The Mars Mission
The project where I discovered what place I wanted to occupy in 3D. The Mars Mission was the name I gave to the final shot of Rebelway's Compositing in Nuke course, but for me it ended up being much more than a simple exercise. This is where my way of thinking as a compositor was born. This is where I understood that, within all areas of 3D, the one that really made me vibrate was this one.
The first time I understood the real power of compositing
I arrived at this course not quite knowing what to expect, but what I discovered inside was a new paradigm for me, something that changed the way I see any shot. I started with the basics: channels, simple chromas, merge operations, 2D and 2.5D tracking, color management, color spaces… and suddenly everything started to click. Nuke stopped being a program and became a language. I learned that absolutely all industry productions go through it, that it's the tool that unifies and gives coherence to every element of a shot, that it's the final stretch where everything makes sense. I realized that even with basic knowledge you could elevate a shot tremendously, and that mastering it at an advanced level allows you to practically build complete shots with cinematic quality.
Apply everything learned… and much more
The final shot of the course brought together all the techniques seen and forced me to take them a step further. I did intensive lookdev of the ship and its environment, worked on geometry projection to be able to do lookdev directly from Nuke with incredible freedom, treated volumes to give body to the Martian atmosphere, added 3D cards with atmospheric effects to create depth layers, and closed everything with color grading that unified the scene.
In this process I learned small tricks that make the difference, like calculating the camera distance to planes with 2D elements to fade them according to how far away they were. That natural fade prevents shots from cutting in camera or 2D elements from being too close, which would show pixels and break the cinematic illusion.
The exact point where I decided I wanted to be a compositor
The Mars Mission is not just a final shot. It's the beginning of my real adventure in compositing. It was the first time I felt I understood the complete process, that I could control every layer, every color, every depth. After this course came more projects, more challenges, more discipline… and it all started here.
