Alpha Release: Compify Addon for Advanced CG/Live Action Integration
Added 2024-03-12 03:27:13 +0000 UTCGet the addon Here (go to the "Code" pulldown and select "Download Zip")
Alright!! Very excited to finally release this! It's a tool Nathan Vegdahl made a couple years ago as part of his color tools project. Hopefully you don't run into problems, but we'll try to check the comments here if you do. Although- I'm releasing this at the worst possible time (Nathan's currently on a road trip), but I want to get it out there!
I'll post more later about advanced use cases; we filmed a bunch of stuff for the boat shoot interiors that should work great with this :D
Comments
On the GitHub I added a link to a working one. There’s a slight explanation. https://github.com/EatTheFuture/compify/issues/9
Montana Reece
2025-03-28 19:52:30 +0000 UTCOn the GitHub I added a link to a working one. There’s a slight explanation. https://github.com/EatTheFuture/compify/issues/9
Montana Reece
2025-03-28 19:52:25 +0000 UTCis there any updates on this ?
Tommy Shades
2025-02-26 01:28:07 +0000 UTC4.32 Unable to use, could you please update it?
yinxin
2025-01-18 08:57:54 +0000 UTCThanks! with a bit of tweaking it worked!
Luc Kleuskens
2024-10-14 08:20:12 +0000 UTCThis worked for me, Thank you!
a_sus_friend
2024-10-12 18:37:28 +0000 UTCStill can't use in vertical footage, have tried everything in this post, someone know's a way?
Sidnei Junior
2024-10-04 18:21:29 +0000 UTCThis in incredible! Such a game changer
Justin Merced
2024-09-24 19:18:25 +0000 UTCI can’t express how happy this make me. Ian and Nathan your are true wizards! Thank you
leland Cassis
2024-06-07 16:54:38 +0000 UTCI love this plugin immensely and have been using it for almost all my videos. I do have a question about auto-align though. You covered it quickly and said you would cover it more in depth later. I was wondering when you would get around to that or if there is any documentation on it.
Tim Morales
2024-05-26 01:23:32 +0000 UTCThis add-on is literally a game-changer for me and my limited skill-- So forgive me if this is an ignorant question- anyway-- Say I want to bring back some of the reflectivity/specular to the delit footage, (i.e., a shiny wooden floor or a window) so that my added 3d objects also cast a reflection as it were-- what would be the suggested method to go about that?
Joel P
2024-04-23 22:12:29 +0000 UTCI've got a stupid question for y'all, I was trying to use the addon earlier and the prep scene button was just greyed out and unclickable. Is there any way to tell what bit of info the tool is missing? Or has anyone seen this before and can venture a guess as to what I'm doing wrong?
Peter Brennan
2024-04-13 23:26:59 +0000 UTCHere ya go: https://discord.com/invite/robot-soup-616552795767832577
Peter Brennan
2024-04-13 23:21:41 +0000 UTCoh and 1 time it worked but all turned grey/ black !
4 am
2024-04-06 19:20:35 +0000 UTCthat when I hit the "Bake Footage Lighting" but even before when I hit the "Prep Scene" button it doesnt set the right materials to the geo object :(
4 am
2024-04-06 19:14:01 +0000 UTCHi Ian ! (or any one else that can help me) - I set up a scene with geometry projecting a kitchen and been trying to use compify_followed the tutorial and got this error- KeyError: 'bpyy_prop_collection[key]: key "compify Footage" not found'
4 am
2024-04-06 19:12:07 +0000 UTCI got it to work by baking all the camera's action's except the scale and just adjusting the scale to match. I don't know if this fix will work for you but it solved all my issues.
Tim Morales
2024-04-05 04:27:16 +0000 UTCI tried that. Didn't work
Gabriel Benício
2024-04-04 16:41:43 +0000 UTCJust change the aspect ratio on the camera project node from 16/9 to 9/16 and make sure to change the aspect ratio on your projecting camera as well
Platyelf
2024-04-04 16:29:48 +0000 UTCActually... For a 9x16 footage, just add after Camera Project node a Mapping node with Type: Point, Location: X = 0.219m Y = 0.219m Z = 0m, Rotation X = 0° Y = 0° Z = 0°, Scale: X = 0.562 Y = 0.562 Z = 1.000. Worked 99.9% perfect.
