#stereo compositing

Here's another tip; this time on setting up Nuke's viewer for stereoscopic display. It's a wee bit simpler than the setup in After Effects. 

First things first, go to your Project Settings and look for the Views tab. Within this tab, look toward the bottom of its properties window; you should see a button for "Set up views for stereo". What this'll do is create two views: left and right, which will replace the default Main view. If this button is not available (earlier version of Nuke), you can manually add these left and right views and replace the Main using the + and - buttons in this same window.

At this point, if you have not brought in your stereo pair images, go ahead and do so. If you're like me and prefer to minimize the amount of nodes you're using, you'll probably want to work stereoscopically within one pipe rather than two separate ones (the benefit being, of course, effects following your read node will affect both eye images). To have your read node recognize the two eye images within one node, simply replace the "left" or "right" portion of your file name with %V.  

i.e. yourimage_left.#####.tif will be changed to yourimage_%V.#####.tif

%V will look for "left" and "right". %v will look for "l" and "r". This applies for both read and write nodes, by the way.

With your cursor hovering over the viewer, you may A/B the stereo pair images using the ; and ' shortcut keys. To view these images in stereo, right click anywhere within the viewer and seek out "Stereo Modes", the last option in this menu. Hovering over this will reveal your options. Select your option of choice and you are now viewing your stereoscopic image. Voila!

If you're working on a stereoscopic project in After Effects and wondering how to see your work live in stereo without rendering out to a third party stereoscopic player, this one's for you. 

Make sure your left and right eye images or compositions are kept independently of each other in your project before doing this. With that said, create a new, third composition that you'll be using for viewing your project in stereo. Bring your left and right eye images or compositions into this new stereo comp; the order in which you layer them isn't important. Now, create a new adjustment layer in this stereo comp and place it above both your separate eye images/comps.

Now, apply an effect called 3D Glasses to this adjustment layer (found under Effects -> Perspective -> 3D Glasses). Under this effect's settings, set Left View and Right View to the respective images/comps you brought in and set the 3D View option to your liking: Interlaced (for passive stereo monitors) or various options of Red Green / Red Blue (also known as anaglyph). As far as I know, active shutter 3D is currently not an option out of the box with AE.

Stayed tuned for another tip in how to set up stereo within Nuke.