My Resolve & Blender Workflow
Added 2024-08-30 08:44:05 +0000 UTCCheck out the YouTube description for the chapters.
Let's linearize some footage! This is what I've been doing on every shot, these days. There's other ways to go about it, but I think there's enough info in so you can understand why I do it the way I do.
Thanks as always to Nathan Vegdahl for explaining so much back in the day, and Zeke Faust for letting me pepper him with occasional questions.
Here's a link to the color tools I mention in the video! At some point I should make another video about these things.
(Also- totally ready to hear about anything that's grossly inaccurate :D)
For later searches: linearizing linearization compositing linear grading keying
Comments
Mmm this is not working for me, what are the resolve settings? When i bring the blender render into resolve its darker… 😩. I watched the video so many times and i cant figure it out. Also my blender 4.2 doesn’t have linear in the texture settings. Only linear rec709 and other ones.
daniel dulitzky
2025-06-20 21:16:31 +0000 UTCWhen I try to place a person I filmed on a green screen into a virtual world using the technique of parenting the green card to the camera and copying the position and rotation, I end up with a situation where it doesn't look like the person is standing on the ground - only their fingertips are touching it - which is revealed by the shadow from a light source. Is there a creative way to solve this? Am I doing something wrong? Thank you very much.
itay oz ari
2025-04-08 09:15:59 +0000 UTCLooks like with all the workarounds, dealing with laggy and buggy HIERO is still the most seamless, least amount of clicks, biggest bang for your buck solution. If you are a one man band and are grading and finishing in resolve however that might be different. Thanks for chipping in Zeke.
Jan Daghelinckx
2024-10-18 12:15:27 +0000 UTCSounds like you're looking for Watch Folders, which Resolve unfortunately doesn't do natively. However I've seen a plugin called Super Bins that seems to offer this feature. It'd just be a matter of setting your watch folder, selecting the new version in the media pool, Right Click the clip in timeline > Conform lock to media pool clip. The other option you have is using the VFX Connect feature; when you right click a clip in the timeline, you have the option to create a "VFX Connect" clip by sending it out to an external DCC. This will create a very specific folder structure and naming. It will also create a Fusion comp file, but you don't have to use Fusion. As long as the file name and folder structure is the same, it will work. Then it's as simple as right clicking any VFX connect clip and selecting which version you want. It auto detects new versions, so you can easily see if you're out of date and switch between versions. I've found this to be more trouble than it's worth generally because it locks you into a specific structure, but depending on your needs it may be what you're looking for.
Zeke Faust
2024-09-28 07:59:28 +0000 UTCHi Ian, Great walkthrough, thanks for all the effort. Had a bit of a different question regarding timelines and workflow and versions of different shots. I'm used to working in HIERO and Baselight. And if you setup your folder structure properly, it's just a simple click to update a vfx shot to the latest version an artist rendered. But since Baselight is not as accesible, literally. And HIERO's playback remains super buggy. I'm looking into Resolve as an alternative. Do you use the TAKE Selector for example ? Might be an option, but still requires manual dragging new versions to the media pool. Just throwing it to the patreon, interested to hear how other people tackle this.
Jan Daghelinckx
2024-09-24 13:41:43 +0000 UTCThis is so unique and specific knowledge, which you would never find on youtube! I'm so glad to support you through patreon, because I think it is worth more than any tuition in university!
Roman Kovalev
2024-09-05 13:45:48 +0000 UTCGreat tutoria!!! but when is the part 2 of making a shot - boardwalk (P.S the new episode is out now and its's amazing) but please please the part 2 shot of the boardwalk
Phani Kumar Kotaprolu
2024-09-04 14:56:24 +0000 UTCSpectacular.
Seth
2024-09-03 23:01:45 +0000 UTCHey, saw the instagram stories about your computer. Hope you're doing okay and not being too hard on yourself for the delays! I can't wait to see the next episode, but that's more a figure of speech, I'm sure we can all actually wait for it ;) I am excited tho!
Douglas Pluylaar
2024-09-03 09:26:23 +0000 UTCI just joined the patreon and I don't think you updated your welcome thing. Lol you said you don't have much of a backlog when you have over 200 stuff to look at Lol.
Jon-Tyrell Adolpho
2024-09-02 20:27:54 +0000 UTCHey Ian I just saw that someone has mad a public playlist of all of your Patreon content on YouTube , I just wanted to let you know cuz I thought you might want to know. Love your Patreon, I can’t wait for the new episode 🫶🏼
rapha_foufou
2024-09-01 22:58:04 +0000 UTCDo you know is using aftereffects and Nathans tools to linearize, would that fixed the problem ian talked about with the color tools having a slower playback in Blender?
Jeffery F
2024-09-01 22:38:37 +0000 UTCFYI, it did. 😁
Vince Lund
2024-09-01 14:08:34 +0000 UTCKING. thank you friend.
Gehrig Campbell-Dempsey
2024-09-01 04:20:32 +0000 UTCThis workflow doesn't involve any project-level color management, since you're managing directly at the clip level with manual transforms. If you do have project-wide color management turned on, you'd probably want to let that do your transforms, the way it's designed to: you'd tag each of your clips with the correct input transform, choose an output transform, and everything is handled internally—no need for the individual CST nodes. You can, of course, still do stuff manually, like override an input transform or add a custom transformation inside a clip's nodes, you just need to stay aware of what color transformations are happening at each point, so that when you choose to intervene you're applying the right transforms.