Gabriel Benício
2024-04-03 12:36:10 +0000 UTCUnfortunately, it doesn't work with vertical footage at all! Need so many tweaks with Mapping node that it is not worth it for now :(
Gabriel Benício
2024-04-03 12:29:38 +0000 UTCthis is sooo impresive
Tomasz Zarucki
2024-04-03 09:22:27 +0000 UTCThanks
Locksley Lennox
2024-04-01 13:31:33 +0000 UTCFixed it in 4.1 by setting everything, clicking prep scene (texture not showing), then going into my geo shader, in the footage node I reloaded my sequence by clicking the folder and selecting my sequence. Then it worked, maybe I also reloaded it in the compify footage tab after that. Hope it helps !
Nathel Sunrider
2024-03-30 20:22:47 +0000 UTCFixed it by clicking prep scene then going into my geo shader, in the footage node I reloaded my sequence by clicking the folder and selecting my sequence. Then it worked, maybe I also reloaded it in the compify footage tab. Hope it helps.
Nathel Sunrider
2024-03-30 20:21:32 +0000 UTCIn the 4.1 release here, I got the same problem but my geo is full purple. If I select "movie" and load an mp4 it works fine, but "image sequence" type with an EXR or tiff image sequence doesn't.
Nathel Sunrider
2024-03-30 19:55:31 +0000 UTC4.0 and above !
Nathel Sunrider
2024-03-30 19:51:15 +0000 UTCI get an error when I try. Do I need a specific blender version?
Locksley Lennox
2024-03-29 17:21:16 +0000 UTCEdit > Preferences > Add-ons, click Install on the top right, find the zip file you downloaded :)
bonzairob
2024-03-29 17:03:21 +0000 UTCI totally should have watched this video in full before asking, I didn't realise Compify also includes a version of the project note - and it works without issue!
whittacles
2024-03-28 11:39:36 +0000 UTChow do you install it?
Locksley Lennox
2024-03-27 23:22:28 +0000 UTCIf you want to use the standalone add-on change the zip file name from “camera_projector-0.2.0” to “camera_projector-0” but really you can just use the camera projector part of compify without actually using the rest of compify
Platyelf
2024-03-27 19:24:51 +0000 UTCThanks for the new tool, looking forward to experimenting with it. On a slight tangent: Has anyone been able to get Nathan's Camera Projection tool to work in Blender 4 or later? It always returns a python error for me :(
whittacles
2024-03-27 16:35:04 +0000 UTCSo if we have a night time live action shot (say in a industrial area) and want to light up parts of the ground surface with CG lights how can we do that?
Arfaan Amini
2024-03-26 18:27:20 +0000 UTCDo you guys know where the discord link is at ? ☠️🙏 I can’t find it :(
james 77
2024-03-24 19:40:43 +0000 UTCWhat insane dark magic is this
Solstice121
2024-03-22 16:50:38 +0000 UTCDoes this tool work with lens distortion workflows? Like if you have tracked a lens with some distortion and plan on applying that distortion to your CG elements for compositing, will the baking play nice with that? I gave it a quick test and it seems like it applies the footage without any undistortion. Perhaps I just have to undistort my footage first and use that as the plate that is projected? But then some edge data might be lost. I'm still testing various methods on my end but wanted to know if you had any wisdom on that topic from your own tests. Additionally, is there any good way to manage if some of the scene geo is reflective?
Ben
2024-03-19 20:35:28 +0000 UTCThis looks like a great timesaver. Cant wait to figure it out. Is it necessary to setup manually the Camera with the correct values (Focal Length and Sensor witdh)? Or will the "align Camera Track" feature do this?
Frank Frohnhoefer
2024-03-18 09:49:15 +0000 UTCHi Ian. I ran into the problem that after scene prep, my footage geo turns grey and shows no video texture, but I do get the shadows after I place an object. I’m using blender 4.0. Is it a bug or something? Any ideas?
