Stitching Spherical HDR Panoramas in NukeX with CaraVR

In this video we take an in-depth look at using the CaraVR toolset in NukeX 12.0+ for stitching spherical HDR panoramas.

We talk about
Advantages of stitching in Nuke vs alternatives like PTGui and AutoPanoGiga
Blending multiple bracketed exposures into a single hdr image
Calibrating color and exposure
Using the C_CameraSolver node to solve our camera rig, including an in-depth rundown on creating manual feature matches, and a manual approach for getting a solve
Fixing alignment, ghosting and blending artifacts
Using C_SphericalTransform to paint out unwanted objects in frame
Using Blender, we'll test out our final HDR to see how it works!

Links
Debayer tool: https://github.com/jedypod/debayer
RawTherapee: https://rawtherapee.com
Nuke-Config: https://github.com/jedypod/nuke-config
ExposureBlend tool: https://gist.github.com/jedypod/7a4f8...
Junk Shop Blender Scene: https://cloud.blender.org/p/gallery/5...
Image Set: If you want to follow along, here are the ACES 2065-1 exr images used in the video: https://mega.nz/folder/hBJUFLib#h4v4L...

Chapters
00:00 - Bad joke
00:32 - Summary of events
01:28 - What is an HDR?
03:06 - Brief tangent into raw image debayer with RawTherapee
05:06 - Why use Nuke for HDR Stitching?
07:55 - Apocalypse from the West
08:38 - Combining bracketed exposures into an HDR image
17:39 - ExposureBlend tool
19:48 - Calibrating exposure
22:56 - Fix alignement issue
25:53 - Intro to CaraVR toolset
26:38 - Solving our rig with C_CameraSolver
33:16 - Straighten horizon
34:05 - Creating manual feature matches
38:28 - Set mask shape
40:02 - C_Stitcher to warp and blend panorama
41:00 - Fix stitching artifacts by tweaking masking
41:56 - Fix ghosting artifacts by removing areas of each view
45:00 - Remove areas from HDR blend to reduce motionblur artifacts
50:36 - Write out a cache of the stitch before paint
52:31 - Paint out camera shadow
59:18 - Color calibration with a Macbeth Colorchecker
01:02:40 - Lighting a scene in Blender
01:06:12 - Thanks and The End
01:06:48 - Bonus Round! Manual alignment if nothing else works