DaVinci Resolve: Understanding Node Trees

have you ever looked at a resolve project or a resolve tutorial and been completely overwhelmed by its apparent complexity if so it's almost certainly the node graph that gave you this impression but nodes are the building block of everything that we do when we're grading in resolve so we have to cut through that complexity and reach a simple understanding of how nodes work today i'm going to show you how i use nodes in my professional color grading practice let's take a look here inside of davinci resolve where i have a brand new project that i've yet to do any grading in the only thing that i've done thus far is to set up my color management now if you're not familiar with color management you want to learn more about it i encourage you to check out my davinci wide gamut workflow series where i'm going to show you how to set up the exact color management that i'm using in this project because if nodes are the building block of our color grades color management is the frame of the house it's the structure that we operate within that allows us to consistently grade awesome looking images for today we're going to stay focused on nodes let's take a look here at shot number one where i have my default node graph which is what i'm looking at up here in the upper right hand corner of the color page right now i just have one single serial node and it's an empty node the serial node is the default type of node when we are grading in resolve it's called a serial node because it happens in serial i'm going to show you what that looks like in just a moment but before i do we need to answer an even more fundamental question what exactly is a node i'm going to give you my definition a node is an idea it's a visual idea of something that we want to do to our image so here's what that looks like for me node number one my empty serial node i'm going to right click and i'm going to label it because i like to label all my nodes based on the idea that i intend for them to express and the idea for node number one here is exposure i'm going to be adjusting my exposure in this node that's all i'm going to do in this node when i have a new idea i'm going to create a new node so here in node number one the only thing i'm going to do is adjust my offset wheel preferentially based on where i think exposure should sit maybe somewhere like this once i'm ready to move on to a new idea my next idea might be to adjust the contrast ratio of my image that's a new idea so i'm going to create a new node and by default i'm going to create a new serial node as i said serial nodes are the most common most fundamental form of node in resolve and i stick to them by default unless i have a specific reason to use something else in this case i don't so i'm going to create a new serial node by going to my color menu nodes and saying add serial node or i could simply hit option s when i do i'm going to have a new node downstream of or to the right of node number one and i'm going to label this node based on the idea that i want to express in it this is where i'm going to manipulate the contrast of my image now what's important to understand about a serial node that we can see here now is whatever i do here in node number two my starting point for node number two is whatever i did in the nodes that came before it in this case that's just one node that's node number one my exposure node so node number two is receiving as its starting point whatever i did in node number one and all i want to do here in my contrast node is work on my idea of manipulating the contrast of this image and i can audition the work that i'm doing by hitting command d off and on to flip this node off and then back on and get a contextual view for what i've affected on the image with this single node that's the enable or disable shortcut and that's the only idea i want to explore here is my contrast thus far these are always my first two nodes when i'm grading i always start with exposure i always move on to contrast and there's always a third serial node that i'm going to use after this that's going to be my balance node so once again i'm going to hit option s right click and say balance in this note i'm going to work on the simple idea of manipulating the relationship between red and green and blue in this image so i could grab my offset ball and simply preferentially adjust where i'm seeing that balance sit and if i didn't have a control panel i could also just grab this middle point of my offset ball here and drag in whatever direction i want to take the image and once again i could flip off and on see how this adjustment is netting out on the image until i'm happy with the result so this is how i use serial nodes in my workflow as i said serial nodes are the default node that i'm going to use unless i have a reason to use another type of node and i'm always going to use a minimum of three serial nodes in any grade that i tackle that's going to be exposure contrast and balance like so let's now talk about another type of node that i use in virtually every grade that i tackle and that's a parallel node to create a parallel node i'm going to go to my color menu i'm going to go to nodes and i'm going to say add parallel node like so and you can see i've now got this vertical stack of nodes happening in this direction and all that i'm doing with a parallel node is combining my two nodes into this parallel mixer node in equal measure so it doesn't matter which is on top or which is below they are being combined in equal measure they are being put back together by this parallel mixer here and the way that i use parallel mixers is like so i'm actually going to disconnect this input into node number five the bottom node in my parallel stack and then i'm gonna grab this green triangle that runs into node number five and hook it up to this leftmost goal post here in my node graph and this is going to mean that node number five is receiving the initial state of image that this shot began with as opposed to whatever adjustments i'm performing on the shot up here now why am i doing this what's this all for what this is doing is giving me a separate branch of my node graph where i can make my secondaries adjustments up here in this top branch these have all been primaries adjustments these are adjustments that affect the entire image right secondaries adjustments are adjustments that only affect a particular portion of the image so one example of a secondary might be to go over here to my curves and then look at my hue versus hue curve and say that i want to make my yellows just a bit more orange like so ever so slightly maybe just four degrees or so and again i can flip this off and on by hitting command d that's very subtle but that's a great example of an adjustment that i might indeed want to make in the course of a color grade now this is what's important the reason why i'm making a secondary adjustment like i'm doing in node number two down here in a separate branch created by my parallel mixer is this adjustment depends on what is fed into it in terms of how it will respond so let's say i make all of these adjustments and then my client says to me i think you went a little bit heavy on the contrast we need to back off the