Tian Di
2024-03-17 23:14:44 +0000 UTCi hope Nathan is still with us .....
pfi Files
2024-03-17 17:01:41 +0000 UTCmy mind hurts in the best way possible!
B#D
2024-03-16 18:54:02 +0000 UTCAh ok! thanks both of you for the help! I tend to just end up in Eevee because it's the default. Interestingly I had tried switching to cycles earlier and it wasn't baking anything at all, I ended up having to make a new 'footage geo' object entirely for it to work, I guess something about setting up an object in Eevee messes it up for cycles. Works perfectly now though, thanks for the fantastic add-on!!
Theo
2024-03-16 17:23:19 +0000 UTCAH! It's been so long since I've dipped my toes in Eevee that I forgot that could even be a variable! I should have mentioned that.
Ian Hubert
2024-03-16 08:12:38 +0000 UTCThe Compify addon is definitely Cycles-specific. It might work with Eevee by sheer coincidence in some specific cases, but it's not designed for it and is unlikely to work with Eevee in general.
Nathan Vegdahl
2024-03-16 08:00:26 +0000 UTCThat is the craziest thing. Awe-inspiring! Can't wait to see what you accomplish with this, Ian.
Ben
2024-03-15 21:54:00 +0000 UTCThanks so much for the reply! After playing around with it for a bit I think the issue I'm running into is that the 'de-lighting' process isn't actually de-lighting? So the areas of the 'footage geo' that are closer to the lights are brighter than the original footage and the opposite for areas further from the lights. I was curious if this add-on is cycles specific, but I tried setting it up and I'm having even more trouble there than in EEVEE. Here's a very weirdly framed screenshot for context: https://imgur.com/a/RChGzsj
Theo
2024-03-15 14:43:41 +0000 UTCWow, abosolute 🔥
MACHIN3
2024-03-15 10:31:24 +0000 UTCOooo- like, brightness wise? Cause that could be the baked layer being affected by something (like if you have the background casting shadows on the scene (which, if that's the case, uncheck "shadows" in the Visibility section of the Object Properties panel)) Also- from experience, a lot of times I just forget to update the "Bake Footage Lighting", so I'm seeing everything with an old setup, and reclicking it helps everything. If you're still having trouble, feel free to post a link to a screenshot so I can see more specifically!
Ian Hubert
2024-03-15 07:19:46 +0000 UTCHey, fantastic add-on!! I am having some difficulty implementing it though. I have a section of a shot that has the 'footage geo' baked on, and a plane in the background with the camera project node to fill in the rest of the shot, almost works great except for some reason the color of the 2 sections are very noticeably different. I've made sure it's the same footage/color space in both materials, so I'm not sure where I've gone wrong? anyone have any ideas?
Theo
2024-03-15 04:46:41 +0000 UTCQuestion: rather than baking the effect of certain lights into a texture and then dividing that out, could this potentially be achieved using a combination of light linking and *negative* lights? EG, if I were to take a photoscan of my environment as well as an HDRI, assuming I could properly calibrate their relative luminances, could I simply make a negative-light version of the HDRI which is only linked to the photoscan, and follow it up with a positive-light version linked to all objects in the scene? I feel like i must be missing something here, but I find this whole topic fascinating and think Nathan's approach is quite cool.
Kai Christensen
2024-03-14 19:05:55 +0000 UTCHa ha! Thanks a bunch, that really warms my heart. But I'm definitely not a genius. I've met the real geniuses in the field, and I'm just not at that level. I also strongly suspect that I'm not the first person to come up with this technique. Once you put the pieces together, it's pretty obvious as long as you're knowledgeable about rendering tech.
Nathan Vegdahl
2024-03-14 07:45:15 +0000 UTCI totally understand ! Thank you really for your work, to me you're a genius in your field 🤯🙏
Nathel Sunrider
2024-03-13 08:11:05 +0000 UTCI think that would be possible, yes. But honestly, with the limited amount of time that I have to work on this stuff right now, I think my time is better spent on bug fixes, etc. And I also still have work to do on OCIO Maker. If you'd like to take a crack at trying to make it work with 3.6 yourself, though, please have at it.
