1/23/25
1/21/25
Most up to date script
I also added an additonal contact shadow for under the ball to just make it a tiny bit more subtle. 
1/20/25
For the additional objects, I am adding in funky looking marbles, here is the current state of the animation, I have quite a bit left to go for animating, but as the beautiful thing about Nuke is that everything is node based and I'm able to apply the similar aspects to the additional objects (and the animation can be all connected to the multiple objects on an offset)!
1/18/25
This is the most up to date version of the shadow layer!
1/16/25
to make it so that the shadow interacts with the 3d objects, my first idea was to roto the shadow, then merge the shadow over; as I was doing that, I realized that not only was that not the best way to go around it, but if I wanted to change the plate behind it, the entire shadow would be broken.
My second idea was to try to key the shadow out and apply the key over the spheres, but that was not giving a sufficient result, so I pivoted using the idea of keying, and graded down the plate, to the point that the shadow could be shuffled into the alpha channel, then pull that channel out separately, and invert the color, I went into photoshop from here to clean up the plate then grade the alpha back in - so the shadow would be properly integrated.
1/14/25
I finished the shadow "clean plate", using Photoshop to essentially paint out the parts of the ground that were lacking the shadow. I might go back and clean up the shadow plate more but getting the jist with how it is right now is possible.
The new shadow pass, with the updated shadow plate
Once I had the shadow up to a point where I could work with it, I went and set up the nodes for ambient occlusion.
The ball with the ambient occlusion.
The ball without ambient occlusion.
This is what the occlusion without the ball looks like for the pass.
Ball movement pass 1
1/12/25
I took the image of just the chrome sphere from the set, and stretched it out so it can be used as an HDRI, with the reflection projected onto the ball.
To get the shadow to transfer, I rotoed the shape of the shadow, then made the shadow plate to input it under the sphere.
The shadow here, in my opinion, is too dark and does not have enough translucency. The way I addressed this initially was by grading down the luminance.
So I am going to make the shadow differently, using Photoshop to make a "clean plate" that is just the color of the shadow.
This is the current state of the shadow plate! I am still working on it, but plugging this into the shadow already looks a lot better.
1/11/25
So far, I have lined up the camera perspective-wise to match the chrome sphere and projected a spotlight so the shadow matches shape-wise.
Once I had the shadow up to a point where I could work with it, I went and set up the nodes for ambient occlusion.
The ball with the ambient occlusion.
The ball without ambient occlusion.
This is what the occlusion without the ball looks like for the pass.
Ball movement pass 1
1/9/25
Professor Gaynor is allowing me to do this project in Nuke, so I’m super excited to get started.
I went today with Alice to Forsyth, using my equipment (EOS R7), to take and capture our plates!