contrast a little bit or even more so we might decide the balance of the shot actually isn't quite right yet and we might go in and refine what we did here in this balance node if i were putting node number two as a simple serial node after these first three nodes it would be subject to these manipulations and to any changes that i make in those nodes that's not what i want i want any secondary adjustments that i make down here to happen independently of what happens up here and i want them to remain consistent even as i continue to go in and refine what's happening up here in this top primaries branch of my node graph so that's how i use the parallel mixer in almost every grade that i tackle it's to have a separate branch for my secondaries which does not depend on what i'm doing in my primaries and it means nothing's going to break or get strange that did look good at one point but now doesn't look so good because i've changed the image that is feeding into that secondary adjustment okay now let's go over to shot number four and we're going to explore a third type of node that i love to use when i'm grading and to get started what i'm going to do is right click back on the thumbnail for shot number one and say apply grade and you can think of what i've just done as pasting what we could call a template node graph over onto a new shot so i might want to zero out or redo any of these adjustments here but i have a template with labels and with a structure that works for me and all i have to do is change the actual operations happening within these nodes so let's just quickly do that i'm going to reset my my exposure node and adjust this for what i think this shot needs reset my contrast adjust for what i think the shot needs there and reset my balance and do the same thing okay good example of using a template but different adjustments based on what the image needs all right and then down here below in node number two i'm going to reset this completely because i don't feel like i actually need it in this shot at least for the time being but what i now want to focus on is a different type of secondary adjustment and since i like to do all my secondary adjustments down here in this lower branch that's what we're going to do right now i'm going to create a new serial node by hitting option s and i'm going to go over to my power window palette and create a circular power window and what i'm hoping to do here is draw a power window that sort of aligns with the contours of my subject's face so that i can ever so slightly soften out my subject's skin okay i'm gonna go nice and soft nice big broad shape and i'm gonna go over to my primaries palette and there's a number of ways that i could soften out my subject's skin manipulate the texture of the inner contents of this power window but right now i'm going to use my mid-tone detail and i'm just going to pull it back to say -6 or so just a little bit to soften things out it's probably going to be even tough to see over youtube but this is a great example of the type of subtle adjustment that i like to make with my secondaries in this lower branch of my node tree okay so let's say i've done that let's say i'm really happy with the result even though it's quite subtle but let's now say i want to do something else i want to do a second related thing i also would like to knock down everything around my subject to help guide the eye a little bit more toward my subject now if i wanted to i could simply create a new serial node draw a new power window realign it with my subject like i just did and then i could go down here to this button and invert that power window and then i would be free to manipulate something like my offset to knock down the contents around my subject's face but there's actually a better way to do this using what we can call an outside node so let's delete node number six go back to node number four and i'm gonna go to color nodes add outside node or i could simply hit option o and when i do i'm going to have the same power window available to me to limit my adjustment that i had back in node number four except i'm going to be using the exact opposite of it so if i go to my highlight mode to this magic wand up here you can see what i mean where before i was affecting everything inside of this region i'm now affecting everything outside of this region and what's cool is if i go back over to node number four and i reposition my power window that position will automatically be updated in node number six those mats or those masks are married together it's actually one in the same mask as you can see by looking at this dotted line that connects the alpha channel of node number four into node number six so here on node number six i can turn my highlight mode off and i can once again go to my offset and just bring that down a little bit i'm using my control surface for this but you could also use your offset wheel right here and knock down everything around your subject and i'm flipping that off and on by hitting command d i can also drag to select nodes four and six and look at the net result of both softening my subject's skin and knocking down everything around my subject okay now these are not the only types of nodes available to us inside of resolve in fact there are several other types of nodes that perhaps we can explore in a future video but if you can get a fundamental understanding of the serial node the outside node and the parallel mixer node you're well on your way to being able to master your node graph and use it to craft great looking images and the last thing i want to emphasize before we wrap up for today is a question that very often comes up when we were talking about node graphs how many nodes should i have how many nodes is too many how many nodes is too few well we've started to answer that question by simply defining what a node is or what a node should be i gave you my definition a node is an idea right so new idea new node that means we should have at least as many nodes as we have ideas that also means that if you look at one of those complex node graphs that we talked about at the beginning of today's video there's probably a lot of ideas in play for that grade right this is not always a great thing usually the more ideas the more nodes that you see crowding a node graph the higher the likelihood that the ideas have yet to be distilled down into their simplest and their most essential form and that should always be our aim when we are grading i talk about this in my book the color is ten commandments simplicity beats complexity so how many nodes should we have how big should your node graph be well it depends on what you're doing but it should be as small as it can be while allowing you to accomplish your creative goals and of course those of your clients so i hope you guys enjoyed this initial tour through the way i think about nodes and some of the key types of nodes that i use in my grading practice let me know if so let me know if you want to learn more about nodes in future videos and i'll see you for the next one

Channel: Cullen Kelly

Views: 69,234

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Id: Ure3c6DdiVc

Length: 13min 57sec (837 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 28 2022