Nathan Vegdahl
2024-03-13 07:58:04 +0000 UTCSo frickin cool! Pretty please dive into the HDRI method soon too?! I also recall you mentioning how to delight photoscans! Ian and Nathan, you guys rock!
Tyler Adams
2024-03-13 06:29:31 +0000 UTCTheoretically! But probably not that well in practice- it'd all come down to how well you could match the geometry to the movement of the face, and I suspect faces would be particularly unforgiving.
Ian Hubert
2024-03-12 21:15:35 +0000 UTCHrmm- which version of Blender are you in? Also just to be sure- is the bake completely done after you hit "Bake Footage Lighting"? With default blender settings it could take a bit (which is why I usually bring it down from 4096 to something like 400)
Ian Hubert
2024-03-12 21:12:31 +0000 UTCHi Ian. Thank you and thank you Nathan. Would you consider doing some case studies with this addon to expand on use cases? Cheers
Lt. Leotard
2024-03-12 20:46:19 +0000 UTCdid u use the camera project modifier to project the footage onto the geometry first?
Jahluu
2024-03-12 20:11:53 +0000 UTCThis is awesome! Would it work on live action actors? Like to put light onto someone’s face that wasn’t there before?
ConorsVFX
2024-03-12 19:36:11 +0000 UTCmine doesn't work, when I load my footage, the geo I have selected as my footage geo turns grey - I get the reflections and light interactions with my object but I can not see any footage texture, thoughts?
Daniel Smith
2024-03-12 18:45:40 +0000 UTCAppreciate the hard work getting this to work within the blender python constraints. Looks amazing!
German Bauer
2024-03-12 18:06:45 +0000 UTCI was literally trying to do something like this over the last few weeks, and chatting with Nathan on the color tools and camera projector github pages. This is amazing! I can't wait to put it to use! If we can get the camera projector to support undistort and color tools to support AgX, I'll be so amazingly happy. Both have workarounds though, so even then I'm pretty dang happy!
Mark Miller
2024-03-12 16:23:42 +0000 UTCThis is very good news indeed! :D
Ian Letarte
2024-03-12 16:21:42 +0000 UTCDannnnnggggggg
Josh Bailey
2024-03-12 16:19:32 +0000 UTCHoly crap. This is phenomenal.
Howie M
2024-03-12 14:50:27 +0000 UTCJust when I thought I was going to start rendering in Unreal Engine. You beautiful, beautiful monsters bring me back.
Jim Hughes
2024-03-12 13:35:21 +0000 UTCBillions of thanks to Nathan and to you for explaining it ! I can't express how much this is amazing ! Is there a way to make it work on 3.6 LTS in the future ? 4.0 and higher seems to be very crashy and less stable to me right now, sometimes certain scenes may be un-renderable. If not, no problem it's such an impressive work and all for free wow !!!
Nathel Sunrider
2024-03-12 13:14:45 +0000 UTCThat looks very handy, you 2 make a great squad togheter!
Raffo VFX
2024-03-12 12:21:59 +0000 UTCGenius!
Zander
2024-03-12 11:00:56 +0000 UTCi full screened your video and your start bar was exactly the same size as mine.. and i wondered why i had 10 different versions of blender open.
Jack_Wolfe
2024-03-12 10:48:47 +0000 UTCThis is right on the edge of my understanding but I'd really like to understand this. Trouble is whenever I try to phrase a question I realise I don't even know what questions to ask. I need to watch all the compify/colour videos again really carefully. And tinker a bit. Lighting CG objects with emissive photoscanned environments makes the top of my head fly off and then drop back down and clatter like the lid of a cookie jar. Thanks for this Ian, I admire your skill and artistry even if I sometimes don't entirely understand it.
