Apple Shake 4 Tutorials User Manual

Shake 4

Tutorials



Apple Computer, Inc.

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Preface 7Welcome to Shake 4

The Tutorial Lessons

Installing the Tutorial Media

Mac OS X Notes

Chapter 1 11 Shake Basics

Tutorial Summary

A Tour of the Basics

Loading Images

Viewing Images, Parameters, and Channels

Working With Windows

Launching a Flipbook

Compositing Elements

Setting Resolution

Filtering and Masking

Tuning Parameters

Working With Layer Nodes

Transforming an Image

Fading an Element

Rendering a Sequence

Chapter 2 47 Intermediate Skills

Tutorial Summary

Inserting Nodes Into a Tree

Grouping Nodes and Using SetDOD

Using the Time View

Creating Motion Blur

Importing Photoshop Files

Keyframe Animation and the Curve Editor

Color Correction

Chapter 3 91 Depth Compositing

Tutorial Summary

Simulated Depth and 3D Compositing

Working With Z Channels Creating Composites With ZCompose

10 2 Color Correcting Premultiplied Images 10 7 Fading With Distance

111 3D Compositing With the MultiPlane Node

121 Animating a MultiPlane Camera

12 5 Importing Camera and Animation Data

Chapter 4 13 3Working With Expressions

13 3 Tutorial Summary 13 3 Creating the Fan Composite 13 6 Creating a Light Source With RGrad 13 8 Looping Frames in the Time View 13 9 Using Local Variables and Expressions 14 4 Simulating Volumetrics With RBlur 15 3 Concatenating Color Adjustments 15 6 Adding Motion Blur to Pre-Animated Elements

Chapter 5 163Using Keylight

163

Tutorial Summary

164

Using Keylight to Pull a Key

165

Testing the Mask With a Viewer Script

167

Adjusting the Mask With Parameters

169

Masking

17 2

Color Correcting the Foreground Image

17 5

Advanced Keylight Techniques

17 8

Using fgBias to Remove Blue Spill

17 9

Using a Holdout Matte

Chapter 6 183Using Primatte

183

Tutorial Summary

183

The Basics of Pulling a Key in Primatte

18 6

Inner Mechanics of Primatte

191

Masking Primatte

19 4

Spill Suppression in Primatte

200

Compositing Outside of Primatte

Chapter 7 201 Tracking and Stabilization

201

Tutorial Summary

201

Tracking and Stabilizing Nodes

202

Stabilizing an Image Sequence

206

Converting Stabilization Data to MatchMove Data

208

Using the MatchMove Node

Contents

215 Position the Foreground Element 218 Color Correct the Foreground Element

Chapter 8 225Working With Macros

225 Tutorial Summary 225 What Is a Macro? 226 Creating a Handmade Macro

232 Saving and Testing the Macro

234 Adding a Button to the Interface

237 How to Set Slider Ranges

238 Creating Macros With MacroMaker

241 Creating Sliders in MacroMaker

Chapter 9 243 Creating Clean Plates

243

Tutorial Summary

243

Stitching Images

247

Stabilizing and Stitching Background Plates

252

Creating a Clean Plate With QuickPaint

Contents

Welcome to Shake 4

This guide includes hands-on tutorials, demonstrations, and explanations of Shake features and workflow.

In addition to the fundamental topics, this guide also explains specialized topics, such as 3D compositing, expressions, keying, and tracking. Check the lesson summaries below for a quick overview of each tutorial.

Preface

For further study, you’ll want to explore the book (also available in PDF format from the onscreen Help menu and in the directory) that contains detailed information about color correction, keying and spill suppression, masking, transforms, premultiplication, bit depth, logarithmic color space, caching and optimization, and other Shake features. The includes a helpful “Cookbook” chapter with additional tips and macros to improve your workflow and productivity.

Shake 4 User Manual

. This is a two-volume

Shake/doc

also

The Tutorial Lessons

•

Tutorial 1: “Shake Basics”

tasks, including loading and compositing images, tuning parameters, transforming images, adding masks, and rendering.

