In part 16 of the Effects Environment Series, you’ll learn about the new “Cache on Playback” functionality as well as the render indications which are now available in the Effects Environment with Flame 2020. So you’re now able to see the render state of each segment without having to switch to the timeline view and you can also interactively cache your renders as you work within this environment.
In part 9 of the Motion Warp Tracking Series, we take a deep dive into understanding how motion warp tracking works with Motion Vectors as well as generating the tracking information for each frame. We’ll discuss "Analysis" and "Integration" and hopefully by having a better understanding, you should be able to get the best performance out of the tools. We’ll also discuss the different methods of how this data is cached to disk as well how to render out Motion Vectors as a standalone source....
In the previous video on Motion Warp Tracking, we looked at the analysis and integration of Motion Vectors to track a logo to a t-shirt. You would use these techniques for a variety of scenarios. Now working with Motion Vectors is very powerful and extremely flexible, however the downside is that it is really processor intensive and the data sets can get quite big. So in Part 10 on Motion Warp Tracking, you’ll learn how to use a different render pass known as "UVs" in order to perform very fast ...
This video covers a new emerging request whereby clients ask for their full resolution graded source material to be included with the final edited masters as part of their deliverables. To add to this, your source material may be a different resolution to the final edited master. So this video will show you a particular way on how to achieve these goals in a very efficient manner using Flame.
In this video series, you’ll take a look at animation through mathematics or better known as expressions. Starting with part 1, you’ll be covering the fundamental basics in order for you to get the most out of this timesaving tool. You learn about the channel animation relationships, perform some basic mathematics as well as cover the initial expression syntax in Flame.
In part 2 of the Expressions 101 series, you’ll start expanding expressions across multiple objects through an understanding of channel hierarchy in the animation editor. You’ll also learn to determine a value at a specific point in time. And finally, you learn an expression function which allows you to offset the start time of an expression across multiple objects.
In part 3 of the Expressions 101 series, you’ll carry on with evaluations but this time, you’ll be introduced to random generator functions which can create a varieties of animation super fast! You can than fine tune your noise functions by combining them with mathematics. You'll cover the "rand" and "noise" generators but please check the on-line documentation for a list of other generators available in Flame.
In the previous videos of the Expression 101 series, you have seen that driving animation based on a mathematical curve can very useful in a whole range of tasks. But sometimes after creating an expression, you may want to take the mathematical curve and develop it manually. So in part 4, you’ll learn how to take the curve generated by an expression and convert it into an editable key-framed curve that you can further enhance using keyframes.
In a previous video of the Expressions 101 series (part 2), you learnt about the animation channel hierarchy and this enabled you to drive the animation of one object off another. This was referred to as the "Controller" Technique. In part 5 of the Expressions 101 series, you are going to take this technique one step further and combine multiple animation curves into a single curve that will than drive your primary animation. This is possible through combining multiple expression curves or even ...
In the first part of Light Wrap in Action, you learnt that light wrap is now a component of the Action 3D compositor. Because of that, you can apply light wrapping to any 3D object in the 3D scene. So in part 2 of the series, you'll learn how to apply light wrapping to a 3D geometry. This could be used for better integration or even creative effect in a motion graphic composite. Keeping it all live and aware of the 3D composite.
If you’re someone who does keying in your post production work, you should be familiar with an integrating technique known as “light wrapping”. This is a process of blending the edges of your key with a background. The purpose of this is to help give your composites a sense of realism. So the light and colour of the background should wrap around your subjects matching real world physics and the final result looks more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Now there are many techniques, node trees a...
In the Flame 2019.2 update, the file browsing experience has now been unified across the entire application. So if you’ve been using the file browser in the MediaHub, you will now have the same experience when loading setups, fonts, 3D models, media and more. The bookmarks have also been totally revamped to give you a much better user experience in any production scenario. Finally session history has been added to remember the last paths you visit in the current Flame session....
In this video on the MasterGrade, you’ll learn about the Printer Lights shortcuts in the Flame 2019.2 Update. For those of you who may not know, Printer Lights go back to the old photo-chemical days before digital colour. They were measured in points and the idea was that you could add or subtract exact amounts of red, green and blue light in order to change the colour balance within a given shot. With celluloid film, technicians used filtered red, green and blue light but now days, you perform ...
In this video, you'll learn how to perform segment nudging. In short, this is a quick and easy way to push video or audio segments around the sequence by 1 frame or a set amount of frames using various keyboard shortcuts. It’s really handy because you don’t need to zoom into the timeline and you don’t even need to move the positioner around.
In this video dealing with the Effects Environment, you’ll learn how to create and use searchable presets. This enables you to navigate your sequence quickly by using segment metadata to search and filter the segments. The search presets are available in the Effects Environment as well as in the Timeline View. Lots of pointers given as well as the differences between using the presets in the Effects Environment and the Timeline View. This will certainly speed up your workflow!...
