As part of our lesson on all the Nuke utilities relating to color and the process of color grading, we were tasked with color grading a 3D model to match our plate.
At first, I found myself quite overwhelmed by the number of different controls that are involved in the color grading process as well as the ways in which they interact or interfere with each other. But even after becoming more familiar with all the knobs and buttons I could not quite visualize the end product. I discovered that I had not been paying close enough attention to the importance of color in composition and especially in this case, how it affects verisimilitude. Adding to that the mathematical aspect of the process when working as a compositor, I realized that manipulating color is one of the most important skills of the job and one that cannot be mastered overnight.
I found this series of tutorials by the foundry very helpful in steering me in the right direction.
It became clear to me that the first thing that the most obvious first step was to lift the blue tones of our model as it is placed between two sources of blue light (the sky and the sea). I used the saturation node to roughly match the blues of the plate and the model.
I went through a lot of trial and error to come up with an acceptable result but I felt hindered by the fact that still I did not quite know what the ideal end product looks like.
I found this task unexpectedly challenging which has motivated me to research and learn more about this process and also to keep trying to develop a better eye for color.