•

Tutorial 2: “Intermediate Skills”

with the You will also learn how to add motion blur, how to color-match the elements in a composite, and how to import Photoshop files as layers in a composite.

•

Tutorial 3: “Depth Compositing”

creating “real” and simulated depth in your composites. You’ll start with Z channels and filtering options. Then you’ll work with Shake’s

Tutorial 4: “Working With Expressions”

•

animation with expressions, rather than keyframes.

Tutorial 5: “Using Keylight”

•

Keylight

performing spill suppression.

SetDOD

node: pulling keys, applying masking, creating holdout mattes, and

—This tutorial introduces Shake through a series of common

—This tutorial shows how to optimize your workflow

node, and how to use the Shake Time View, and the Curve Editor.

—This tutorial demonstrates different methods for

MultiPlane

—This tutorial shows how to generate

—This two-part lesson covers the basics of using the

node.

•

Tutorial 6: “Using Primatte”

Photron Primatte keying plug-in, as well as masking and spill suppression.

•

Tutorial 7: “Tracking and Stabilization”

for Shake’s tracking technology, including removing unwanted motion from an image sequence and “matchmoving” an element to the motion of another element in the composite.

Tutorial 8: “Working With Macros”

•

groups of commands, called macros. In this example, you’ll set up a basic macro for a motion blur effect that is adjustable to any angle.

•

Tutorial 9: “Creating Clean Plates”

with the You will also use the

AutoAlign

node, and how to use the

—This lesson describes the basic use and mechanics of the

—This tutorial demonstrates the primary uses

—This tutorial demonstrates how to create reusable

—This tutorial demonstrates how to stitch images

QuickPaint

SmoothCam

node to create a clean background plate.

node to stabilize footage.

Installing the Tutorial Media

Before you continue with the tutorials, you need to install the tutorial media. The sample files for the lessons are located on the Shake Installation disk, in the

Documentation/Tutorial_Media

from the Shake Installation website.

•

Installation CD:

your

$HOME/nreal

•

Online (Linux/IRIX Users):

password to access the download site for the Shake tutorial media.

Copy the

directory.

directory. Licensed users can also download these files

Tutorial_Media

Contact your system administrator for the URL and

folder from the

Documentation

directory to

Note:

Tutorial_Media

Mac OS X Notes

The following information applies to Shake on the Mac OS X platform:

Using the Three-Button Mouse

You must use a three-button mouse with Shake as many functions are not possible with a single- or two-button mouse. The middle scroll wheel commonly serves as the middle mouse button. Many commands in Shake require you to “middle-click.”

The Delete Key

The Macintosh Delete key located below the F12 key is the equivalent of the Linux Backspace key; the Macintosh Delete key grouped with the Help, Home, and End keys is the equivalent of the Linux Delete key.

8 Preface

You can install the tutorial media files anywhere you like, but the

directory is used in this guide to simplify the process of instruction.

Welcome to Shake 4

$HOME/nreal/

Important: Macintosh users should bear in mind that the Delete key used in Shake is

not the key located below the F12 key but, rather, the one grouped with the Help, Home, and End keys. If you are using a smaller Macintosh keyboard without the second Delete, use Option-Delete (again, the key below F12).

Keyboard Command Differences Between Platforms

Some keyboard commands are different between the Mac OS X platform and the Linux or IRIX platform. In most cases in this documentation, the Macintosh keyboard command is cited first, followed by the Linux/IRIX command.

Control vs. Command

On the Mac OS X platform, you can use the Control or Command key interchangeably. For example, use Control-C or Command-C to copy an object.

Launching Shake in the Terminal

Mac OS X wraps up binaries and their contents into one icon in the Finder. Click the Shake icon in Mac OS X to launch Shake, or right-click the Shake icon to obtain menu options. For example, right-click the Shake icon and choose Show Package Contents from the shortcut menu to open the subdirectories. Alternatively, you can use the Terminal to navigate to shake.app/Contents/MacOS/ to find the actual binary files.

