Spaceship post in Resolve and Fusion

So I took my BMPCC 6K G2 into space and shot a lot of video of my spaceship, and now I want to use all the tools at my disposal in Resolve Studio and/or Fusion Studio to make it look as good as I can. Preferably they have to read my mind to know exactly the look I'm going for.

Wait, that doesn't sound right. Oh, right. That's what I wanted to do, but it was too expensive. So instead, for most of this year I have been working on a personal learning project in Blender that hopefully soon will come to an end. I have thousands of frames in EXR sequences, although they are not multilayer EXRs. I simply rendered two EXR sequences per camera, one with the ship in RBGA and the other one with the HDRI background that has the stars. In a few cases I rendered a third sequence because I added nebulas and I wanted those in a separate layer.

As I was rendering them (and rendering them again over and over because I would find something I didn't like), I was bringing the sequences into Resolve Studio and going through the FX list trying to find any that would help the render look better. As it is, it doesn't look bad, but I'm sure Resolve and Fusion have a lot to slap on top of it to make it look even better.

And that was obviously the case, since just adding the Film Look Creator and tweaking a few things in it looks remarkably better. But then there Chromatic Aberration Removal (which should be called Addition and Removal), Aperture Diffraction, and above all, Lens Flares!! (used in moderation of course).

So at one point I figured that rather than keep spending way more time than I have exploring, I needed to go to the tutorial factory (YouTube) and find some good tutorials on the subject. To my surprise, I still haven't found any that talk about doing post on renders of starships. I found lots of Blender tutorials on how to render spaceships the best way possible, which I had already watched; I found one about compositing a spaceship in Resolve and Fusion, but the first part is called "3D Model Import", so that's obviously about bringing a 3D model into Fusion, and no offense, but 3D world navigation in Fusion is just horrible, with the mandatory wheel button + Alt/Option to just move around. Not for me. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than happy to import the EXR sequence into Fusion Studio if I can apply some cool effect in it. The part I hate about Fusion is the 3D world part, I'm fine with the nodes and all that when I need to use them.

So I keep scrolling results, change the search terms, and I find barely anything useful, or it's like 8 years old. Which really surprises me, because I thought this topic would be full or tutorials.

So basically I'm looking for VFX, in either Resolve Studio or Fusion Studio, that will give me the closest look to the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies. Please don't tell me "that's not what spaceships and space really look like" because I already know that. It's an artistic choice that I happen to like very much and I want to see how close can I get to it. I fact, next year I'm hoping to model something also with a space theme, but more current and try to achieve a realistic look like Interstellar, Gravity, etc. But for now, my goal is to achieve the look from those movies, which sometimes have invisible spotlights in places where they shouldn't be, and the lens in the space camera is really dirty, but you can only see that when it goes into WARP

So, any suggestions?

Okay so i've read your entire post, but it's hard to tell what exactly you can do to make it look "better" without seeing any examples. can you post some screenshots/short renders?

But just a shot in the dark, talking from experience, it's often better to film the real thing instead of CGI. you might want to consider finding some sponsors for a re-shoot in actual space. Nebula's are not too far away from here.

Okay so i've read your entire post, but it's hard to tell what exactly you can do to make it look "better" without seeing any examples. can you post some screenshots/short renders?

I'd rather not for now, I'll post it when it's done. I was referring more to general tips or links, certain practices, etc.

But just a shot in the dark, talking from experience, it's often better to film the real thing instead of CGI. you might want to consider finding some sponsors for a re-shoot in actual space. Nebula's are not too far away from here.

Indeed. I think I'm going to ask Tom Cruise if I can tag along when he goes to the ISS soon.

Posting it when it's done, kind of defeats the purpose of asking for help here. A lot of the realism of spaceship vfx comes down to the way the spaceships are modeled, textured, lit and rendered.
If those elements didn't work, there is no way of telling if the post process will make any difference at all.

