Davinci Resolve & Fusion - Create believable Volumetric Rays

hey guys my name is Vito I welcome you another confusion tutorial and today I want to talk about volume race it was a request from one of my patrons and here we go all right before we get cracking let me give you a few words on the fusion user interface layout now this is the default layout and for me being a southpaw this is very annoying and you know what because I have to always cross the screen with my whole arm and this is not really yeah not really nice okay so I like to move this over here unfortunately the layout seems to be a little unstable and fusion so yeah another thing is because we're on YouTube here not at the time of the recording but since you are viewing this on YouTube now I thought that the viewer up there kind of tiny and since we're talking about art and details and results you know I thought it was kind of a little waste of pixels to have this only up there so I thought why not doing something like this yeah very nice and big you see that the flow now is very small but Houdini has proven that it works actually quite well so on the top here we have the tools we have the modifier we have a small instance of a spline editor and I have a bigger one down here just in case if I have to do bigger stuff and I have a small image we are up here for small tweaks okay so I would say with that Set let's get cracking now okay so here this is the object this is the camera I bring the camera down here I try to use wireless notes but I could be that it's a little bit unstable in fusion 9 so I'm gonna try it this way now I want to bring this scene together so I hook the camera and the object into a merge 3d and let's view the camera the camera is already animated as you can see and I think there is no need to show you how to animate a camera so let's continue with the good stuff the next thing I want is a spotlight i hook in a spotlight and I'm gonna position the spotlight now where are we the camera is here so I move this - around here w-4 rotate and where do we place it now I leave it there for now because I want to show you something cool make this a little bigger okay and now I drop in a renderer I set the renderer as always to recognize it with color all my patrons know that already and hook this in and now I set the render to OpenGL and this is just the same as always super sampling on set this down to 5 triangle enable lighting and shadows and very important in the hidden area here textures to float16 otherwise your highlights will be clapped not clapped clamped and in the image tab you can see I have a low resolution does just for speed I set this to flood 16 and let's render this rant bane okay I activate the look-up tables since we are working in linear color space and now it becomes brighter so I just bring in a garment here and do the opposite so it becomes goes back to oops so it goes back to normal okay now since we're doing some multi pass compositing here I suggest we rename this and basically what we see here are just reflections so I'm just going to rename this reflection you can't see the pop-up now it's on the second screen for some reason so these are the reflections and I I want to have a light disc in the back and for that I put it in a different test which i call emissive emissive and that's actually also how Corona works it puts the light disc into the emissive emissive pass and now I will just make a copy this Murch I hope in this light here and the camera into the renderer let's render this for this renderer I can turn off the lighting let's put this also just temporarily I turn off the lighting we don't need a lighting here and but now we need to light this how do we create a light disc that's very cool I'll show you Oh for the light disk I just dropped in a shape 3d let me show you hope this hook this in for now and I make this a cylinder no they put it in here and cylinder and I make it small and flat and I kept the bottom and the top just because I'm too lazy to find out which faces towards the camera hmm that's something like this maybe a little smaller and important to turn off lighting effect by lights and now I go to the transformation tab and I rotate this to 90 okay and we can see that we need more subdivisions here i crank this up to 80 and the way we put this on to the light and link it to the light is actually simple just to hook it instead of the merge you hook it into the spotlight in bang and you see where it is and it's right at the light positions and the cool thing is that if I move the light now it moves makes the disk follow okay and so where does the camera camera stop here and so I want the disk to be about here and let's change the shape make it a little bigger maybe something like this with a little up mm maybe something like this okay and if we render this now we have the light shape but we also have the Batman logo and we don't want that we want the Batman logo to be a matte object so in between the logo and the merge I hook and overwrite in and I said this too is mad bang now we have the plain light and we can use this now for the volume light action okay so for the volume light I use you guessed it right directional blur and a raised tool so let me hook this in here real quick so now I want to talk about the reaction of blood first because if I do this here I can hear people already screaming a video this looks yeah well compared you might compare this to the after-effects directional blur that gives you away smoother results I think but you have to see that this direction of Bloor is actually a motion blur sort of like a motion blur so it actually does if you see it like that it does a good job because yeah it's the motion blur fake so that's why you get these nice streaks here this structure in between we can't use this for volume race right so the trick is to just over do this you just put this to one so that everything gets out of the screen and and now you might worry and say hey but this is way too overkill okay don't worry because we are working 16-bit float we can always go back in with a color correction and tint this to something blueish and then simply bring down the gamma and we get something like this we can also increase the glow something like this maybe okay so this is not bad and let's check out the race tool now the race tool gives us out of the bat it gives us this kind of yeah sort of proper race although it's still artificial and here you have the decay control okay and now they're almost almost look the same almost so but I want to combine these so I want this race tool to have this hot spot and then feather away or out and then I use the same color correction in here maybe maybe it's a little too strong then you do something like this maybe and now I'll combine these two okay and the way we do that you might use the merge because this tool here the channel boolean scared you away because this tool doesn't say you doesn't tell you anything it has some operations in here but it looks very mathematical and that's basically