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New here, need some advice

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Mr.Cane

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  • Joined: Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:39 pm
  • Real Name: Simone Boiocchi

New here, need some advice

PostFri Jan 04, 2019 6:57 pm

Hi guys,

I'm new here and a bit of a noob in Fusion, and I'd like some advice to start with the right foot in comp.

After years of archiviz renders I moved more and more towards animation, and at some point using a real comp software became a necessity, so I looked around and Fusion for me and my ordinary production is a no-brainer.

So, what I usually do is to render in exr 16bit and rebuild my beauty pass with the merge or the channel boolean nodes. I also have some other extra pass like Zdepth, IDs for masking, blur etc, nothing esoteric. Then I make corrections for each pass and or for the whole comp.

Since everything is in linear and exported in sRGB, I apply a 2.2 gamma to the Fusion LUT in the viewer for preview purpose. Then in the saver I setup the Output Color Space to sRGB and the Output Gamma Space also with sRGB and Apply Curve checked and everything is usually fine,

[tl:dr] BUT,

I find very difficult to use some nodes like the Color Corrector node, or the Glow node when the source is exr 16 bit linear. I don't know if it's related to my lack of understanding or what, but it seems that some sliders acts really strange, like contrast is clamping all the blacks immediately and blow the highlights, and the glow effect creates some strange blotch or solarization effect.

Also: is there some established node order/correct workflow to preserve values outside the 0-1 range I get from the exr without clamping? I guess first thing is try to color correct, then try to grade using CC or LUT (I don't know other stuff for now) and in the end add some effects like glow, but I have the feeling I'm doing something wrong.

More also, is there a way to color correct like in DaVinci? I saw some tutorials and they use scopes and some useful tools I'd like to explore in Fusion if they are available.

More more also: do you know any good tips or tutorial to use properly the glow node to create flares, spots etc?

I have so many other questions, but I'm already too long, so thanks in advance for now!
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Pieter Van Houte

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Re: New here, need some advice

PostFri Jan 04, 2019 7:32 pm

Just to be sure, check your preferences to see if you're not working in 8 bit?
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Bryan Ray

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Re: New here, need some advice

PostSat Jan 05, 2019 1:27 am

Mr.Cane wrote:More more also: do you know any good tips or tutorial to use properly the glow node to create flares, spots etc?

I have so many other questions, but I'm already too long, so thanks in advance for now!


First, as Pieter mentions, make sure that you're actually still in 16-bit mode. You can see that in the upper-right corner of the image Viewer, where it should say something like 1920x1080xfloat16. If it says int8 instead, you'll need to fix up your Preferences. The Frame Format prefs are available in both the Globals and the Comp preferences. Once you set the Globals, any new comps will inherit those settings, but comps you've already started will need to have their own prefs set, since those will override the globals.

You can, of course, force a bit depth in the Import tab of the Loaders, but that gets cumbersome when you're dealing with multiple buffers.

----

Color correction often works more intuitively in a gamma-corrected space, as do certain other effects. Glows, the LumaKeyer, and the Ranges tool are some that I often switch to sRGB for. You can bracket those operations with a pair of Gamut tools to switch into and out of sRGB. Since you're in 16-bit you don't risk any data loss from doing it.

Even in gamma-corrected space, some of the CC's sliders are overly sensitive, particularly Lift, Brightness, and Contrast. Even holding Control while moving them (which reduces the sensitivity), they still take a very light touch.

----

You can right-click in any Viewer and point to Views to put a scope into it. You can even set one to quad view to show all four scopes (2d and 3d histograms, waveform, and vectorscope) at once. Or you can super-impose a scope over your image using the SubView button.
Bryan Ray
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Mr.Cane

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  • Joined: Fri Jan 04, 2019 2:39 pm
  • Real Name: Simone Boiocchi

Re: New here, need some advice

PostSat Jan 05, 2019 10:57 am

Hi guys, thanks for the replies.

Yes, I forgot to mention that both the comp and the global settings are default to 16bpc float. Oh, and I also setup the 'Frame Starts From' 1, but no matter what, every comp always starts from 0. There's something else I need to check for this setting to work?

Thanks Bryan for the tips, I just tried the gamut node and it's working much better. Still don't know if adding this nodes for every passes is going to work in the long run though, I can imagine a very crowded comp just for the beauty reassembly, but I'll see.

Another quick question: I can't see Linear in the Output Color Space of the gamut node, is it ok to just remove gamma from the sRGB source space and set output to No Change? It looks fine, but I'm not so sure.

I found the scopes also, and I saved the quad view to default, that's exactly what I was looking for!

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