- Hey, friends, welcome
back to another video, and in this one, we're gonna be talking about fixed node trees within the color page of DaVinci Resolve. Now, fixed node trees are a great way to improve the consistency and efficiency of your color grades. And we're just gonna be diving in, having a bit of a casual conversation about fixed node trees, and how I utilize them within my workflow. And you can also download
my fixed node tree that we're gonna look at in this video to follow along yourself. The link will be in the
video description below. So why don't we just jump in. We're gonna take a look
at these five clips. You may have seen them before, they're just downloaded
straight off Artgrid. And if we jump over into the color page, this is essentially a starting
point for any color grade. Obviously, we have our
five clips just here. And one thing to note is we are working in a
color-managed workspace. So if we go to the color
management settings here, you can see DaVinci YRGB color managed. And if you just wanna take
a quick screenshot of this, these are all the settings I'm using. We're essentially working in a
input color space of DaVinci, or Blackmagic Design Film Gen 5 that is being moved into the timeline or working color space of DaVinci Wide Gamut Intermediate. And then our output will
be Rec. 709 Gamma 2.4. I am monitoring everything
here on the Flanders DM240. This is a calibrated reference monitor, but you can see here
on the left-hand side, and you can see on the
left-hand screen here is the graphical user interface, or the GUI monitor of DaVinci. So those are my color management settings. The final setting I
always change down here is the 3D lookup table. Change that to tetrahedral. Sometimes it's on trilinear, and we'll go ahead and hit save. So right off the bat, you can see here I've got a whole series of nodes here. I'm just gonna delete that and
completely reset all grades by right clicking and
hit reset all grades, and then I can go ahead
and select all the rest of the clips and copy that node tree over. So now we are starting afresh. We are in the color managed workspace, which essentially what that
means is it's converted it from the raw state of the footage into a Rec. 709 viewable
color space as we're grading but we're grading within a DaVinci wide
gamma working color space, which is important because
if we are using any LUTs, any color space transforms, any type of color space-specific tools, then we need to be
aware that we're working inside a DaVinci wide
gamma intermediate space. So now let's say we have 100 clips here. All I'm going to do to start
is to apply a fixed node tree to one clip. And I'm just gonna use this
sample fixed node tree. I've been using this particular one for a long time and it's
works for me in my workflow. There's no right or wrong way
of building a fixed node tree but essentially, the concept behind a fixed node
tree is that it's fixed. It's a preset or a predefined
number of nodes that you apply to every single clip within your project and each node is the exact
same node in every single clip. For example, if we have
node four here as exposure, a fixed node tree will
essentially determine that on every single clip,
no matter where you are in the entire project, node four will always be exposure, no matter what you're doing. So what we can do is once we've built out our fixed node tree I can then select all of the other clips within my project and then
copy that node tree over. So now I have five clips
and you can see I can cycle through all of the nodes
and the nodes are laid out in a really logical consecutive nature from one all the way through to 26. And then I can cycle through my clips and every clip has that same node tree. If I move over to node five,
which is my ratio node, I can then cycle through all the clips. You can see the ratio
node is always selected no matter what clip I'm working on. Now, this is the power
of fixed node trees. Because everything is consistent, I can really quickly jump through my clips and navigate through my
nodes and I've got control over what adjustments are
being made on what node. There are a couple of settings
that we need to select just to make sure that the functionality of the nodes are the same
as how I'm using them. So over in the top right-hand corner here, we can click switching clip selects and just make sure same node is checked. This essentially means if we are on our exposure node on this clip, when we move to the previous clip, the same node is selected, in this case exposure, node number four. So then we have our
fixed node tree applied to every clip within our film
or commercial or documentary. In this case, obviously,
we're just using five clips but this could be 100 clips, 1,000 clips. Every single clip has been brought into DaVinci wide gamma
as a working color space. And every single clip has the
same node structure applied to it before I have done any
adjustments to the project. Now, the great thing
about a fixed node tree is that you can have a whole
range of preset tools applied in a cold state to the node so they're not actually affecting
the image from the start. What I mean by this is
if we deselect everything and bypass this, we can
actually disable every node. There's no changes actually
being applied to the image. But if we look at node 13,
I've actually already got a soft vignette already
applied as a power window. And if we go here, you can see that power window
has already been applied. And so if I cycle to this node, all I have to do is hit offset
and just drop my offset down and I've already got a soften
here ready to go if I need it. I don't always use it for every
single clip, but the point of a fixed node tree is to
give you the ability to jump into nodes really quick, make adjustments without
having to grab your pen if you don't have a panel and you know, grab a power window, apply it, tweak it. So the point is efficiency and speed. Now, if I reset that,
you can see I've also got a slightly different edge power window and I've got a range of different
power windows ready to go. As another example, if
you really wanted to, let's go to node 23. I'm gonna pull up my effects
and just type in film convert. If I drop that in there, you can see it's made a
whole range of adjustments. But if I move the chroma and luma down and take the grain strength
