One thing that is guaranteed to make me swear out loud at my desk is opening someone else’s Nuke script and finding it full of In and Out nodes. There are very few reasons why you shouldn’t just use Mask or Stencil instead.
Ins and Outs bother me so much I decided to make my first ever video tutorial explaining four reasons why Mask and Stencil are superior. Check it out.
It all boils down to the fact that with In and Out, the image is connected to the A input of the merge node rather than the B. Here is a summary of the four reasons why this is a bad idea:
- When you disable a node, the B stream is passed through. It’s more useful to see the image rather than the matte.
- The mix control in a merge node mixes back the B input. You usually want this to be the image, not the matte.
- The merge node takes the format from the B input.
- Metadata from the B stream is passed through the merge node by default.
If you disagree and you can think of some reasons why I should reconsider my animosity for the In and Out nodes, let me know in the comments below.
I hope you found this tutorial interesting. Let me know if you think I should make some more like this.
Very good tutorial and useful tutorial, that’s how I was taught to composite. Would love to see more things like this on your site.