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YES! A clickbait title, but I avoided learning about the Clean Plate node for ages because it sounded boring, and I don't want the same thing to happen here :P Does everyone already know about this??? Am I the last one?I'm very excited for the next few months- I feel like we've been putting in the pre-production work on the spaceship stuff for the past few years, and the post production work on the Boat Episode- but things are wrapping up and now we get to DO things and FINISH stuff, which is very gratifying. Also if you'd like to hear more about a linear pipeline (I promise it isn't that confusing, and it made my life so much better), I've got a video here that I'm pretty happy with: https://youtu.be/FGSxCoH14qE It gets into EXRs and importing and exporting and all that.

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The Biggest Thing I've Learned for Greenscreening in 20 Years

YES! A clickbait title, but I avoided learning about the Clean Plate node for years because it sounded boring, and I don't want the same thing to happen here :P I'm very excited for the next few months- I feel like we've been putting in the pre-production work on the spaceship stuff for the past few years, and the post production work on the Boat Episode- but things are wrapping up and now we get to DO things and FINISH stuff, which is very gratifying. Also if you'd like to hear more about a linear pipeline (I promise it isn't that confusing, and it made my life so much better), I've got a video here that I'm pretty happy with: https://youtu.be/FGSxCoH14qE It gets into EXRs and importing and exporting and all that.

Comments

Nick

"Outside is like a real life HDRI" should be on a t-shirt

Gehrig Campbell-Dempsey

I thought I'd found a genius solution by using magic mask to track the green background and then plug that into the clean plate node... never once realizing clean plate node already has color selection built into it lol. Whoops. With corridor key as well though, there's a fantastic Resolve/Fusion plugin that lets you keep your footage in linear, doesn't work on every shot, but on some, especially shots with full GS backdrops.... hooooly cow. This clean plate tip though.... good lord. So much less work. So simple. CAn't believe I've also been doing it so wrong for so long.... thank you Ian!! Also something I'm curious about watching this one, it looks like you're working in rec709/linear, is there a specific reason for it for your workflow? I switched over to working in ACEScg/linear as my intermediary color space, especially now that Blender has ACEScg as a working/render color space built in... not sure how much of a difference it makes overall, but I think preserving highlights and matching BGs has gotten a bit easier!

George Moise

This is so interesting. I’m still using after effects, which I hate because Adobe products are awful, so this was inspiring to try to jump on resolve infusion. Also, I just want to reiterate that you do not have to only post “helpful videos“. We don’t care we just want more content. Like I’ve said before, it could just be a video of you modeling and texturing something for 10 minutes. That would totally work!

Gabrial Wolf

Dude, stop worrying about bit depth. The Phantom Menace was shot in OG 1080p and sometimes 720p. Image quality is not tied to resolution or bit depth. The Creator was 10bit.

Gabrial Wolf

Also, if you use your flat studio lights, just use negative fill. Add shadows and shade to redact light.

Chromfell

Pretty sure you can also drag and drop the .setting file from Explorer directly into the Fusion node graph, that's usually what i do because i keep all my resources in their own external folder tree structure and don't wanna pasta anything into The Folder They Prescribe To Me if i can avoid it... or deal with restarting all of Resolve for literally anything to refresh ever... lol

Bearrun

Big question that came to my mind, is why not just use the 3d keyer instead of the delta? I feel like it does better with picking up the details.

Blake Rizzo

Hey! I notice you are doing rec.709 linear instead of sRGB linear like your color video, any reason for the pivot?

Zeke Faust

They are identical. BT.1886 and sRGB are two different gammas, but they share a common gamut, which is Rec.709. So really it's a bit of a misleading label

Mubarak

I also use after effects, (and sometimes resolve). Im pretty sure you can do the same in after effects using Difference Matte

Tardsmat

The phantom menace was shot on film I think, it's attack of the clones that was shot in 1080p. And based on how some of the green screen scenes in that movie look it's maybe not the best example.

George Moise

that's helpful. thx man! I've never used that. I just use Keylight.

Zeke Faust

The 3D keyer can't take advantage of the clean plate and generally doesn't work as well as color difference keying (in my experience at least)

IanHubert

I should play with the Corridor stuff again! I know in the version I tried, it would let you go linear, but I think it would clip the values to be between 0 and 1, which wasn't ideal without prior tone mapping. And I don't have a good reason! I should try ACEScg, too! I've seen folks speak highly of it! But I've also had a couple color folks I know go "Eh", so I never dove into it.