Preface Welcome to Shake 4 9

10 Preface Welcome to Shake 4

1 Shake Basics

This tutorial introduces Shake through a series of common tasks, including loading and compositing images, tuning parameters, transforming images, adding masks, and rendering.

Tutorial Summary

• A tour of the basics

• Loading images

• Viewing images, parameters, and channels

• Working with windows

• Launching a Flipbook

• Compositing elements

• Setting resolution

• Creating a new element

• Tuning parameters

• Working with layer nodes

• Transforming an image

• Applying a mask

• Rendering a sequence

A Tour of the Basics

In this tutorial you’ll create a composite with images created at Big Sister's Watching, NY by Brandon Robinson and Melissa Graff.

You’ll start by layering the images for the composite. Then you’ll incorporate additional elements for soft shadows and lighting. Before you begin, let’s review some basic Shake operations.

Launching Shake

You can launch the Shake application from your desktop or from the command line, assuming the Shake binary files are located in the directory created for Shake during installation.

To launch Shake:

On the Mac OS X platform, browse to the application directory and double-click the Shake icon, or simply click the Shake icon in the Dock.

On the Linux or IRIX platform, enter the following in any shell:

shake

For you Mac users, the Shake icon may appear on the Dock. If it’s not there, then you can drag it to the dock from the application directory. You can also launch from the Mac OS X Terminal, but you must type the complete path to Shake (that is, Applications/Shake/shake.app/Contents/MacOS/shake), or set the appropriate environment variables.

Note: For more information, see “Environment Variables for Shake” in Chapter 14 of the Shake 4 User Manual.

12 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

Using the Shake Panels

When you start Shake, you’ll notice that the interface is divided into four panels: Viewer, Node View, Tools, and Parameters.

Each image process in Shake is accomplished by connecting items, called nodes, as a tree structure in the Node View. The result is an overview of the images, layers, and processes in your project. Shake projects are called scripts because the results are stored as a list of sequential commands in a script file.

So, where do the nodes come from? The Tools panel lists the objects and functions— the nodes—that you can add to your script. The Viewer shows the output of a selected node in the script. The Viewer is also the place where you use interactive controls to transform images and create shapes.

In the Parameters panel, you edit a selected node or change project settings on the Globals tab. And, speaking of tabs, three of the four panels are divided into a number of tabs that allow access to commands, additional parameters, and other functional windows, like the Curve Editor and Audio Panel.

You don’t need to know all the screen controls at this point, but you’ll probably have some questions while you’re working through this tutorial. Being the advanced compositing artist that you are, you never crack open the user documentation—except for this tutorial guide, of course—so how can you figure out what all the screen items do? Contextual help, that’s how!

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 13

Contextual Help

Move the mouse pointer over a control or parameter to display brief help messages in the Info field at the bottom of the screen. These messages explain what each item does and also show any relevant hot keys.

The Info field displays context-sensitive help.

For example, suppose you want to know what would happen if you clicked on the ColorWheel command on the Image tab. Move your pointer over the command and the message Create node: “ColorWheel()” appears in the Info field. Go ahead, click it if you want. You’ll add a ColorWheel node to the Node View.

Your first color wheel!

Shortcut Menus and Lists

In addition to the contextual help, you can right-click many controls to display shortcut menus with additional commands and functions. Try this: Right-click the View Channel button. A shortcut menu appears with the hot keys for each channel display option.

14 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

For many onscreen controls, there are also click-and-hold behaviors:

• Click a button to toggle between its two default states. For example, click the View

Channel button to toggle between RGB and alpha channel views.

• Press and hold a button to select an option from a pop-up list. When you press and

hold the View Channel button, for example, you can select from a list of available channel options.

Click to toggle between RGB and alpha views.

Press and hold to choose from a pop-up menu.

