a quick batch search-and-rename using wordpad. The issue I've noticed is that during the conversion, somehow it adds an extra black layer in front of my Layer Texture nodes.

Not sure why that is, but going in and simply just deleting that first added layer fixes the issue.

NUKE: Slipping Roto Tracks SOLVED!

CTRL + DRAG all fields, linking translate + rotate + scale + CENTER. Very important, link the center!

(UPDATE: 2011.JUNE.02)
Note: Background (sourceplate) should be composited via MERGE directly, before the tracker node. Seems to fix one of the double translation issues.

NUKE: Refresh Glitches Preventing Tracking

For some reason Nuke doesn't properly refresh on the DRONE: SC2A shot for the tracker. May be due to the array of reformats etc.

Problem seems to go away if shot is sized to 100% of source. More as things develop.

MAYA: Mental Ray Backburner

To tell Mental Ray to use all threads while batch rendering through backburner, use:
----

-mr:art

---

(mental ray, all render threads)

MAYA: Normal Map Direction

If Normal Maps look inverted, INVERT the Red Channel in Photoshop by going under the Channels panel, selecting the Red Channel, and going under Image>Adjust>Invert.

MAYA: Instanced Geometry

Did a few tests to test files sizes, and indeed duplicating files via "COPY" uses up more disk space, as compared to using "INSTANCE" under 'Duplicate Special'.

The tests using a cube were minimal when it came to file sizes, but you can imagine a heavier scene with objects that are half a million poly's plus. Only caveat is that if you modify one of the shapes, all of them get modified.

MAYA: Normal Map Power

To control a normal map's power in Maya, use the "contrast" node. Pipe normal map alpha output to input.X of contrast node, and output.X to bump value of bump node.

Gets a lot of bang for your normal map buck at the default multiplication of 2, but dial down as needed.

(UPDATE: After the contrast node, go back into the BUMP node and adjust the value. The control seemed to have done nothing before, but seems to become obedient again once you slap it with the contrast node.)

MAYA: PNG Alpha Issue (Solved!)

The 3D card where the texture is projected on to causes a semi transparent shadow of the card itself. To fix that, go under "Raytrace Options" and turn "Shadow Attenuation" down to ZERO. BAM. FIXED.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=76416

MAYA: Efficient Cine-Lighting

As per Jeremy Vickery's Efficient Cine-Lighting Gnomon Masterclass:

MAIN POINTS:

- MIB_AMB_OCCLUSION shader piped into the "ambient.Color" of all shaders
- AO: samples:100, Max_Distance: 5 or 10
- Spotlight Key
- Area lights to simulate bounce in 'hot' areas created by Spotlight Key
- Wide Arealight to simulate window
- Wide area light to bounce back onto the window surface plane
- Good models help tremendously with lighting
- Subdivide edges and convert to subdivision models to help create a tiny light wrap
- Rim on sphere: Use area light, disable "Illuminates by Default", and have it only affect the sphere
- Use color temperature to your advantage, including the AO black and white points
- each light has 'counter' light

- "bleed" lights to soften hard edges from spotlights


TRICKS:
- add 'Glow' to skydome to create post bloom in Maya
- (JWX) better yet would be to render out a specific matte pass and do in post
- overcrank luminosity values on glow channels past "1.0" to simulate blowout from set color, to color temp fade off (bright yellow fades into red, think lightsabers)

NUKE: Batch Render Using PYTHON script

Got rendering outside of Nuke's UI to work, but because there's no license server running, it outputs renders that have the little colorful dots.

Using a modified technique from HERE, you can call a script from within Nuke's UI and it'll execute and rendering without the little dots. YAY!

Put in your Render.py (or whatever you want your file to be called):
nuke.execute("writenode", startFrame, endFrame, steps)

Then >FILE>TCL File...> and load your .py file.

RGBA 32bit Float Output

Was testing out the RGBA 32bit Float output in Maya as opposed to the standard 8bit, and the files unsurprisingly came out about 4x bigger. Not sure if I can afford the data rate for this small short film project, but maybe future commercial projects?