and the grain size down, you can now see that this
adjustment, if I bypass it is actually doing nothing to the image. So if you are using grain or film convert a lot
within your node tree or your fixed node tree,
you could keep it in there. And as you can see, it's
actually not doing anything to the image, but it's already
there plugged in to that node for you to go in and quickly
make adjustments if you need. All this does is save a few
seconds having to bring up the effects menu and type in film convert, dragging and dropping it onto a node. It just saves a little bit of time and it's really helpful and efficient. So let's have a look at the
logic of this fixed node tree and I'll run you through every single node and talk about how I like to color grade. This isn't a fixed node tree
for absolutely every project. It will grow or contract depending on
the particular project. Now, I've designed these
fixed node trees really to do the base and secondary
adjustments underneath a look. And generally, I apply the look on a timeline level or
a post group clip level. What this basically means is if I select these five
clips, right click and add them into a new group, I'm just
gonna call this footage for now, these have now been
applied to a new group. If you ever wanna see
where the groups are at, you can bring up your light
box view and you can go ahead and click this icon down
on the left-hand side and you can see the different
groups that you have set up. So in this case, footage has
all of these clips inside it. Now, every single clip on this group has an additional dot,
which you can see here. And now I can go ahead and add
a post group clip adjustment and I can start to build
my creative look here, post group, for example, if
I just add a lot of contrast and then throw this color way off, you can see that that has
applied it to all of these clips. If I disable this node on the first clip, it has disabled it on every single clip. And that's because with every clip, all of the adjustments go
through all of the initial nodes in the fixed node tree
and then it goes into, it gets piped into the look
adjustment, which is here and then it goes into the timeline. If it's a really simple
project that's been shot only on one camera and it's not using a bunch of additional source material,
such as archive material or multiple formats, then you'd be safe to just do your look
adjustment in the timeline. However, in this case, I'm just going to create
a really basic look here in the group post clip. To illustrate this at a really high level, I'm just gonna use some LUTs from Cullen Kelly's Voyager Pro Pack. This LUT is creating
contrast to the image. It's just giving it a nice
filmic contrast curve. I'm gonna introduce some color
shifts with this Venus LUT. And then finally, I'll just
introduce a split tone, which has given the highlights
a bit more of a creamy look and then definitely introduce
blue into the shadows. So really quickly, this is
before, let's go full screen and this is after a quick look. Now what we can do is go into the clip and actually start now working
in our fixed node tree. Because I've applied the look
at a post group clip level, I can really just dive in and finesse some really simple things, such as exposure ratio, which is contrast, white balance and saturation to bring all of these clips into the same world. And that is the logic of my fixed node tree
with this first line. So the first line is very much
your base level adjustments to balance all of your shots together. From left to right,
starting with number one, this is noise reduction. Noise reduction, I generally apply after I've done pretty
much my whole color grade because oftentimes, depending
on how you crush the shadows or roll the shadows off and
drop the exposure of the image, it might actually absorb
a lot of that noise. And so if you're applying noise
reduction at the beginning of your grade without
a strong contrast curve and exposure adjustment,
you might be applying it in a way that's too heavy
or isn't actually needed. So I apply that at the end. So we're not gonna do anything here. The next node is texture. Oftentimes, shots vary in
texture or contrast or sharpness. You know, footage might be shot
with a pro mist type filter on it with a lot of halation and glow. Others might be really sharp and quite clinical, quite digital. So texture is a node where
I can finesse the texture of the clips to try and
match them together. Node number three is highlight control if I ever need to control my highlights and just roll them off so that they're not
clipping and distracting. I have experimented with highlight control
pre and post exposure. I find controlling highlight in the raw state just to compress
the dynamic range earlier just has a more organic look to it. So the next node is exposure and you can adjust exposure
in many different ways. You could use your offset just like this. You could also use a
linear gamma adjustment. So right click, gamma, go to linear and then you can use your gain wheel to give it a really nice
photographic type exposure where it anchors the
blacks a little bit more. You could also just use
your lift gamma and gain. You could use a range of
different things, custom curves but I like to keep it all simple and all controllable by my
panel, and so I tend to default to that linear gain
method or just exposure. The next node, number five, is ratio. Now, this is contrast. Sometimes shots need a bit
more contrast depending on how they were shot. If I'm using this shot as an
example for my hero image, I'll just grab a still here. And if we go over to
this shot, for example, and play this still, you can see how these are completely different. Now, if I was to match this,
I could go to my exposure and try and initially
get a exposure match. And you can see, I'm using
my lift gamma and gain wheels to do this. And while I'm doing that, I'm actually naturally increasing
the contrast of the image. Oftentimes, I used to do this in exposure, as well as using my exposure adjustments. But what I've done is I'm gonna reset that and actually move it into my ratio node. So my ratio node is