Overriding the Default Button Choices

To override the default choices, Control-click and hold to choose your next option. For example, the default button behavior for the View Channel button is to toggle between RGB view and alpha view. To modify the behavior to toggle from RGB view to red channel view to alpha channel view and then back to RGB view, perform the following steps:

1 Make sure the View Channel button is set to RGB (Color) View.

2 Control-click and hold the button, then choose the Red Channel button from

the pop-up menu.

3 Control-click and hold the button, then choose the Alpha Channel button.

Because the alpha view already toggles to RGB view, you do not have to Control-click and hold again to toggle back to RGB view.

To save this behavior, choose File > Save Interface Settings.

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 15

Loading Images

To load images into your project, you use the FileIn node from the Image Tool tab. In these tutorials, the notation for creating nodes is identified with this format: Tab NameNode Name, as in “insert an Image-FileIn node”.

Note: Do not confuse the FileIn node with the Load and Save buttons at the upper- right corner of the screen. The Load and Save buttons are for retrieving and saving Shake scripts.

If you still have that ColorWheel node in the Node View, you need to remove it. Click once on the node to select it, then press the Delete (Mac OS X) or Backspace (IRIX/ Linux) key.

To load the images:

1 In the Image tab, click FileIn to launch the File Browser.

2 Browse to the $HOME/nreal/Tutorial_Media/Tutorial_01/images directory.

Note: See “Browsing Tips” below for information on saving this directory to a list of favorites.

16 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

3 Double-click the background directory to open it, select the background.30-59@.jpg

image sequence, then click Next at the bottom of the browser (or press the Space bar).

You click Next instead of OK to select additional files. When you’re done, you’ll load all the images at once.

4 Click the Up Directory button, and browse to the orchid directory where you’ll find the

orchid.30-59#.exr image sequence.

The “30-59” tells you this is a sequence of 30 frames. The # symbol indicates frame numbers padded with zeros, so that all frames have four-digit numbers. Don’t believe it?

5 Just for fun, click to deselect the “Sequence listing” checkbox.

You’ll see the individual files in the image sequence. This is a good thing to know if you ever need to load just one frame from a sequence.

6 Click to select the Sequence listing box again to switch back to the original view.

7 Select the orchid.30-59#.sgi image sequence, then click Next.

8 Click the Up Directory button and navigate to the table directory, where you’ll find the

table.30-59@.exr image sequence.

This sequence name includes the @ symbol instead of the # symbol. The @ symbol indicates these frame numbers are not padded with leading zeros. Toggle the “Sequence listing” option and you’ll see.

9 To load the sequence, activate “Sequence listing,” then select table.30-59@.exr. This time,

do not click Next!

10 Click OK to include the last file and close the browser.

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 17

Browsing Tips

There are several ways to navigate within the File Browser:

• To move up one level, click the Up Directory button or press Delete (Mac OS X), or

press Backspace (IRIX or Linux).

• To move back to the previously viewed directory, click the Previous Directory

button.

• To move down one level, double-click a directory.

• To scroll by file, click in the file list, then press the Up Arrow or Down Arrow key to

scroll up or down.

• To scroll using the mouse, middle-click and drag or Option-click and drag (Mac OS

X), or Alt-click and drag (you do not have to use the scroll bar on the right). You can also use the mouse scroll wheel.

• To jump to a file name, type a letter to move to the first file that starts with that

letter.

• To review browsing history, use the Directories pop-up menu, which lists the files in

your $HOME directory, as well as recently visited directories and favorite project directories.

• To save a favorite location, click the Bookmark button near the top of the File

Browser. The current location is saved to a list of favorites.

• To import multiple files, click Next, or press the Space bar. On the last file, click OK

to import all selected files and close the File Browser.

After you click OK, the selected images appear as FileIn nodes in the Node View. They might overlap each other, but this is easy to fix.

18 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

11 Drag a selection box around all the nodes, then press L on your keyboard to line them

up. You can also right-click in the Node View and choose Node Layout > Layout Selected from the shortcut menu.