Creative Video Tips has some good videos for Fusion:
https://www.youtube.com/@CreativeVideoTips/videos

Prophetless also:
https://www.youtube.com/@prophetless/videos

Millolab Tuts:
https://www.youtube.com/@MillolabTuts/videos

https://dvresolve.com/tutorial/fusion/

One of the best Fusion-Tutors - VFXstudy:
https://www.youtube.com/@VFXstudy/videos

vfxexpert:
https://www.youtube.com/@vfxexpert/videos

Casey Faris:
https://www.youtube.com/@CaseyFaris/videos

Tutorial: Real-time EXR Workflow | DaVinci Resolve + Blender

Posting it when it's done, kind of defeats the purpose of asking for help here. A lot of the realism of spaceship vfx comes down to the way the spaceships are modeled, textured, lit and rendered.
If those elements didn't work, there is no way of telling if the post process will make any difference at all.

I beg to differ big time. Are you going to tell me that the VFX industry puts all their effort into the texturing and rendering, and any added VFX done in post are an afterthought? I mean, I'm not a professional VFX artist and I was really impressed at how a render that looked decent in itself could look much better and polished after just a few adjustment clips on top of it with some of Resolve Studio's VFX.

I'm not saying you can render crap in Blender and Resolve will magically fix, but you're wrong if you say post VFX will not make a difference at all.

Creative Video Tips has some good videos for Fusion:
https://www.youtube.com/@CreativeVideoTips/videos

Prophetless also:
https://www.youtube.com/@prophetless/videos

Millolab Tuts:
https://www.youtube.com/@MillolabTuts/videos

https://dvresolve.com/tutorial/fusion/

One of the best Fusion-Tutors - VFXstudy:
https://www.youtube.com/@VFXstudy/videos

vfxexpert:
https://www.youtube.com/@vfxexpert/videos

Casey Faris:
https://www.youtube.com/@CaseyFaris/videos

Tutorial: Real-time EXR Workflow | DaVinci Resolve + Blender

Excellent, I will start taking a look at those now. Thanks!

Okay so i've read your entire post, but it's hard to tell what exactly you can do to make it look "better" without seeing any examples. can you post some screenshots/short renders?

Sorry, I just realized maybe you meant examples of what I'm trying to accomplish rather than my own renders. I can post some stills from the movies, although this forum software only allows 3 per post, so I'll choose some nice ones.

ST 2009 ship side copy.jpg (199.56 KiB) Viewed 718 times

Ship from below copy.jpg (262.8 KiB) Viewed 718 times

STID about to go warp copy.jpg (209.43 KiB) Viewed 718 times

I think Rick means to show your renders, because as I pointed out: if your base renders aren't good enough no amount of post will make it look like the shots in your reference images. Modelig, lighting and texturing are all very important to make this look good, so without seeing what you have we can't tell you how to make it better.

Are you going to tell me that the VFX industry puts all their effort into the texturing and rendering, and any added VFX done in post are an afterthought?

No but they put all their effort into creating the best final product. Sometimes this comes from the insanely detailed and incredibly lit renders before vfx, and sometimes come from the incredible work the VFX artists do. Keep in mind the VFX industry is comprised of masters of every discipline and do not operate as a single entity. They have masters of modelling, masters of texturing, masters of lighting, masters of composition, masters of storytelling and also masters of VFX in the entire process of creating these visuals.

Especially those renders from Star Trek, there is no "afterthought" because they have the time, budget, resources and expertise to plan and create the best product they possibly can.

I overlooked this part

you're wrong if you say post VFX will not make a difference at all.

Yes, I would be wrong if I had said that. But I didn't. I said that if your elements don't work, post VFX will not make them better.

So VFX aren't an afterthought, but if you've rendered your spaceship with soft area lights instead of a big harsh sunlight it will not look realistic if there's a big sun in the image.

If you have used norrmal texture maps instead of displacements or actually modelled geometry it will not look as good, no matter how much post you throw at it.

Lets reverse the situation Sebastian.

I currently have a shot on my screen. I like, but i would like your opinion of it.

What do you think it needs?

Lets reverse the situation Sebastian.

I currently have a shot on my screen. I like, but i would like your opinion of it.

What do you think it needs?

Look, I know you’re being funny, but I already explained that I just wanted tips on what VFX in Resolve are good for renders of spaceships, not MY particular render. If you get from that that I’m trying to be difficult, then suit yourself.

the point is, without seeing your shots, what can we suggest?
Add more cool colours?
Add some camera shake on that fly by?
Add some trails on that engine?