specifically just contrast, adding contrast or decreasing contrast, and then my exposure node is free to purely just adjust the exposure. My ratio node is just contrast. So the next node is white balance. Now, white balance can be adjusted in a range of different ways. I tend to only use offset to do more of a classical printer light adjustment. I could use printer lights. I've got printer lights
set up on my stream deck but offset does the exact same thing. And if I was to try and
match it to this example, would be somewhere in that world. Saturation, finally is self-explanatory. There are obviously a range of different ways you can
increase and decrease saturation but essentially, those are
the base level adjustments. I'll go through and adjust those for every single shot just to make sure that they're all matching. Obviously, these aren't
matching, but I will adjust all of these to match before I then go on to my secondary level adjustments, which are from node eight down to 19. Eight to 11 are where
I can add a whole range of hue versus adjustments. Maybe there are some specific
colors that I want to shift within the image. Maybe there are some actual
fixes that I need to do, such as face refinement. That is all done between 8, 9, 10, and 11. Then I move into the
windowing or relighting. So as I mentioned
before, there are a range of presets already in here in terms of my power windows and 12
and 13 are general vignettes. 14 is just another power window and 15 is the outside of the power window. What I mean by that is if
we look at this window, you can see this is adjusting the outside and then if I move into the next window, this is adjusting the inside
of that same power window. So then 16, 17, 18 and
19 is just two more sets of the in and out power
windows to use if I need to. So I've just got a simple circle set there and then this one's left
open in case you want to do a custom or for example, a gradient, something like this. However you like to do it, it's up to you. But those are a bunch of presets that I tend to use all
the time when I'm grading. And so I like to just
have them ready to go. Now, the final line 20, 21, 22 and 23 is generally my look development. And this, in this case, is actually done in my post group clip. So if I was using this fixed node tree for this particular shot, I would actually delete that and now I'm left with a
simpler fixed node tree. When I do my look, generally there's a contrast
curve base, which is this here and then the look nodes would be some kind of creative treatment, some split toning, all of that good stuff. And then if there's grain,
you could apply it here at the end of your node tree,
such as the final node here. Or some people actually
like to build grain into the texture element
of the color grade. If you're doing textural work and grain work there, it's generally 'cause you're trying to
emulate the workflow process if you were actually to film
and shoot on film stock. If you are shooting on film stock, obviously, the grain is baked
into the film stock initially and so the grain is present
in the actual color grade. Finally, the last thing in my fixed node tree is
I have a second stream of inputs solely to pull
qualifications if I need it. Every now and then, I need to pull a qualification to isolate either a particular color,
a particular luminance range or the most common situation
is obviously skin tones. And so if I need to pull a qualification, let's say we're trying to
isolate that blanket there, I can go ahead and actually
go to my first node, which is keybase, and increase the contrast,
saturation and white balance of the image to create
maximum color separation for the qualification
that I'm about to initiate 'cause I want to get the
best starting point possible before I pull my qualification. So that's before and that's after. If you take a look in here,
this is before and after, you can now see that I've
got a better starting point. Now I'm gonna go ahead and
simply pull a hue qualification. So I have my qualification of the blanket and now what I can do is
actually take the alpha channel from that qualification and
pipe that in anywhere I want to any of these secondary
node adjustments. So now if we go back into
our color graded image, I now have a clean selection of that blanket to do whatever I want to. For example, if I want to just
shift it just with my offset and just pull it down a touch,
you can see I've done that. But the beauty of this style of qualifying is that it's not affected by
anything I'm doing up here. An extreme example would be to completely desaturate this blanket. Now, what I can do is
if I increase the warmth of the white balance,
let's say we pull this in a completely stupid way,
just for example, you can see that that qualification is
still very much holding up no matter what I'm doing
in my primary adjustments. So this is a really powerful way to create qualifications that don't break if you have to go back and
tweak the exposure ratio, white balance or saturation of your image. You can obviously have a range
of different parallel nodes with different qualifications that you can pipe in anywhere
you want within your workflow. So that's basically just a
summary of my fixed node tree, how I like to work and how I like to
structure my color grades. Just to summarize, a fixed node tree will
help you be more efficient and it will help you keep track of where everything is
within your color grades. If you've got 1,000 clips and every single shot has
a different node structure and a different I guess,
logic of how you're grading, it's gonna be really hard to
create consistent results. But also, it's gonna be hard
to be efficient, particularly if a client is sitting and
sort of asking you questions and wanting to tweak really
specific aspects of the image. I've found a fixed node tree helps me stay in control of my color grades and particularly, if you're
using a look development at a group post clip
level or a timeline level, it creates a really
consistent look all the way through your color grade. I hope that's helped you in some way. Just remember, you can
download this fixed node tree in the link to this video and I'd love to hear how you're using it. And if you do have any
questions about color grading, particularly with a fixed
node tree, please drop them in the line below and I'll
be sure to answer them. Thanks a lot, guys. We'll see you in the next one. (tranquil music)
