Dusk Environment Study | Cinematic Sky Replacement

Project Overview:
This project focuses on high-end environment integration and atmospheric look development. I transformed a raw daylight ocean plate into a cinematic dusk scene, moving beyond a simple sky swap to a full global relighting of the environment.

Technical Highlights:
2.5D Projection Workflow: Utilized Nuke’s 3D system to project a high-resolution sunset onto 3D cards. This ensures that the sky maintains a mathematically perfect perspective and parallax relative to the camera movement.

Selective Luminance Keying: I avoided generic masking in favor of selective luminance keys to isolate the water's surface and the wooden structure. This allowed for precise control over the specular reflections and shadow density.

Global Relighting: To seat the foreground elements into the new purple and orange atmosphere, I performed independent color grading on the wood and water textures, simulating realistic light bleed and "sky spill."

Tools Used:
Foundry NukeX: Primary compositing, tracking, and 2.5D projection.

Sky element integrated from original photography by Ray Bilcliff via Pexels.