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Workflows

A first comp

  1. Read the plates. Press R (or Tab, then Read) and pick an image sequence or a video file in the media browser. One Read node handles both.
  2. View. Select the Read and press 1 to show it on viewer pipe 1.
  3. Grade. With the Read selected, press G to add a Grade below it. Adjust it in Properties.
  4. Merge. Read the foreground, then add a Merge (M). Wire the foreground into A and the background into B, and choose the operation (over by default).
  5. Check. Press a digit to wire the Merge to a viewer pipe. Use W in the Viewer to wipe.
  6. Write. Add a WriteImageSequence (W in the node graph) or WriteVideo at the end, set the path and format, and render. Writes render in a separate background process, so the app stays responsive; cancel stops the render at once.

Layers and channels

Read keeps every layer of a multi-layer EXR on one wire. Nodes work on the layers they need and pass the rest through.

  • To use a single plane as a mask, wire the image into the node's mask input and pick the plane on the wire (rgba.a by default, or for example depth.z).
  • Copy and ShuffleCopy move channels between streams and layers.
  • When you write EXR, every layer and its metadata are kept. Compression can be DWAA, ZIP, PIZ and others.

Color management

  • Config: $OCIO when it is set, otherwise the bundled ACES Studio v4 config. A different config for this machine is set in Preferences > OCIO; the Project panel picks the config and the working colour space for the project.
  • Read converts from the source colour space to the working space.
  • OCIO nodes (ColorSpace, Display, Look, File, CDL, Named and Log transforms) apply transforms inside the graph.
  • The Viewer applies the display and view transform, with exposure and gamma, and never changes the pixels that are written.

Roto and paint

Add a RotoPaint node and select it; its tools appear in the Viewer.

  • Shapes: bezier (click for points, click-drag for tangents, close with a click on the first point or Enter), cusped bezier, ellipse, rectangle, and freehand pencil.
  • Edit: select and drag points and tangents; add, remove, cusp or smooth points; drag a shape's move point to move the whole shape.
  • Paint: brush, eraser and clone strokes. On selection limits a stroke to the selected shape.
  • Per item: colour, opacity, feather, invert, blend and lifetime (the frames an item exists), edited on the Shape and Stroke tabs. Onion skin shows neighbouring frames.
  • Esc drops an unfinished shape.

Tracking

Add a Tracker node, select it, and use the Viewer toolbar:

  1. Turn on add-track mode and click on a feature to place a track.
  2. Choose how the pattern is grabbed: keep the first pattern, every frame, every N frames, or when the error goes over a threshold.
  3. Track forward (X one frame, Shift+X to the end) or back (Z, Shift+Z). Esc stops.
  4. Add or delete keyframes on the selected tracks; key-track fills the gaps between your keyframes. Clear keys before, after or on all frames.
  5. Use the Tracker's transform outputs to match-move or stabilise other nodes.

Tracking matches luminance. Planar and camera tracking are not part of the Tracker.

Deep compositing

  1. DeepRead a deep EXR.
  2. Combine deep renders with DeepMerge, cut one with another with DeepHoldout, and adjust with DeepRecolor, DeepCrop, DeepReformat and DeepTransform. DeepSample inspects the samples of a pixel.
  3. DeepToImage flattens the result into a regular image for the rest of the comp, or DeepWrite writes a deep EXR.

3D

Build a scene with Camera, Axis, geometry (Card, Cube, Sphere, Cylinder, Cone, ReadGeo, ReadGLTF), lights and materials, combined in a Scene node. Switch the Viewer to 3D to look at it, move objects with the gizmo, and render it back into the comp with ScanlineRender. Project3D and UVProject project images onto geometry; Card3D places an image in 3D.

Groups

Select nodes and press Ctrl+G to make a Group. Inputs and outputs are created from the wires that cross the selection. Open a group to edit it. You can rename, reorder and remove group ports, and expose inner knobs on the group so they are set (and animated) from outside. Groups copy and paste like any other node.

Projects and saving

  • File > New Graph starts an empty graph.
  • File > New Project... creates a project folder with scripts/, media/, renders/ and cache/ subfolders, and a first script in scripts/main.json.
  • File > Save... saves the graph as JSON. File > Open Recent lists recent files.
  • The project's frame range, frame rate, resolution and working colour space are saved with the graph. Machine preferences are not.