Beauty Retouching in DaVinci Resolve Fusion

1 minute ago, Jesper Hammarbäck said:

I would love to learn how to do change the body like liquify in photoshop.

Body stretch and symmetry will be covered in several upcoming lessons.

Really glad you are making these, thank you for all the thought you've put in! I think it will definitely help artists newer to these concepts and some of your process descriptions are very concise. I'm sure as the series goes on I'll pick up some tidbits I didn't know about too. 

That being said, I have one major (hopefully constructive!) critique of the series so far: node graph organization. 

Please take this in the most polite way possible, but I think this is setting a very poor example of Flow organization for artists not already familiar with large Nuke / Fusion style graphs.

Just like reading text, nodes should generally "flow" from top left --> bottom right. Inputs start higher than their outputs, merges are below both FG & BG, etc. The primary trunk of the tree runs straight down from the main input. New inputs merge to the trunk, additional operations on the source footage branch from the roots of the trunk and then merge back in.

This is a Nuke chart so the left / right principle is less important than top / bottom, but you get the gist (in Fusion I find left / right consistency is often equally important):

Optical effects take place at the final stage of the pipe, followed by adding grain (as the very final step in most cases so the grain does not become manipulated by other operations or transform filters).

Labeling nodes is great and should be done anyway, but a well laid-out node tree should be skimmable at a zoomed-out glance without a single label so that another artist can at least identify things like order of operations and inputs, and then pick out more specific organization at a per-branch level by looking at masks or trackers. 

The top --> bottom vs. left --> right debate is mostly preference, but whatever you do it should be consistent, not changing directions from one operation to another. 

Anyway, I hope this point is taken in the intended constructive spirit -- very glad someone is popularizing Fusion beauty techniques. I just think setting a good organizational example will help the whole community in the long run. 

On 2/18/2019 at 5:24 AM, Jesper Hammarbäck said:

I would love to learn how to do change the body like liquify in photoshop.

Warp > Grid Warp and ResolveFX Warp > Warper can create similar results.

4 hours ago, Jedidiah Mitchell said:

Really glad you are making these, thank you for all the thought you've put in! I think it will definitely help artists newer to these concepts and some of your process descriptions are very concise. I'm sure as the series goes on I'll pick up some tidbits I didn't know about too. 

That being said, I have one major (hopefully constructive!) critique of the series so far: node graph organization. 

Please take this in the most polite way possible, but I think this is setting a very poor example of Flow organization for artists not already familiar with large Nuke / Fusion style graphs.

Just like reading text, nodes should generally "flow" from top left --> bottom right. Inputs start higher than their outputs, merges are below both FG & BG, etc. The primary trunk of the tree runs straight down from the main input. New inputs merge to the trunk, additional operations on the source footage branch from the roots of the trunk and then merge back in.

This is a Nuke chart so the left / right principle is less important than top / bottom, but you get the gist (in Fusion I find left / right consistency is often equally important):

Optical effects take place at the final stage of the pipe, followed by adding grain (as the very final step in most cases so the grain does not become manipulated by other operations or transform filters).

Labeling nodes is great and should be done anyway, but a well laid-out node tree should be skimmable at a zoomed-out glance without a single label so that another artist can at least identify things like order of operations and inputs, and then pick out more specific organization at a per-branch level by looking at masks or trackers. 

The top --> bottom vs. left --> right debate is mostly preference, but whatever you do it should be consistent, not changing directions from one operation to another. 

Anyway, I hope this point is taken in the intended constructive spirit -- very glad someone is popularizing Fusion beauty techniques. I just think setting a good organizational example will help the whole community in the long run. 

Good point. I will keep that in mind. I will use Underlays in the future also.

On 1/13/2019 at 11:46 AM, Julien Souloumiac said:

Hi, 

 

Thanks a lot for your answer, that's a very interesting point. 

I have another question : when I follow your instructions concerning node structure and tracking data, my ellipse center may switch on the y position sometimes. I already encountered this several times connecting tracking data. Is this a known issue/bug, or am I doing something wrong ? 

 

I can post a screenshot to make things clear if needed. And I was working on free beta version, didn't try on my studio version...

 

Thanks again for your work,

 

best

 

Julien

 

 

Sorry for the delayed reply. I have noticed some bugginess when connecting tracking data. I suggest connecting the data to a Transform tool that is downstream instead.

Hi, 

Thanks a lot for your answer, and for all your work. 