Viewing Images, Parameters, and Channels

Each node represents a function or operation that can be viewed or modified. In this case, these are FileIn nodes that reference images from your disk directories. As shown in the previous illustration, image thumbnails appear above the nodes. If there is an accompanying alpha channel, a thumbnail includes transparency, as well. To test this, drag the mid node over the background node in the node tree and you’ll create a mini- composite. Does this help you composite at all? No, but it gives you a quick preview of what the composite might look like.

To create an actual composite, you must connect the nodes. This happens in a moment, so stop fidgeting.

Working With Thumbnails

When working with thumbnails, bear in mind the following:

• The thumbnails represent the frame at the time of file loading.

• To refresh for the current frame, select the node and press R with the pointer in the

Node View.

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 19

• To view the alpha channel, place the pointer over the thumbnail and press A. To

return to the RGB view, place the pointer over the thumbnail and press C for “color.”

• Any node can have a thumbnail—select the node and press T.

Note: The thumbnails do not dynamically update (see below).

• To hide thumbnails, select the nodes and press T. Press T again to show the

thumbnails.

• Additional controls for the thumbnails are located in the Globals tab.

Shake does not dynamically update thumbnails because it can be inefficient and inaccurate. For example, if you’re working on 6K plates, do you really want to spend all of your time resizing 6K plates down to tiny icons? (Please say “no.”)

Suppose your script has 900 nodes, which I think we can all agree is not unlikely. Continually updating all thumbnails would require... well, that’s a lot of coffee breaks. The most efficient and accurate way to check a node is to load it into the Viewer.

This leads us to the next topic, loading and viewing nodes.

Viewing a Node or Loading Its Parameters

There are several ways to activate the controls on a node:

• To load a node into the Viewer, click the left side of the node.

20 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

• To load the parameters into the Parameters tab, click the right side of the node.

• To load a node into the Viewer and the Parameters tab simultaneously, double-click

the node.

Sometimes, you need to edit the parameters of one node while viewing the output from another. For example, you’ll often want to adjust a color correction while looking at the result in the final composite.

Loaded into Viewer 1, buffer A.

Loaded into the

Parameters tab.

In the illustration above, the orchid node is loaded into the Viewer—the highlight on the left side of the node is the Viewer indicator. The 1A label also appears below the node to indicate it is loaded into Viewer 1, buffer A (stay tuned for information on Viewer buffers).

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 21

The gray square on the right side of the background node—it’s supposed to be a tiny text field—indicates that this node is selected for editing in the Parameters tab. So why is this useful? In a real composite—you’ll have one soon—you’ll often want to adjust a node while viewing the end result at the final output node in your script.

We mentioned contextual help for screen controls, and this also works to get information about nodes. As you pass the pointer over a node (no need to click), the resolution, bit depth, node name and type, and channels are displayed in the Info field of the Shake window. For example, move the pointer over the FileIn node named background, and you’ll see that it stores an 8-bit image, with RGB channels, and a resolution of 720 x 486 pixels.

Displaying Different Channels in the Viewer

Use the View Channel button to toggle the display of different channels in the Viewer. This is important when you want to check the quality of matte edges or transparencies in the alpha channel. You’ll also need to view independent R, G, or B channels for many color-correction operations. For example, click the View Channel button to toggle to the alpha channel view.

There you see the alpha channel. However, nobody actually uses the View Channel button. Remember when you right-clicked this button to see the hot keys?

Use the hot keys when the pointer is in the Viewer to quickly view a channel (C, R, G, B, or A).

22 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

Panning, Zooming, and Framing

While working in Shake, you’ll need to pan, zoom, and frame the contents of the Node View, the Viewer, and other windows in Shake.

• To pan: Drag the pointer over a window while pressing the middle mouse button. Or,

drag the pointer while pressing Option (Mac OS X) or Alt (Linux/IRIX)

• To zoom: Drag the pointer over the window while pressing Control-Option (Mac OS X)

or Control-Alt (Linux/IRIX). You can also press plus (+) or minus (–) to zoom in or out.

