Visual FX Guide Practice Exercise ? (.comp attached)

I've been through Chapters 2 and 3 of the Visual FX Guide to Davinci Resolve 18 several times now (two full run-throughs of both and about 3 -4 readings/work-throughs on Ch. 3 alone).

Not so much asking for anyone to "Do my homework" for me but I don't even know where to start right now so any guidance would really be appreciated.....

Clearly there are critical key-core concepts that I still have not yet internalized because when I get to the last section of Chapter 3 with the Practice Exercise, I'm lost.

Here is the text from the book:

Practice Exercise

To reinforce the concepts you learn, there will occasionally be optional exercises at the
end of the lessons. These exercises will be very similar to the procedures you will have
just completed.

However, they will have brief directions for guidance instead of detailed
step-by-step instructions.

In this practice exercise, you’ll need to use the masking and tracking skills you’ve learned
from these past two lessons. Using the third edit in the timeline, you’ll simulate depth of
field by creating a matte around the robot in the front, tracking the matte, blurring the
remaining robots, and adding a separate stronger blur to the background.

1 From the edit page timeline, go to the third edit in the timeline (first blue marker) and
switch to the Fusion page.

2 Bring both layers into the Fusion page.

3 Create a polygon matte for the frontmost robot on the left.

4 Track the robot and apply the tracking data to the polygon matte.

5 Add a Blur to the Robots node and use the matte so the blur applies only to the robots
in the back.

6 Add a Blur to the background room, so it is blurred more than the robots to simulate
greater depth of field.

7 Color correct the robots to be slightly darker and have less saturation.

As soon as I get to direction 4 ("apply the tracking data to the polygon matte") things start to fall apart. Massively.

Here is the .dra file: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/38oz1u8s ... kxfpa&dl=0

Here is my current .comp which is obviously not going well! https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/khyzaazp ... jeoxj&dl=0

Thankful for any help anyone can offer!

Sean

I opened your comp.

Honestly I cannot underdand it. The tracker was performed and it seems to be working but the operation is set to None. Are you passing the data using modifiers? Anyway, the tracker isn't passing the tracking position dow the flow.

Sorry, very hard to see it without seing the picture.

I can keep checking it for you if you need more help.

Thanks Davy,

I'm working thru chapters 2 and 3 again for the 4th or 5th time to try to figure this out. My confusion is colossal but at least I'm beginning to formulate questions.

1. I now see there is camera movement in both clips ("Robot" and "Room,"). At the beginning of Chapter two it says: One of the most critical aspects when compositing is to have all the different elements follow the same camera motion. These are often called match moves because you analyze the background clip’s movement and apply it to a foreground clip or vice versa. Then it takes me through a split screen compositing exercise, in which both clips are tracked, "Match Move, BG Only" operations are performed, a mask is applied, and then a Transform node is applied with "Connect To: Tracker - Unsteady Position" in order to restore the camera movement to the composite.

But in the "brief directions for guidance" with the exercise that started this post, it says to "Apply the tracking data to the polygon matte."

First off, how do I even apply tracking data to a matte?

Maybe I just need to sweat this out for 6 months to solve the answers for myself but the Editor's Guide and Colorist's Guide and other books so far seemed to be far clearer than this VFX Guide, and the worst part is that I'm not even sure if the confusion is stemming from me, or the way the text is written. At this point I'd probably pay the author by the hour to answer my questions if I could.

The operation is set to none in my practice comp because match move wasn't leading towards anything that looked like the picture in the book and so I just folded in hopes of any guidance available. I'll be sweating this out for awhile longer but I refuse to give up or be beaten down. The hallway in-between is like stumbling through the dark though.

There's a picture of what it's supposed to look like on Page 94 of this document: https://documents.blackmagicdesign.com/UserManuals/DaVinci-Resolve-18-Fusion-Visual-Effects.pdf?_v=1679295613000

So Sean,

You probably are learning the right way. I never liked Tracker and in the Online my go to node is always planar tracker or surface tracker.

You will find your way pretty soon. keep digging in.

I can keep digging in but I'm digging into the wall that I'm beating my head against. I gave this another shot just now based on review of the Matte Control node and messing around in Fusion but at this point, honestly, I'm not sure what finding my way is even for, since I'm not trying to become a professional VFX Artist, but got into this 3 years ago to start making guitar videos, not Hollywood productions.

Began taking the self-guided courses to learn how to work more efficiently and faster in Resolve, but at this point it's no longer faster nor more efficient. If anything it's killing productivity and momentum as I continue to pour hours or time into a 1-page Practice Exercise in a book with no assurance it will ever relate to anything I need to use the program for.

If I could track down the authors, I'd pay by the hour for answers. As is, I just about feel like giving up.

Hope I'm not getting too grouchy. Short of evidence this is even going to help me get more views and grow my channel, what am I doing? Just watching the days slide by, looking towards the end of what I have to give this Fusion tutorial.

