IBKStacker_IS: a tool to speed up IBK Keying

INTRODUCTION

I first learned of the IBK stacked technique from the Compositing Mentor blog at compositingmentor.com. I’m not going to go into meticulous detail on how this works under hood so check out the Compositing Mentor’s blog for more information. In short, stacking IBKColour nodes will likely lead you to a better result than just using a single IBKColour node. This method works by first creating a “main IBKColour” in which the user sets the screen size to a low value (1) and fiddles with the darks, lights, and erode until the subject is covered with black. Then, the user duplicates the main IBKColour, sets the erode to 0 and patch black to 1. The user continues to duplicate the main IBKColour and setting an erode value of 0 and patch black that increases exponentially with each copy (1, 2, 4, 8 etc.)

THE PROBLEM

I was working on a commercial spot that involved heavy amounts of keying with multiple keying setups and found that the process of copy/pasting the IBKColour nodes and adjusting their values was prone to human error and was super time inefficient. So, I challenged myself to create a python script that would automate the stacking process and speed up my work when keying using IBK.

THE SOLUTION

The IBKStacker_IS python tool will automatically create a stack of IBKColour nodes with exponentially increasing patch black values. The tool looks similar to the IBKColour node with the addition of two knobs, stack size and expand group. The stack size knob controls how many IBKColour nodes the user wants in the stack. Each additional IBKColour node will have the same knob values as specified in the User tab except for the patch black which increases exponentially with each new node in the stack. While the expand group button will expand the groups contents into the node graph, which can be easier to read to another artist who's unfamiliar with this script.

The video below shows how increasing the stack size creates new IBKColour nodes with exponentially increasing patch black values while also keeping the values of other knobs the same. In this example, there are 5 nodes in the stack (IBK01 through 05) with IBK00 being the “main IBKColour”.

The next video shows how the IBKStacker_IS tool creates the same outcome as the large stack of IBKColour nodes. Overall, using this tool can save a few seconds of time when keying but those few extra seconds can add up when you have lots of keying to do or when experimenting with different methods or values.

DOWNLOAD IBKStacker_IS

Add these lines of code to your menu.py file, located in your .nuke folder.

Download the "IBKStacker_IS.txt" and save it as "IBKStacker_IS.py" in all files, case sensitive. (Weebly won't allow .py files to be uploaded directly, sorry!) Then place the file in your .nuke folder or wherever you keep your python scripts. Can't get it work? Leave a comment.

IBKStacker_IS.txt
File Size:	4 kb
File Type:	txt

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