# Relight explosive scenes directly inside Nuke with Beeble

Alex Hanneman - Compositing Academy·Jan 16, 2026

> "Beeble's Nuke plugin ties directly into professional workflows."

### Alex Hanneman from Compositing Academy shows how Beeble's Nuke plugin makes real footage relightable.

[Transform your FLAT Green Screen into Cinematic Lighting](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cYK2CKjp2k) [Compositing Academy](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzqFnIJVQ1hVI-WZ62Sir1Q)

A flat greenscreen plate is usually a one-way door: you can key it, grade it, add CG, but you can't re-light the performance as if it were a CG asset. However, Alex does exactly that in his tutorial.

## The setup

Alex's workflow is deliberately practical: capture a simple greenscreen plate, build the CG scene in Blender, then use Beeble Studio to generate physically based passes from the live-action footage, so Nuke can treat the plate like a relightable element.

That means you're no longer locked into whatever lighting you managed on the day, which is especially useful when:

- You didn't have DMX/interactive lighting on set.
- You're still deciding where the CG event (explosion, muzzle flash, lightning) will land.
- You need to push a performance into a more dramatic, stylised environment.

## The process step-by-step

### 1) Generate PBR + utility passes from the plate

Normal Map from Beeble

Using Beeble Studio with local processing, Alex generates a full set of passes, including normals, which are key to relighting, plus depth and material maps.

In the breakdown, he calls out passes like:

- Albedo
- Depth
- Normals
- Roughness, specular, metallic
- A rough roto/matte

He also notes an interesting side effect: the albedo result can even out uneven greenscreen lighting, making downstream keying and cleanup easier.

### 2) Relight directly inside Nuke with the Beeble Nuke plugin

Relighting with Beeble Nuke Plugin

Alex then brings those passes into Nuke via the [Beeble Nuke Plugin](https://app.beeble.ai/plugins#nuke), which packages the passes into a workflow that plugs into relighting nodes—environment/HDRI, directional, point lights—with controls to rebalance diffuse vs spec.

This is the core win: you can now do the classic CG relighting trick, but on real footage.

### 3) The explosion reflection trick, and why it looks so convincing

ReflectionBuddy with normal map

Instead of faking the explosion light with a simple grade, Alex drives a reflection-style projection using a free Nuke gizmo called [ReflectionBuddy](https://www.nukepedia.com/tools/gizmos/3d/reflectionbuddy/), feeding it the normals Beeble generated.

That lets him project the explosion footage itself so it:

- Hits at the exact right time.
- Shifts correctly across the surface as the normals change.
- Targets different areas based on the material.

It's also where good comp judgement matters. Alex flags the common plastic look pitfall and fixes it the right way: breaking up highlights, targeting materials separately, and doing proper, localised corrections rather than a single global glow.