I understand that this course is almost over, and I have a few questions/requests if possible :

- Is there any chance you can add an extra-course on how to handle warping on a "real" background (not a clean plate) ? I have a few ideas about a node structure to handle that but your experience will definitely help.

- in the same way, is there a possibility to add a lesson on how to emulate dodge&burn technique from Photoshop in Fusion and/or Resolve Color Page ? I'm quite sure that can be handle only with power window, but I'm also looking for the most effective workflow and suspect Fusion can be used for that...

Once again, thanks again for your work,

best

Julien

2 hours ago, Julien Souloumiac said:

- Is there any chance you can add an extra-course on how to handle warping on a "real" background (not a clean plate) ? I have a few ideas about a node structure to handle that but your experience will definitely help.

I'm currently working on a different series, so no immediate plans to expand the beauty series. However, we will keep that in in mind for the future. When warping an actor over a background, you really have to separate the actor via rotoscoping or some form or masking. If you make the actor skinnier or taller, there is the danger that part of the set will be missing; hence, I would say it's only viable with some shots, else it requires a lot of extra work.

2 hours ago, Julien Souloumiac said:

- in the same way, is there a possibility to add a lesson on how to emulate dodge&burn technique from Photoshop in Fusion and/or Resolve Color Page ? I'm quite sure that can be handle only with power window, but I'm also looking for the most effective workflow and suspect Fusion can be used for that...

 

Dodge and burn would fall into the color correction category. In Fusion, add a Color Correction tool and draw a mask to limit the area where it's operating (connect the mask to the Color Corrector's Effect Mask input). In the Color tab, youcan also mask, although I do most of work in Fusion as I am a VFX guy.

hi Lee, 

thanks a lot for your answer, I'll check that out and run some tests to find the best workflow according to my needs.

I have another question that may interest some people, concerning the best workflow between Fusion and Color Pages. 

To make it simple, how do you deal with ungraded Log (or raw) footage when asked some beauty work ?

Do you first grade them, then export an hi-res graded version, and eventually import this graded version to work in Fusion page ? 
Or do you use some fusion color transform tool to "normalize" your loog footage, work on it and then achieve color work in the color page (which might not work with raw footage) ?
Or is there any other trick to simplify these kind of interactions ? 
I konw for exemple that, with a new media out, you can extract an alpha matte from the Fusion page. Does this work with animated matte ? Can this be a way to deal with color correction in the dedicated page after building a matte taking advantage of the Fusion tools ? 

I hope I don't bother you with all these questions, and that it may help other users to develop an efficient and high-quality workflow. 

Once again thanks a lot for your help and work, 

Best 

Julien

Ps : I also noticed that the standalone version of Fusion is far more stable that the Resolve implementation and I'm looking for the best way with these two softwares. Do you have any advice about round-tripping between Resolve and Fusion stand alone ? Thanks a lot 😉

5 hours ago, Julien Souloumiac said:

hi Lee, 

thanks a lot for your answer, I'll check that out and run some tests to find the best workflow according to my needs.

I have another question that may interest some people, concerning the best workflow between Fusion and Color Pages. 

To make it simple, how do you deal with ungraded Log (or raw) footage when asked some beauty work ?

That is a good question and I don't think there is one answer. One way is to switch to Resolve Color Management (RCM) through the Color Science menu in Project Settings and assign the correct Input Color Space (based on the camera) to the clip in the Media tab. Fusion, buy default, should show you the same interpretation seen by the other tabs with RCM.  Make the VFX fixes in Fusion. Last, color grade in Color. You can choose a Timeline Output Color Space and an Output Color Space through the Color Management section if you need to wind up in a different space, like Rec.709. Another approach is not to use RCM, but assign to a LUT to the clip in the Media tab so the log footage is interpreted correctly. Either way, you are adding the VFX to the _ungraded_ version. I would avoid color grading in Fusion, unless you need to match elements to each other (like match a 3D render to a background video). The Alpha channel from Fusion is passed to the other tabs.

I haven't roundtripped from standalone Fusion to Resolve. The integrated Fusion is definitely more buggy than the standalone and is missing some features.

5 hours ago, Julien Souloumiac said:

 

Ps : I also noticed that the standalone version of Fusion is far more stable that the Resolve implementation and I'm looking for the best way with these two softwares. Do you have any advice about round-tripping between Resolve and Fusion stand alone ? Thanks a lot 😉

6 hours ago, Lee Lanier said:

Two more options I should mention: Apply a LUT in the Color tab before or after the color grading. Again, you would add the VFX to the ungraded version, even if it remains in log space.