Part 4 of the Image toolset shows you how to deal with external matte inputs as well as embedded channels when it comes to working with the Selectives in the Image toolset. The Image toolset does have its own masking and keying tools for image isolation but it’s also quite common to be provided with external mattes/alphas or even multi-channel media for flexibility. These assets can be a major help when it comes to isolated look development but there is a certain workflow you need to know in ord...
This may not be a flashy or creative task but it comes up in quite often in every form of production. This practical video covers the way to set a custom start frame for your composites. Normally the default is frame 1 but there are quite a few cases, including sequence publishing or shot collaboration with Shotgun, which would require a custom start frame. We'll run through the preferences and options of how the start frame works in Batch as well as BatchFX.
This video focuses on media versioning or shot versioning when working in a collaborative production pipeline. In other words, you may start off with the original camera media in your timeline or your composite. But later in the production, other artists may give you the same piece of media with grading applied or even additional VFX from a 3rd party application. This is quite common in a multi-artist production pipeline. So with Flame being the central point in the pipeline, you need to be able...
When it comes to masking or rotoscoping in the Flame products, the Gmask Tracer is a very powerful option that allows you to isolate a part of your image. Now when you are in the process of masking your image, there are a number of views you can use to view your progress. With Flame 2019, there is another viewer you can use that is called the “Matte Viewer”. This is a Matchbox shader that provides some additional overlay functionality when working with masks and mattes. This tool can also be use...
In this video, we’ll run through the interoperability between Autodesk Flame and FilmLight Baselight. So through the use of Flame’s Pybox architecture and the FilmLight BLG plug-in, you’re able to load the grade information from Baselight directly into any edits and composites in Flame. So regardless of their complexity you can load Baselight grades into Flame, see everything in the context of the grade without rendering and even process the final results within Flame using the BLG plug-in. Only...
In this video, you will learn how to draw a motion curve for freehand animation. This allows you to record the movements of your cursor on the screen and apply the X and Y values to any animation curve. This helps achieve very organic looking animation without trying too hard. Basic example to start, followed by more complex one with linking expressions.
In this video, you'll learn a great workflow to connect and link your sequences with any VFX work that you may do in Batch. So unlike the BatchFX workflow where everything is always contained in the timeline, this workflow will allow you to start in a sequence, automatically separate your segments and load them into Batch. And finally the flow graph renders will automatically update in the timeline. This is not replacing BatchFX but it does give you an alternative way to do VFX work in separate ...
In this additional video on the Connected Conform Workflow, we are going to take a look at the Flame 2019.1 update changes to managing Time-warps or speed changes when using multiple sequences in a Connected Conform. If you’ve never used the Connected Conform Workflow before, please watch the previous videos to take you through the whole workflow step by step.
With the Flame 2019.1 update, there have been a few enhancements to the Connected Conform Workflow allowing you to sort your source media in two ways in the sources sequence. So you can now sort your sources by either source or record timecode. If you have never used the Connected Conform Workflow, please watch the whole series to get you up and running.
In Flame 2019, we introduced the MasterGrade for floating-point HDR capable grading within the timeline and VFX toolsets. Now with the Flame 2019.1 update, the MasterGrade has now been enhanced with RGB curves allowing you to have even more dedicated control when it comes to grading the colours within your image. We’ll start off with an explanation of the curves and then we’ll take a look at how they work.
In this short video, you learn how to swap and replace nodes in your batch flow graph. This means you don’t have to disconnect and reconnect your flow graph if you’re trying out different nodes as your flow graph develops.
In this video, you’ll learn about the updated copy and paste behaviours when working in the timeline. This is a small setting but it can make a big difference as to how you’d like to end up after performing copy and paste.
In this video, you’ll learn about another retouching tool that now comes with Flame 2019. This tool is known as the “Washer”. The Washer is not as powerful as A2Beauty but it uses a faster calculation allowing you to maintain a faster degree of interaction when doing various clean-up work. The results will differ from A2Beauty but you can decide which one works best in different scenarios.
his video shows off a small performance enhancement for browsing media in the MediaHub. When typically browsing your media, you’re exposed to a wealth of information to ensure that you are well informed when making any input or output decisions. So ideally the directory and media browsing is designed to fit in with any production workflow. This is why you should actually refer to the MediaHub as a clip browser, rather than a standard file browser or file explorer. So each piece of media display ...
With the frequent release of Flame updates, it's very easy to accumulate multiple project archives from older releases of Flame. Now if you are continually working and archiving a project, or perhaps restoring an older project for updating, archives created in previous versions of Flame are normally read only. This meant that you couldn't add to them with a later release of Flame. So in order to have an archive with all your amendments, you would have to restore everything and make a new archive...