Zeke Faust

Working in a wider gamut is one of those things that's helpful *when* it's helpful, but not noticeable any other time. Most of the images we shoot are pretty much contained within Rec.709 (though there are some everyday objects that slightly go outside it, see pointer's gamut), so the only time you really benefit from wide gamut, ACES or otherwise, is when you have a saturated hotspot like a neon sign or colored LED light etc. That said, if you get used to working in a wider gamut, those times you really need it become a lot less hassle because you're already set up for it, and the rest of the time it just blends into the background. As for which gamut? I prefer working in the native camera space, or if I need a general use space then Davinci Wide Gamut. ACES is ok, but it doesn't actually cover most cameras particularly well. And working in the full ACES pipeline (i.e. fully color managed grade, ACES output transform etc.) is quite creatively restrictive

Christian Sokol

Id love a video about how you go about writting your scrips!

Simon H.

There is the Series "Advanced Keying Breakdown" from CompositingMentor (Tony Lyons) on Keying in Nuke, for free on Youtube. The principles are the same and the tools just have different names. Lots to learn from him. For example most compositors stack erodes with exponential values on the cleanplate (ibk in Nuke) Node. That way you dont just push a single value back but get more of a gradient.

Nahuel

Thanks Ian!!! Just wondering which monitor/s do you use for compositing and grading ? Thanks man!!!!

Gehrig Campbell-Dempsey

Interesting, I'd thought that ACEScg covered more than generally most other colorspaces, I never do a full ACES workflow by any stretch, but since Blender's only wide colorspace output option is ACES (as far as I understand) I just go with it when linear comping to avoid extra CSTs. I had a bunch of shots on a film with highlight rolloff issues when I was still comping in rec709 that comping in a wide colorspace fixed, gonna dig deeper in the saturation point. Appreciate you sharing !

Zeke Faust

You can go in resolve and set your timeline to ACEScg, then in your CIE scope you can overlay other camera spaces to see how well they overlap. Basically every single camera goes way beyond ACEScg, with the closest match being Arri WG4. So really the best possible workflow is working in camera native space. Second best would be Davinci WG, since it actually covers most cameras really well. Third best would be Rec.2020, which Blender also offers as a built-in working space and is basically the same size as ACEScg, but with a normal D65 white point rather than the D60 that ACES uses. What I've done in the past is set up a custom OCIO config (which is very easy with Nathan's tool!) for each working space that I need. Then create a simple blender launcher script that sets the OCIO environment to that config on startup, so I can quickly and easily move between whatever working space I need from project to project. Although maybe I'll switch to a single Davinci WG config in the future!

bittergourd

@Tardsmat... it was shot in 35mm but select sequences were digital indeed using the Sony HDC-750. After that, George shot the rest of the trilogy using digital cameras.

Gehrig Campbell-Dempsey

Well now that's fascinating, I'm gonna give that a try on my next project. I don't know much about white point conversions, but what you're saying about Rec.2020 makes sense logically. Do you find then that Blender rendering in rec.2020 is easier to work with vs setting the working space to ACEScg? Really appreciate you sharing all this Zeke.

Zeke Faust

It doesn't really make a difference what your working space is in terms of ease/workflow, as blender does the conversions automatically. And realistically there's not going to be much of a difference between ACEScg and 2020 when it comes to actually rendering either. Maybe the white point conversion could result in some rounding errors but you won't really ever notice it. My main beef with ACES is more on the color grading side

ScifiFilmmaker

I need a full 10-season series with a star-studded cast.

Maxime Gerardin

Hey Ian! Amazing video as always! I wanted to ask a simple question, I'm starting to miss those shots you made back in 2021 with some people on a bike, riding on cool roads next to waters, very dreamy yellow haze type of vibe. I LOVED this sequence, and was wondering if you abandonned all of that, or if it's actually planned to be released in a future episode of Dyanmo Dream ? Perhaps the next one ? Would love to know, thanks again Ian !!

Milo Gasset

SUPER informative video, making me start the jump to Resolve!

Kallen

within seconds you just saved me so much time keying out a yellow emblem on an actors hat I was almost certain was going to be a manual paint out, thank you so much for all the knowledge you share!