Carter Burr-Kirven
2024-08-31 22:24:15 +0000 UTCThis is very helpful. my brain appreciates you.
Ian Letarte
2024-08-31 15:12:30 +0000 UTCMan i had a half baked misunderstanding of this stuff for yearrrssss! This video cleared up so much! Thanks Ian!
Nate Pantumsinchai
2024-08-31 12:43:06 +0000 UTCHi what color management settings do you for this linear pipeline in Davinci?
Tristan
2024-08-31 00:43:48 +0000 UTCThat's the beauty of Nathan's tool, if your camera's not supported you can add it yourself!
Zeke Faust
2024-08-30 21:36:34 +0000 UTCI've actually not noticed any distinguishable difference between keying linear, log, or display footage in Fusion. The only thing it changes is what settings you use in the delta keyer, like black/white clip and gain. The only pre-processing I do on my footage now is denoising, and occasionally a hue curves as Ian does in the video. That, plus making use of the Clean Plate node!
Zeke Faust
2024-08-30 21:33:00 +0000 UTCTotally! But for blackmagic I did not see any IDT support for those cameras which really annoyed the heck out of me.
Blake Rizzo
2024-08-30 21:25:42 +0000 UTCAfter Effects also supports OCIO now, so another option is to switch that on, pick a config, and work in a standardized color-managed workflow the same way you would in Blender, with IDTs and view transforms and a working space
Carter Burr-Kirven
2024-08-30 21:24:35 +0000 UTCNo, because the last thing he does before that export is swap back in the properly linearized footage (43:22 in the video). The other transform was just to help the keying process—which is optional, since you can also get perfectly great results keying in linear. Could be that some of Fusion's keying tools prefer display-referred footage and will give better results that way, I don't know, I've never used Fusion for greenscreen.
Carter Burr-Kirven
2024-08-30 21:18:54 +0000 UTCYEAH!!! I’ve beat my head on a wall trying to get my head around this and this is so helpful! For the folks still handcuffed to after effects I found that the work in a linearized workflow checkbox is buried in the project color settings fyi!
Blake Rizzo
2024-08-30 20:58:42 +0000 UTCThey have the exact same color primaries, just different gamma curves! 709 is 2.4, srgb is 2.2. in linear, they are exactly identical.
Zeke Faust
2024-08-30 19:43:28 +0000 UTCEpic video. It's been an adventure and a half trying to understand and breakdown color spaces, working in linear etc... thank you for this! Curiosity question time, why do sRGB linear vs rec 709 linear? A colorist I just worked with had a preference for me to go IDT->Rec 709 linear, and I was just like sure yeah, why not, and didn't seem to run into any issues, but from researching... seems the consesus is that: rec 709 and sRGB are the same thing, except not really, but sort of. Nice! Nice??
Gehrig Campbell-Dempsey
2024-08-30 19:00:44 +0000 UTCIan! I haven't watched the whole thing yet (only about half) because I have a thing I have to go to. But just wanted to say that at least so far, this video is *excellent*! I could quibble about some terminology goofs and details and whatnot, but who cares? The broad conceptual explanations are on point, and I'm stupidly happy watching through this video. Can't wait to finish it when I get back! :-)
Nathan Vegdahl
2024-08-30 18:53:28 +0000 UTCThis is amazing! I had to work on vfx for a class film for uni and this would’ve been amazing a couple months ago. I can see just how inefficient I was 😭
Sean Nguyen
2024-08-30 17:46:26 +0000 UTCSo at the very end of this tutorial you're exporting the ThomsWonderKeyTime EXR after the fusion node did a color space transform on the footage? So even though it's an EXR it acts like a jpeg in terms of the color information? When I put this card in Blender it feels like it's from an alien color space
Gabriel Meilikhov
2024-08-30 15:33:46 +0000 UTCSo glad I switched to Resolve last year, never looking back. I really liked the sounds of "ultimate mega-red" as a colour.
Zach Hoy
2024-08-30 14:46:23 +0000 UTCThe word processor analogy has to be the best way I've ever seen to explain color spaces , I love it!
Hayden Mason
2024-08-30 13:41:21 +0000 UTCIt's funny to see you using the old fashion methode to call the Import Images as Planes operator. I'm sure you know that it is present in the Add Menu under the "Image" tab but you're just an old school guy XD Very cool video this one btw ! Exactly the kind of content I expected from you! Thank you so much for that. You didn't mentioned anything about your project settings in DaVinci btw. It should be nice to know about it. For a future "full process DaVinci" video maybe ? :D
Simon Salord
2024-08-30 12:18:36 +0000 UTCAH! I hope it actually answers them!
Ian Hubert
2024-08-30 09:06:40 +0000 UTCGood lord, I spent two hours looking for these exact answers yesterday! 🤦♂️ Thanks! ☺
Vince Lund
2024-08-30 08:59:52 +0000 UTCYESSSS!! I sprinted to my desk to put this video on once I saw it posted-- thank you so much!
Spencer Grant
2024-08-30 08:51:01 +0000 UTC
