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Maybe not flashy, but important! We're talking proper footage linearization again, and how to easily do it in Blender!Nathan's put a bunch of work into the color tools since we last talked about them a couple years ago. I use them basically every day, so I wanted to dive into them again!

I've got a lot of compositing to do in the next month or two, and I want to talk about a few new techniques, and this is the foundation for most all of them.   

Download the tools here, under Releases.Here's the video covering the original release, which goes more in depth into transfer functions and what they are. And if you really want to wrap your head around it (which I recommend, if you're going to be doing a lot of compositing), here's an in-depth episode of Nathan (probably the smartest guy I've ever met on the topic), explaining it in detail. 

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One of the Biggest Compositing Basics

We're talking proper footage linearization, and how to easily do it in Blender! Nathan's put a bunch of work into the tools since we last talked about them a couple years ago. I use them basically every day, so I wanted to dive into them again! I've got a lot of compositing to do in the next month or two, and I want to talk about a few new techniques, and this is the foundation for most all of them. Download the tools here, under Releases: https://github.com/EatTheFuture/image_tools

Comments

alex

Merry christmas!

SwaMusic

NICE! More Nathan tooools!!

redishere

This is something I've always wanted! Thank you so much guys: I was working on some VFX shots with CG integrated into SLog3 footage, and the only way I could find to integrate everything was to convert the plates to Rec709 with Color Space Transform in DaVinci, then use them as background in the Blender compositor to have a correct preview, then export only the CG stuff, comp it in Fusion and convert the final footage back into Slog3 to deliver it to the colorist. What a hassle! EDIT: I'm having a bit of trouble setting up the Enviroment Variable in MacOS, though – I tried searching for tutorials but I feel super dumb haha

Fransoa

Question from a beginner: it is like we have to choose between colorgrading in blender or color grading in premierepro. Or the 2 steps have different objectives?

Joseph Ulibarri

Can anybody tell me how to accomplish this with a Blackmagic camera? I can't figure out how to get the lense cap picture into the app. Blackmagic cameras take pictures in a weird raw format. I'm going to try it on my new fx30 today but it would be nice to figure it out with the Blackmagic as well...

Hayden Mason

Maybe try shooting a quick video and exporting one frame as a jpeg from your editing software.

Cristian Jimenez

This is a great video! BUT something I really need to know now is your workflow for canceling the photogrammetry lighting to get flat lighting that you mentioned. You can just say something super cool and gloss over it 😂😂

Hayden Mason

Yes, the two steps have different objectives. In a typical post-production workflow footage is given to the VFX artist by the editor, then when the VFX artist is done they will send it to the colorist for finishing. Which is why it is so important that the CG elements are in the same color space as the original camera footage; it makes everything flow together nicely with no surprises. So with what Ian is talking about you're not color grading yet, you're just normalizing the footage so that you can work and composite accurately (and somewhat close to what the final image could look like), but then you render it back to the original S-LOG space so the colorist can make all the creative decisions later.

Joseph Ulibarri

He goes over the whole process in a previous video. Sorry I don't know which one off hand.

Oscar

Yeees! We absolutely need a tutorial on HDRI + properly linearized footage + placing motion tracked 3D objects in your scenes! Preferably yesterday!

Frank Frohnhoefer

Finally, I waited so long ;) Cant wait to see more of this. Please show us the actual process of light matching and foremost subtracting the lighting on scanned Objects. It sounds really intriguing

Ben

In the vein of getting things to match footage, what's your process for matching lens distortion? I've been messing around with a few different workflows recently, but all of them seem to have huge drawbacks and none of them are very straightforward or intuitive at all. Maybe I'm missing something obvious? I'd just love to see what your workflow for that is in case there's a better way than what I'm currently doing

Kai Christensen

I love your 3D modelling/shading videos, but I think videos like these are my favorite. I don't think I'll ever get tired of videos on compositing, projection, set extensions, greenscreen — generally any live action + CG integration work in Blender. I've been hooked ever since I saw the original Dynamo Dream teaser and I've learned so much from this Patreon since then. Even if you posted no tutorials, I think I'd still be a patron of yours, just because I want to support future Dynamo productions, but the fact that you've made so many genuinely useful instructional videos really sweetens the deal. Keep up the fantastic work man!

Kai Christensen

I found these instructions, which I think may be a good jumping-off point: https://paperkrane.io/articles/setting-up-aces-color-space-in-houdini-19-and-up/#mac TLDR: Environment variables are stored in a file on MacOS that's either ~/.zprofile or ~/.bash_profile, depending on how old your version of MacOS is. You can add your OCIO variable as a new line at the end of that file. Would look something like: export OCIO="/your/path/to/ocio" I should note that the page I linked to is specifically talking about setting up ACES for Houdini on Mac, so following its instructions exactly won't do what you want. But hopefully this clears some things up for you regardless.

IanHubert

Yes! That's it exactly. Nathan was going to set up a thing where you could just dump in video, but he hasn't gotten around to it yet.

IanHubert

Thanks Hayden! Yeah, actually a big point of this process is NOT messing with the footage, so that when it comes time to color (after VFX), the live action stuff should still match the same of the rest of the non-vfx stuff you shot. In most cases, you're going to be linearizing your footage before grading anyways, and if you're not (say, for using Film Convert from a log profile), that's when you'd want to export back into Slog using the process describe at 8:50.

IanHubert

Did we talk about it?? I know I've discussed it- I'm not sure if I really walked through it. I'll see about putting together a video! Long story short, though- I don't use the process much anymore because I tend to mount lights directly to my camera when I scan these days, which 1.) results in fantastically flat lighting anyways, and 2.) invalidates the HDRI process.

