I have a live action clip, which I’ve tracked syntheyes. I’ve done a roto on the person. I’m doing an environment replacement for him. I’m doing a matte painting that’s going to be done using a Nuke card system. The matte painting will be seen through the windows of the new environment.
Would there be any advantages of me doing the new environment on a card system in Nuke as opposed to doing it in maya and just comping with my renders?
It’s a matter of priorities. If you’re not changing the 3d setup or the matte painting over the course of the project, it is faster to render the matte painting layer once and for good ( using either nuke or maya).
But if you think you’re gonna have to do a lot of tweaking I suggest using nuke, because you can change things easily as you go.
Nuke would be more beneficial because you use the 3d system in Nuke to create things like vector paths, z depth. So… in the composite you can do depth of field and motion blur on the camera for the environment.
how much more control would that give me during my comp than doing it in passes from some 3d software package?
Doing it in comp allows you to tweak placement, size and other usual factors of the needed environment live, right up until the very end. If you render them out in a separate 3D package, you can’t really make any significant changes easily without resorting to comp hacks or just re-rendering the whole thing. If it is indeed a relatively simple shot (no complex camera projections and such), definitely do it in Nuke.
If you haven’t already checked it out, I suggest you take a look at the Nuke master class downloadable from The Foundry’s web site. There’s some really good stuff on using Nuke’s card system:
http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/pkg_training.aspx?ui=CBC2593A-2C9F-4EF9-84BE-C198B0171453
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