what it is while this looks a little bit more inviting however usually for for those operations here you will be using the channel boolean tool of course the operations in here are slightly different than the ones in here here you have so for example you have the overlay you don't have this in the boolean tool but for it for an add operation in most cases you want to use the boolean tool and I'll show you why so if you come from after facts you might neglect the Alpha let me show you the alpha this is the alpha Channel and this is the alpha channel of the race okay and you might only work with the colors you see right but as again there's an alpha Channel and you cannot neglect that it's it's important it's important when you do compositing so now look watch what happened if we put these together using the merge the Alpha just gets overlaid and I don't mean this overlay here I don't mean this overlay it just puts it on top of the other now this is not an ADD operation we need four light passes yeah light passes we need to use the add operation okay and that would be bringing this up again to zero now if you check the color channels this is what happens we are adding this however if I show you the Alpha again you can see that now this is the Alpha from the directional blur and this is from the merge now this alpha should contain the alpha of this and this but it doesn't it only takes this alpha okay now look watch what happens when we use the boolean tool now right off the bat we get the IFF from the race the color also from the foreground and this is simply because everything is set to foreground to the channels to the target channels if I do add in here watch what happens now that the RGB channels I added but the Alpha is also added this is the directional and this is the race and this both together okay so this is a technical correct yeah I was a little tough one I know okay so this is basically an the volume race pace that we have and now it looks a little hard here right and in order to soften this out we can't oops not this one we can use a soft glow before the race very soft as the name implies and maybe this one doesn't need it it's kind of smoothing it out anyway okay and now we get a little bit this glowing going on around the edges looks a little bit better okay and let's put this already together with the with the Batman logo for that I use the same at boolean and I add this right on top hmm something like this if we check the off up bang looks nice and clean okay so now you might be already satisfied with this the the more advanced user is probably not happy with this so for me this looks very artificial and I can't help but the only way to make this look more organic is by using organic material and you might have one only the other might have seen that I've shot a steam footage for my sphere ax compositing pack that I released recently on my patreon and I look something like this for example and you know what I think I blew my first cigarette for this footage I'm a nonsmoker and never smoked in my life but for this one for this one hell I lick one up and I bought the cheapest cigarettes I could get and they stink so badly I was I was disgusted seriously yeah yeah but the result was surprisingly good the result was was is more valuable and more expensive than the cigarettes itself but at the cost of my health do look at this little look looks beautiful now I have unfortunately I have a little bit bit of the background in there but yeah yeah okay but let's see how we can incorporate this with the volume race and the first thing I do is I want to actually multiply the whole thing the whole thing let me see what size is the right size I want to multiply the whole thing on top doing something like this and I'm gonna use a mask derived from the volume race set to luminance and invert and I restrict the multiplication to that area but it's hard to see it's hard to see because that background is basically black so in order to make this a little bit more prominent we use a background tool 16-bit float as always and another background tool merges together and make this brighter color bring in an ellipse mask to restrict this let me see what we got something like this and smoothing this out okay and let's bring this together already so I use a merge and put this actually into the background so I switch the input and we get something like this now before I make adjustments to the background color I want to go to the multiplication so we see the the actual brightness so and this doesn't look too shabby now the reason why I use the mask is because if I don't use a mask it will also talk into the light itself although maybe it's okay because maybe there's some some hard steam going on being in front of the light bulb okay so the next thing I want to do is to actually use another mask again from the light race let me go up here into the viewer why do we have this bad and again from the luminance do we get this and now I use another boolean tool and I hope this into the boolean tool and what I do with this boolean tool now is I basically okay I put it in here you see the problem with this viewer I basically if it's for myself it's okay because I know what I'm doing but I want to show it to you that's why this viewer is actually a little bit yeah so I want to set this to to clear here clear and of course invert the mask and bang the yeah you see okay so now we're gonna add this on top and in this case we can use the merch and simply put this to add and we get something like this okay now the problem is that the Batman logo got dark pretty dark due to the multiplication for that again what I do is I actually know was the wrong one with my thoughts I was already step ahead I put the reflect pass into a merge know I forgot something I forgot to actually reduce remove the disk from this pass actually didn't look too bad what happens if I remove this so to remove the light disk from the reflection pass I have to copy this light over and replace it with the other one and then we get something like this is also good that's better yeah yeah that's perfect so so here we have the reflection pass I go to a frame where we have more reflections something like this for example and again here it's completely dark so after the multiplication after this one I'm simply gonna move this in here inverted input and now now I say again add okay you can see now the reflections come back nice and clean okay so this is basically how I created the volume race and in incorporating that organic steam those rays become much more realistic now this looks very overblown but I mean we are looking right into a light what do you expect or expect then so I think this looks pretty nice especially yeah I have to say it's really it really depends on your smoke footage that you have you know for example here in this area we have some very broad steam ok it looks very nice here why here we have those those single streaks here it's maybe not that nice it's all up to your taste yeah same here you know it