Wolfers

WOOOO! I've been dying for your next BHTS/Tutorial

Stephan

I'd love to see a video on either of those processes. cancelling out the light or the 'lights on the camera' method. There was a previous video that got a bit into both ideas (studio lighting setup and cancelling out the light), but it wasn't super direct re method. An updated version would be awesome.

Stephan

seconding that!

Stephan

thanks for making this process seem so much simpler than it does when i try researching across various online sources. this was pretty straight forward.

Phil South

But what if you don't shoot in LOG? Do these tools make a difference then? Forgive me if this is a stupid question.

Clayton Orgles

If your footage is in raw, you don't need to do this, because raw is already linear. To bring it into Blender, import your footage into Resolve, and switch to ACES colour space in the settings. You can then just export an EXR sequence out of Resolve and import it into Blender. Once your footage is in Blender, select 'Linear ACES' as the colour space. The process in the video above is for when you shot in a raster format, like if you shot in Prores + Blackmagic Log, or sLog3 on your FX30.

Joseph Ulibarri

Clayton thank you! My biggest issue was trying to figure out the raw file! Do I record in bm raw or pro res? Then do I grade it and does grading it negate the whole process in the first place? This all makes sense now. Thanks again for answering questions! Still new-ish to color space.

redishere

Thank you so much, you're very kind! I tried following those instructions but if I open up Blender nothing changes. I'll try again!

Patric Ryan

Nathan is a legend. Many thanks to you guys.

NickTricc

just going through the build in addons and noticed "is key free". Back when you made the How to make and add-on - tutorial, you mentioned you don't know what keys you can make new shortcuts for.. apparently, this does exactly that; find free shortcuts!

VoiD010AUT

Yeah, since it's linearized the footage behaves now correctly when you change the exposure.

Nathan Vegdahl

On Linux (not OSX, but there are similarities) you can also launch programs from the command line with temporary environment variables by just putting their definition first. So if you navigate to the directory where Blender is on the command line, and do something like: OCIO="/your/path/to/ocio/config.ocio" ./blender That might work. Although you'll have to launch it that way every time. But then you could make a shell script to do that automatically. (I actually always do it that way, and just have different shell scripts for different configs, so I can easily switch between them.)

Tyler Adams

Awesome! Can you make a video on projecting an hdri onto a photoscan geometry of the environment for more accurate lighting and compositing? Can you also show the technique for de-lighting a photoscanned subject?

redishere

Thanks for the thorough explanation Nathan, I'll give it a try and see what happens!

Leo Nobu

I've been using it since the first release

Dave Wrath

What 3D camera are you using/ any you would recommend for HDRI bracketed captures?

Michael Lau

Thank you so much ! Really appriciate Nathan and Ian 's work which literally save my life ! i think it is the most accurate lut I've ever used! I wish I can use it in davinci as well so much. I'm dying for the solution...The problem is: when i use it in davinci resolve, the lut is completely dark. Anybody has the same problem? PS: my camera is BMPCC...

Michael Lau

I really think this tool is revolutionary in blender VFX history ! Imagine that all your greenscreen footages, image textures, photoscan models and HDRIs are all came from the same camera and using the same LUT, white balance, contrast ratio... Then the whole cg thing you made won’t ever have the ’doesn’t gel’ problem cause they’re all the same tone! Forgive me if my imagination is unpractical… But when I try to apply the ‘raw’ image texture on the subject, same problem happened again… It’s completely dark…(emission strength doesn’t really help in this case…) I’m soooooooo eager to tackle itttttt!

503Unavailable

since blender is going to switch to AgX in 4.0 will the color tool be updated to support the new color standart?

Cole Smith

I've been using the ETF tool to create OCIO configs since the first video on it and it's fantastic!

Thijs Linssen

I'm new to the color space things so I think I'm allowed to ask stupid questions ;). Are you also rendering in rgb? But because you save it in EXR it doesn't matter cause you have the range in the file?

Jeffery F

Would love to know this aswell, or if Standard is the best view transform for this linear workflow. Thanks for the amazing tools, Ian and Nathan!

lambok sihombing

i tried making my ocio settings, but the agx not found can you tell me what happen?

Quantay Peoples

I didn't understand anything, might have to pass on this gem sad

Laris Dalley

But what if my Gamut is also unkown? I use the DJI mini 3 pro. Estimated everything, but the Gamut isn't DJI D-Gamut. Read in a Reddit post it is Rec.709 but with shadows lifted.

Alex Handjiev

After adding the OCIO to the windows settings, all view transforms in blender are gone and have been replaced by different stuff. Did I miss something in the video?

IanHubert

OH! I'll look into this tomorrow! It's possible there are changes with blender 4.0!

IanHubert

That sounds about right! If you use Rec.709, but use the black levels estimation for the initial LUT generation, that should work alright, then!

Vitor Assan

This workflow is incredible in blender! I just couldn't seem to get it to work out in resolve, do you actually use these custom idts when working in davinci for something like keying a footage before it goes to blender?

itay oz ari

Hi, I would appreciate clarification or a link to another video that talks about the subject. I shot a green screen in Arri log c - I want to perform compositing in After Effects. But still use the technique of placing the footage inside the scene so that I can derive from it reflections, shadow, lighting, etc. What will be the corrected workflow in terms of the color space? I want to take advantage of Agx's dynamic range and somehow manage to connect the two in After Effects. The way I understand it - I will simply do a color conversion to Rec709 during the compositing phase (once from Log c and once from AGX). Am I missing something? Thanks

Clint Shelton

Oh man! A year later and I finally understand what's going on, and the importance of this video!!!!! Thanks Ian and Nathan

Martin Siuda

I have same issue, Blender 4.2.2