Phil South
2024-03-12 10:46:27 +0000 UTCDopeguy here. Just cried a lil happy tears.
alex
2024-03-12 10:40:07 +0000 UTCWow that is impressive, the fun part is you can ask everyone to use it and debug it for Nathan
Jack_Wolfe
2024-03-12 10:38:04 +0000 UTCOMG YESS! I love you, and Nathan Vegdahl .
Jack_Wolfe
2024-03-12 10:33:27 +0000 UTCFab!
Rohit Gill
2024-03-12 10:27:23 +0000 UTC[heavy breathing]
Armando Marchetti
2024-03-12 09:46:55 +0000 UTCThis thing is WILD.
Karl Poyzer
2024-03-12 09:35:57 +0000 UTCThis is amazing! Thanks Ian & Nate!
Miko Dela
2024-03-12 09:29:16 +0000 UTCWhat kind of magic is this? WTF!
Leo Nobu
2024-03-12 09:19:13 +0000 UTCOh yeah, that seems to be confusing people. I export EXRs, which is a linear format that- as far as I'm aware- bypasses all the color management settings entirely, and also means I can easily import it back into my video editor and convert it to whatever I want. So the fact that it's set to filmic only controls how it looks in the viewport. If you're exporting to a format like png or jpg or something, I'd say just keep the View Transform on Standard, with Look set to None.
Ian Hubert
2024-03-12 09:12:42 +0000 UTCWhat colour space should be used. Since using Filmic for instance will also affect the footage
Jed
2024-03-12 08:56:52 +0000 UTCAmazing!
Dan Adrian
2024-03-12 07:59:26 +0000 UTC...what the hell is this voodoo magic!! Seriously, there aren't a lot of tools that I get genuinely excited about. A lot of them are nice and save a bunch of time, but this is a proper game changer.
Jamie Dunbar
2024-03-12 07:33:43 +0000 UTCI knew it was something I needed just by looking at the content, even before watching the video. Thank you!
soco
2024-03-12 07:27:45 +0000 UTCThis does look amazing!
Thorsten-Tobias Heinze
2024-03-12 06:57:30 +0000 UTCThank you so much for putting this out there! I’ve been wanting something like this for a long time!
Richard Reimer
2024-03-12 05:43:30 +0000 UTCWow. Just wow. Makes me excited to do some experiments :)
Chris Ras
2024-03-12 05:27:00 +0000 UTCOh wow. Amazing!
Tim Evans
2024-03-12 05:08:22 +0000 UTCYeah! I'm going to make a more detailed breakdown soon- I just wanted to get this initial info out there.
Ian Hubert
2024-03-12 04:54:34 +0000 UTCThanks! I was concerned about how I can insert 3d Models in real world and maintain reflections / shadows / emission from it in blender. That should be what I was looking for!
Roman Kovalev
2024-03-12 04:47:17 +0000 UTCThis is incredibly cool! It would be really nice to have a more in depth explanation of how it works
Albert Wright
2024-03-12 04:18:55 +0000 UTCI remember the original post about this.This feels like when the movie Incredibles 2 finally came out, 20 years later , but it was all worth it :’) Nathan is the best.. Vegdahl in the house ! Blender is so lucky to have him
Seb Diaz
2024-03-12 04:08:09 +0000 UTCThis is insane.
Daniel Smith
2024-03-12 04:04:04 +0000 UTCCome to think of it. It’s the kind of thing I might actually use in almost every scene I do!!!
Chris Keller
2024-03-12 03:54:12 +0000 UTCI was literally working on something just the other day where this would’ve come in perfectly handy. as in like saved me four hours of farting around. Can’t wait to try it.
Chris Keller
2024-03-12 03:53:15 +0000 UTCyou made me cry thank you
Richard Cave
2024-03-12 03:48:51 +0000 UTCGah. You guys are geniuses. I can't even.
Christopher Kou
2024-03-12 03:48:42 +0000 UTCThis feels like what I thought 3D was like before I got into 3D. Amazing tool! Thank you!
Jason Rugg
2024-03-12 03:45:46 +0000 UTCThis is an incredible boon for us indie filmmakers! Thank you Nathan + Ian!
Jeffery F
2024-03-12 03:31:38 +0000 UTC