• To frame: Move the mouse pointer over the window and press F.

• To expand or shrink the window: Move the pointer over a panel and press the Space

bar This toggles the window between full-screen and standard view.

Setting the Frame Range

There are two places to set the frame range in Shake. The first and most important is in the Globals tab. The Globals tab lists all script settings—the frame range, proxy settings, default resolutions, GUI settings, and quality settings. The first Parameters tab contains a listing of parameters for a selected node.

There are two ways to show the Globals tab:

Click the Globals tab.

Double-click an empty area in the Node View.

The first parameter in the Globals tab is the timeRange parameter. This frame range determines which frames are rendered. Although it is saved in the script, you can override it in the command line. Click the Auto button to examine the FileIn nodes and determine the frame range automatically.

To enter the time range:

Click Auto in the timeRange parameter.

The timeRange parameter is extremely flexible because you can customize the range:

Entry Calculates

1-56 Frames 1 to 56

20-30 11 images from frames 20 to 30

1-56x3 Frames 1, 4, 7, and so on

1,10,20-30x2 Frames 1, 10, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, and 30

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 23

Working With Windows

Now that you have a few images loaded, this is a good time to practice methods of working with the Shake windows.

Function Keyboard Notes

Expand a window full screen Space bar Press the Space bar again to

zoom back to normal view.

Pan a window Middle-click and drag, or Option-

click and drag (Mac OS X); Alt-click and drag (Linux/IRIX)

Zoom a window Command–middle-click and drag,

Control–middle-click and drag, or Control–Option-click and drag (Mac OS X); Control–Alt-click and drag (Linux/IRIX)

Zoom in on a Viewer + / – (under the Mac OS X function

keys); Backspace key (Linux/IRIX)

Reset a View Home Works in the Node View, the

Resize a pane Grab the border between two

Works in all windows, including the File Browser.

Works in the Node View, the Viewer, the Time Bar, and the Curve Editor.

Gives you an integer-based zoom so you have fewer roundoff artifacts on your display. The zoom follows the pointer.

Viewer, the Time Bar, and the Time View.

panes and drag to resize the window.

Launching a Flipbook

In the Viewer shelf, click the Flipbook button to render a Flipbook for the node displayed in the current Viewer.

If a FileOut node is selected, the actual FileOut is not executed. To render to disk, use the Render command (right-click in the Node View, or use the Render menu). Otherwise, the sequence is rendered into memory and you can play it back.

24 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

Flipbook Controls

The following table contains several Flipbook controls.

Control Action

. (Period; think of it as the > key.) Play forward.

, (Comma; think of it as the < key.) Play backward.

R, G, B, A, C Show the red, green, blue, alpha, and color channels.

Shift-drag Scrub through the animation.

Escape (Esc) Close the window.

You can have as many Flipbooks as memory allows, but once closed, all links to the Flipbook are lost—you cannot save or use the images again. You can stow the Flipbooks and retrieve them later, but they take up memory.

You can also use the Time Bar to indicate a frame range and obtain playback. The Time Bar displays the range that you want to concentrate on, and does not get saved into the script.

To set the playback range for the Time Bar:

Place the pointer over the Time Bar and press Home on the keyboard (or click the Home button in the Time Bar) to load the script’s timeRange into the Time Bar.

To play the sequence in the Viewer:

Click the Play forward button in the Time Bar to play through the sequence. Playback does not occur in not real time, but does place the images into the memory cache, optimizing future calculations in the interface.

Home

Shift-click the Play Forward button to playback from the images cached to disk from

Play backward

Play forward

the Time Bar.

For more information on the Flipbook, see “The Flipbook, Monitor Previews, and Color Calibration” in Chapter 11 of the Shake 4 User Manual.