There is no "Spacehip VFX" setting to suggest to you.
Ideas are based around looking at what you have, and then being able to make a suggestion.

Throw up a couple of stills from you shots, and you will get some suggestions.

I use version 15 and recently decided to learn fusion. I bought a book published by blackmagic and sold by amazon on fusion visual effects for resolve 15. There's one lesson in it that has to do with a spacewalk. Most of the earlier lessons are about using text. I looked at the pdf version of the book but didn't get the book yet so haven't done any lesson. You download lesson files for the books to use with the book. I have everything ready to start the lessons when I get the book. I keep the book open next to mouse and go step by step through them. Will take a long time. It's how I learned editing and grading. You haven't mentioned ( I don't think ) your version. Once familiar with the nodes and some effects you can apply what they do to anything, not just text, for example. Part of JJ Abram 'look' was the horizontal blue lens flare you get with anamorphic lenses when light hits the lens a certain way. Shooters can do this on sets with tiny mirrors that reflect light into lens from something like a leko light behind camera. You can probably create them with fusion in your compositions. A star for example could make a flare.

There is no "Spacehip VFX" setting to suggest to you.

And clearly, I never implied there might be such a setting. I was clear in what I meant, and I'm not going to waste time repeating myself over and over.

I use version 15 and recently decided to learn fusion.

Sorry, I'm confused. I mean, you're free to use what you want, but you're using a Resolve version from 2018? Not that there's anything wrong with that, but BMD doesn't charge for upgrades even to major versions, so I understand someone would stay behind a version until the new major version has had many updates and time to be tested properly. But I've never seen someone staying 4 major versions behind. I'm just curious, that's all.

I've never seen someone staying 4 major versions behind. I'm just curious, that's all.

Folks using older hardware (cpus and gpus etc) are very wise to stay on versions of the software expressly designed to run well on such systems.

I overlooked this part

you're wrong if you say post VFX will not make a difference at all.

Yes, I would be wrong if I had said that. But I didn't. I said that if your elements don't work, post VFX will not make them better.

So VFX aren't an afterthought, but if you've rendered your spaceship with soft area lights instead of a big harsh sunlight it will not look realistic if there's a big sun in the image.

If you have used norrmal texture maps instead of displacements or actually modelled geometry it will not look as good, no matter how much post you throw at it.

Ok, but I don't think it's that black or white. When I really started looking at all the VFX in Resolve and how I could use them to improve my renders, I was blown away. And there are different movies with different budgets, and while these days most of them have at least basic decent renders, that wasn't always the case, and still isn't in each and every movie. So not everything will look as polished as these Star Trek movies, or Gravity, Interstellar, etc, all movies with budgets that allow for perfection or close to it.

So I don't share your opinion that if your render wasn't good enough then all the VFX in Resolve won't make it any better. It won't make it perfect, but it will make it a lot better, even if it's just the combined pass and nothing else.

And sometimes it's not even a matter of whether you can use actually modeled geometry for the smallest details, which I agree will make everything look more realistic, but at the expense of way too much VRAM, and VRAM is expensive. I recently bought an RTX 3060 with 12 GB of VRAM for my old PC just to have a second render node. Some scenes that I was rendering fine in my Mac Studio Ultra would give me out of memory errors when opened in the PC, and 12 GB is pretty high among consumer cards. Go to 16 GB and you're already in the $500-ish range, more depending on the GPU.

Of course the people in VFX studios have insane machines that can handle all the real geometry you can throw at them, but that's not always the case with the regular freelancer Joe.

And clearly, I never implied there might be such a setting. I was clear in what I meant, and I'm not going to waste time repeating myself over and over.

Here's what you should do to make it better:

-add more details to the 3d model
-create a more interesting camera animation
-add more "depth"
-Render in higher quality
-composite the render passes
-make the spaceship stand out in the color grading, maybe add interesting camera effects.

There you go, an awesome spaceship!