starts around here when this when I blew in the smoke the whole room was thinking something like this and now it's the Batman logo is still dark we could change the reflections a bit yeah you can also use lights to change that a little bit I want to continue for now and I want to do that in the improvisation section later on so and now I'm going to go to the post process section that is already set up here so I hook this in already and the next thing I did was I used the footage from artbeads as of oh my god it's an ancient collection that I have that is like very low quality but since I use it Sowell maybe a little bit more subtle I thought it's fine and then I have another one going on here I always make this put this on top and then here this one here here this is sort of a bloom and now you saw that I adjusted the center of this ellipse and we want to make this automated we want to actually link the center of all the tools that have a center point and depend on the lights position we want to actually link them to the lights position and the way we do that is very cool so I go back to our light here and I put in a locator okay now the locator needs a target which is the light I hope this into the target and it also needs this whole scene which is this one here and I hope this into the scene input and bang that's basically it you don't have to do anything else now we can go to our directional blur Center right click connect to locate a position bang see it changed and next raise to center connect two locator position bang next because it's so much fun we do it one more time here with this ellipse mask Center connect two locator position and everyone bang okay I like this so much I don't know who I am okay this unloose match the same here Center connect two locator position and now the problem with this with this one with this or with this blooming here is that it brightens up the Batman logo which takes away the contrast so it removes a little bit of the impact so we want to bring this a little bit back for that I use I use math derived from the reflection Pass and I hope this in here and it will overlay sort we will cut this out there I invert the mask and now I simply smooth this out maybe something like this sort of like a cheesy light wrap it's not really light right but cheesy okay so next we could think about making those glints on the very high edges so I put in a soft glow a soft glow and I make another copy of this mask here this time I will use the luminance I don't invert don't soften and I will try to get just those highlights maybe not too much it's actually already too much I could break this down with a noise to make it a little bit more tiny so and now I into this I hope or after this merge I hook in a soft globe Bay oh my goodness and I want to restrict this using this mask I don't use it into the mask slot because that will cut off the glow basically will cut the glow but I use it in this effect mask in here wait how is it called glow mask so you can mask it but it will still have the fall-off okay so and now usually I would add two or three to get some nice glint going on here now because we don't have time I just keep it okay something like this for example and then the chromatic aberration now I have to say I say many times I actually I'm not a chromatic aberration fan and I think that people overuse it way too much so for me the chromatic aberration is more like taking the edges and make make them look a little bit more natural you see here the difference I mean it's it's not a heavy chromatic aberration you can barely see it if I wouldn't have soon then you would probably not know that I used it but yeah anyway overrated effect you know it's like a chromatic aberration is actually an error it's like the optical illusion like Neil deGrasse Tyson said optical illusions they call it optical illusion as you call it brain failures because that's what they are okay and then I changed the gamma and used my grading LUT and we get something like this and it looks beautiful I mean you know how long this took yeah okay I haven't spoken about the Crocker dolls before I thought I should probably mention a tool that is similar to the directional blur and the Rays tool it's called microwaves and basically it allows you to do the same things it just has a little bit more creative control as you can see here you have the brightness full edge which I think allows you to adjust a little bit the sharpness or something like that the length and then you also have these shape buttons that I couldn't find the extra useful I don't know for what that is meant so to give you a light comparison here on the Left we have the microwave the co-operative tool and on the right this is the setup I showed before and now the thing is at times the microwave rays look a little sharper than on the directional blur and the Rays combination here but it changes over the time you know if I go to another frame you see here it's it's a softer well here's a little sharper or what about here for example here there's soft here's sharp at the top is basically the same almost overall you can see we have a little bit more fidelity in here but I think with a little tweaking we could also get this in here this this fine streaks here that we have is because of the noise that I'm gonna add later in the improvisation now obviously I recorded this after the improvisation because I thought I should be mentioning the crooked of tool as well so I think if you don't have the studio version then you're out of luck anyway if you have this to your version then definitely try it out I think there are certainly times where you might want to prefer the microwaves and by the way you can see I added some another snow element the bright dots here this is also footage I took yesterday last night when it was snowing outside luckily about the perfect timing yeah I wanted to build a snowman but I thought job comes first maybe next year and yeah you can see it really adds to the to the whole feel of this thing if you are one of my patreon you are lucky because this will be included in the footage pack so with that said I'm gonna go back to my espresso okay guys so I think that was it very very quick and dirty and for now I will shut up and I will continue a little bit with improvisation just adding a few details if you want to stick around why don't you stick around and maybe enjoy an espresso while watching my weird stuff that I'm doing here okay my name is Vito thank you for watching I'll see you soon my I think I screwed up something whatever [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Pirates of Confusion

Views: 24,245

Keywords: Fusion 9, Volumetric Light Fusion 9, God Rays, Lightrays, Lightrays Fusion 9, BMD Fusion 9, Compositing, Batman logo, Batman, Nuke, Learn BMD Fusion, Compositing in BMD Fusion, Advanced techniques Fusion 9, Getting started with BMD Fusion, Krokodove, Light rays, Godrays, Multipass setup BMD Fusion

Id: elaxcKRLIrg

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2018