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 25

Compositing Elements

Now that you know how to navigate through the Shake interface, you’re ready to composite the elements. Finally! Arrange the FileIn nodes like this, in the order that you want to composite them:

To begin the composite:

1 Click the orchid node to select it.

2 In the Tool tabs, click the Layer tab, then click Over.

Over1 is automatically attached to the orchid, because that node was selected when you added the new node.

The Over1 node has two inputs on the top of the node, although you won’t see them until you place the pointer over the node. The orchid node is attached to the first input.

3 Move the Over1 node down a little. Then, drag the second input from the top of the

Over1 node to the bottom of the table node to connect the two nodes.

26 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

You can also drag from the bottom of table to the second input on Over1.

Information flows downward in the Node View like a stream—the image data is passed from the orchid and table nodes, and fed into the Over1 node to create the composite.

orchid node

table node

Over1 node

What happened? The top half of the image is gone. We’ll fix this in a minute—and explain what it means.

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 27

Look in the Parameters tab, where the Over1 parameters now appear. The first parameter is the same for all nodes: the name of the node. By default, Shake assigns a generic name and appends a number to it, which allows each node to have a unique name. You can type a different name in the text field and make it more descriptive.

4 Click in the first parameter field for Over1, and type “orchid_Over_table.”

The new name reflects the compositing logic for the node: “Input 1 is Over Input 2.” If you switch the inputs, then the compositing order is reversed.

Note: When you move the pointer over the line—called a noodle—that connects two nodes, the end changes color (magenta = lower end, yellow=upper end) to show that you can drag or delete the connection.

5 Drag the lower end of the table noodle to the first input on orchid_Over_table.

28 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

The node logic is switched, which completely changes the result of the composite. The orchid now appears behind the table when it should be on top.

6 Switch the inputs again (or press Command-Z or Control-Z to undo your previous

operation). The orchid image appears over the table image again.

As you work with the different layer nodes, you’ll find they have distinct methods for creating the layered output. The Over node, for example, follows the logic of “Input 1 is Over Input 2”—or more specifically, “The pixel values of Input 1 are placed Over the pixel values of Input 2.” As you’ll soon see, other layer nodes use different logic to create their output, such as “The pixel values of Input 1 are Added to the pixel values of Input 2” or “The pixel values of Input 1 are Multiplied by the pixel values of Input 2.”

Breaking Connections Between Nodes

Use one of the following methods when you need to break a connection between nodes:

• Move the pointer over one end of a noodle and press Delete (Mac OS X) or

Backspace (IRIX and Linux). You can also Control-click the noodle.

• Select a node and press E on your keyboard to extract the node—and

appropriately break all its connections. If necessary, you can always drag any node back over a noodle to insert it again.

• Take advantage of Shake’s namesake and quickly drag and shake a node to break

its connection.

Chapter 1 Shake Basics 29

7 In the Node View, select the orchid_Over_table node and add one more Over node. Use

the following illustration as a guide to connect the background element.

The result appears in the Viewer. We can thank the folks at Big Sister's Watching, NY for their impressive work. But it didn’t always look like this, did it?

30 Chapter 1 Shake Basics

+ 230 hidden pages

Apple Shake 4 Tutorials User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual

Contents

Welcome to Shake 4

The Tutorial Lessons

Installing the Tutorial Media

Mac OS X Notes

Using the Three-Button Mouse

The Delete Key

Keyboard Command Differences Between Platforms

Control vs. Command

Launching Shake in the Terminal

1 Shake Basics

Tutorial Summary

A Tour of the Basics

Launching Shake

Using the Shake Panels

Contextual Help

Shortcut Menus and Lists

Overriding the Default Button Choices

Loading Images

Browsing Tips

Viewing Images, Parameters, and Channels

Working With Thumbnails

Viewing a Node or Loading Its Parameters

Displaying Different Channels in the Viewer

Panning, Zooming, and Framing

Setting the Frame Range

Working With Windows

Launching a Flipbook

Flipbook Controls

Compositing Elements

Breaking Connections Between Nodes