Andy Mees had the right answer...but it goes way beyond simply cpu, gpu, memory ...it's all the drives, monitors, including sdi reference from pci installed blackmagic sdi card, and also the many programs aside from blackmagic. Most machines now ship with windows 11 and that would make a lot of my legacy programs dead ducks, even though many are both 32 and 64 bit. Some are just 32.
I have a fractal design case with lots of stuff in it like separate storage for root, source, cache and exports.
Then there's the money factor. I'm retired on fixed income. Plus, and this is important... version 15 does everything I would ever do cause I just shoot and edit as a hobby. If I had to edit a 44 min episodic tv show I would throw myself off the brooklyn bridge. I worked in film as a grip and am done with high pressure GO GO GO type living.

p.s.
An alternative question might be, " Are you really getting what you need with constant upgrades or are you simply doing it because it's available ?"

Here's what you should do to make it better:

-add more details to the 3d model
-create a more interesting camera animation
-add more "depth"
-Render in higher quality
-composite the render passes
-make the spaceship stand out in the color grading, maybe add interesting camera effects.

There you go, an awesome spaceship!

Thanks for the tips! More or less along the lines of what I've been doing. Unfortunately some things I'd like to do, like add more details to the model would be too time consuming on a project that has already been a rabbit hole for me, albeit one I enjoyed and learned a lot from, but I'm ready to move on. Same goes for rendering, I settled for a quality that to me is pleasing visually and doesn't show any major flaws, i.e. no excessive noise or weird stuff going on. Basically Cycles at 4192 samples with 0.01 noise threshold. And also no Denoise, which is something I know most people wouldn't do, but I did a lot of test renders, and I realized that even at the tamest settings, the denoiser made everything look like when they put a filter on older actresses to hide the wrinkles and it looks horrible. Obviously you can't render at 1024 samples without denoising and expect a decent quality, but even going up to 3072 and denoising harms more than it fixes. Well, at least in my case, perhaps that doesn't apply to everything.

I wish I had access to even the old project files from the 2009 Star Trek, although they're probably in Maya and Nuke so I couldn't do anything with them, but I wish I could take a look at what they did. Even if that was done mostly in 2008/09, and in software I will never have, I would love to have like two hours to sit at one of those workstations and just go throughout the projects to learn even a small portion of what those Hollywood VFX guys know. One can dream, eh?

p.s.
An alternative question might be, " Are you really getting what you need with constant upgrades or are you simply doing it because it's available ?"

Yeah, you make good points. In my case I had a 2015 iMac that could edit video just fine, although rather slow, and barely anything in 3D. So I spent five grand on a Mac Studio M1 Ultra with 4 TB of internal storage with the plan to have it for ten years. And it was worth the insane price tag (no, I'm not rich or even close) because it's a beast that can do whatever I throw at it, Blender, Resolve and Fusion Studio, Cubase Pro, you name it. But I'm not buying another Mac Studio anytime soon.

But let me give you a tip that will allow you to bring your PC to the present without spending thousands or having to suffer Windows 11. I built a PC back in 2012 that was very fast back then, i7 3930k, 32 GB of RAM, and a GTX-770 card, to which I added a second one of those later.

That machine works great to this day, but when it came to render anything in Blender, no way. Something that would take me 2 minutes in my Mac Studio would take 20 in that machine.

So taking advantage of Amazon's return policy I spent 300 bucks on an Asus RTX 3060 with 12 GB of VRAM, knowing that if it wasn't that great I could return it easily.

That card completely changed my PC, and it's not even running as fast as it can because it's PCIe 4.0 and my PC's motherboard is 3.0. But the thing is fast as hell. Not as fast as my Mac Studio, but if a frame takes me 2 minutes in my Mac Studio, it takes 3 minutes in my PC. So I can leave renders overnight on both machines and have them ready the next morning, or I can work on a Blender file on my Mac, close it, send it to the PC and render it there while I use my Mac for other things.

And both Resolve Studio and Fusion Studio work perfectly fine on the PC with that card, even if the rest of the PC is 12 years old, because the $300 card is doing most of the work.

So if you wanted to take advantage of the latest features in Resolve and Fusion, even a $200 card would do it for you, because I paid $300 so I could have more VRAM for Blender, but if you don't need Blender, any RTX card with 8 GB of VRAM would more than work for your needs.