vfx-compositing

VFX compositing direction

Use this skill to make composite shots feel photographed together, not stacked together. Treat compositing as shot integration across color, motion, geometry, light, lens, material contact, atmosphere, artifact repair, and delivery handoff.

Do not use this skill as a substitute for legal clearance, colorist judgement, an on-set VFX supervisor, or a compositor operating a specific node graph. Use it to brief, plan, supervise, and review provider-independent compositing work.

Evidence posture

Documented facts below come from professional documentation and standards sources listed at the end. Tool-specific documentation facts were verified on 2026-07-10 and may change.

Empirical observations are repeatable checks an agent can perform by reviewing frames, scopes, mattes, tracks, and before/after renders.

Production heuristics are practical rules of thumb. They are not universal laws; override them when shot evidence, client direction, or a facility spec requires a different approach.

The compositing target

A good composite satisfies four contracts:

1. The audience contract: the shot does not pull attention away from the story, product, or message.
2. The camera contract: inserted elements share the plate’s perspective, lens behavior, exposure logic, motion, and defocus.
3. The image contract: elements share color pipeline, black/white points, grain/noise, sharpness, compression, and atmospheric depth.
4. The production contract: inputs, versions, rights, AI provenance, handles, mattes, and final outputs are traceable enough for editor/colorist handoff.

When time is short, prioritize the most audience-visible mismatches: perspective, scale, contact/shadow, edge quality, color temperature, motion jitter, and grain/sharpness.

Start with plate and reference prep

Before requesting generation, roto, cleanup, or integration, inventory the plate:

• Delivery target: aspect ratio, frame rate, resolution, color space, HDR/SDR, codec, duration, handles, captions/safe areas.
• Plate quality: camera motion, rolling shutter, motion blur, focus, lens distortion, chromatic aberration, grain/noise, compression, exposure, white balance, clipped highlights, crushed shadows.
• Spatial facts: horizon, vanishing points, camera height, focal-length feel, ground plane, object scale references, parallax, occluders.
• Lighting facts: key direction, softness, color temperature, bounce fill, practical lights, contact shadows, reflective surfaces, atmospheric haze.
• Matte needs: what must be foreground, background, holdout, garbage matte, key, roto, object selection, depth mask, or clean plate.
• Rights and safety: whether people, products, logos, artwork, locations, copyrighted plates, synthetic endorsements, or likenesses require permission or disclosure.