Nuke Depth To Points

A side to looking into Volumetrics in Nuke I have been exploring the Depth to Points node. It's a very clever workflow that only needs a depth and normal pass, which allows you to project your render out into 3D space within Nuke.

This process would save having to export geometry and cameras out of Maya, it would all be self contained within the render and the passes, which I thought was really interesting and convenient.



To give this technique a test I decided to composite in a sphere into the background of the shot.

This is what I was able to produce.


Which considering was all done in Nuke without and interaction after render with Maya is pretty cool. I was able to position the sphere within the projection, then by looking in 3D space was able to match where the lights were in order to quickly match the lighting on it.


I also tested it with volumetric lighting, although this caused me a lot of trouble with matte lines around the table, I think this was due to the quality of the depth to points not matching exactly with the render, so when it came to using it as a holdout it didn't align perfectly with the render.

Overall I really like the process, and I think will render the passes we need to use it so we have the option available to us. Overall it ran slower than reading in geometry, but if it was much higher poly this workflow might be more efficient.

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