I think you may be on to something here. You say:

with no assurance it will ever relate to anything I need to use the program for.

There are so many things in Fusion that some people will need and other people will never need.
I have never touched a pCustom particle tool, but for other people it's their go to tool for just about everything. There are more than enough people out here willing to help you, so maybe you should try and share with us your plans for what you do want to make and there's a good chance we can get you on your way much faster than trying to explain a tutorial that indeed may not be relevant to your use case at all.

And as for paying by the hour. There are people on here - myself included - who can log into your computer through Zoom or something that allows for shared mouse control and walk you through the steps if need be. But usually we manage to figure things out here on this forum or over at www.steakunderwater.com in a way that's beneficial for other users as well.

look, I've doing this for over years and I understand your frustration.

Listen. Send me a PM and I can review your code node problem. You can also send me the actual clip and I can redo it in the way I normally do and put some notes along the flow for you to understand.

Best of all, it's free of charge.

Sean,

I actually found the practice footage on a hard drive I had laying around. I'll walk through the practice steps and see if what needs to be done.

Thank you all. I really appreciate the replies Sander, Davy, and Ernest.

To keep this reply in one note for the benefit of all:

Sander, I've heard about those forums! Thanks for reminding me it exists (I should register over there)...and it's not false appearances or dangling a carrot....if I really do need some more personalized guidance as I continue trying to learn Fusion, paying for some help is no more out of the question than it was when I was studying guitar (9 years, 2 teachers (one twice weekly), numerous camps, then college). I value expertise but if we can figure things out on these forums, even better. As I get a better idea of what I want to make I will share those plans here. This forum was greatly helpful a couple years ago helping me to set up a .comp for some scrolling music notation/TAB that I still use when making videos. The trouble at the moment is I'm not entirely clear on what is possible within the Fusion page, so it seemed better to dive into a tutorial book in order to grasp the broad strokes. Hence, here I am trying to work through the book!

Davy, that's very generous. I really appreciate it. I will send you a PM after posting this.

Ernest, thanks so much for offering to look at that from the practice footage on your drive.

Sean, I don't have the actual .drp to run it in Resolve. What is the name of the 2 files you are bringing into Fusion? I have the robot footage, but I'm not sure of the BackGround plate the lesson is referring to.

Sean, I don't have the actual .drp to run it in Resolve. What is the name of the 2 files you are bringing into Fusion? I have the robot footage, but I'm not sure of the BackGround plate the lesson is referring to.

Hi Ernest,

Just opened the project to find this out for you. The file on top/V2 is:

H20_Visor_Shot_01_Bty_CU_v005.0001.png

The file on bottom/V1 is:

FRK_SHW.mov

But the still image .png file on top contains motion in the project files that go along with the book and I'm not sure why. I see no keyframes or other identifying alterations in the Inspector or Fusion page....

It may be easier to use the .dra I uploaded here. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/38oz1u8s ... kxfpa&dl=0

Thank you again for offering to take a look. I really appreciate it!

Ok, I have both assets.

The H20_Visor_Shot_01_Bty_CU_v005.0001.png file is actually a sequence of 100 still images that Fusion is reading into the Loader; so, you probably only seeing the first file in that sequence. That's why it has movement.

Are you on Mac or Windows? If Mac, then, maybe we can FaceTime and screen share and I can walk you through this example. I was going to write up something last night, but for some reason I couldn't upload images into my text. I think you would benefit having someone to ask questions in realtime and be able to visually walk you through things. Let me know.

Hi Ernest,

Thank you so much. I am on Mac.....

@DavySilva sent me an annotaed comp a few days ago that finally got me past the hurdle so for right now I'm ok but really appreciate your offer and thank you again!

I tried responding to this thread a couple days ago but just noticed my reply was either deleted or never posted in the first place. Bizarre. The forum was down a couple nights ago I noticed so maybe things were weird. Anyhow, that's why it took so long to get back to you.

Hope this finds you well and all my best!

Sean

p.s. - edit.....not only was imperative, critical information contained nowhere within the 90 pages leading up to that exercise, but to make things all the more needlessly convoluted, now in Chapter 5 on page 126, it finally says in a little yellow box: "NOTE The Timelines bin includes a Backups bin with timelines saved at various stages of the lesson and a Completed Projects bin with finished compositions. These bins are both available for reference and reverse- engineering the node trees."

I'm sure the authors are good human beings but this is what I was talking about in regards to the VFX Guide.

The Colorist's Guide and Editor's Guide were organized and made sense start to finish and I got a lot of help out of them.

This guide.....needed a book editor or something. Yes I should have explored the Media Pool to find the finished timelines for myself but all things considered, this book is just not organized in a very clear fashion, which is a drag since it seems like Fusion is the most complex part of DR. And....the practice exercise that started this thread was excluded from the bin altogether.