EX.

NO:01
UNDERSTANDING NATRON ENVIRONMENT
DATE:

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
ENVIRONMENT
Environment The interface of Natron is composed of different elements

Standard layout of Natron

Generic Description
The purpose of Natron is to process video images using elementary “effect” bricks called nodes.

The image is processed in order passing through each node. The nodes are connected with links
that define the order of the processing. These connected nodes are called the node graph.

Each node has parameters allowing to customize the effect produced on the incoming image.

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The Toolbar

It is the list of icons on the left-hand side of Natron.

Each icon is a menu giving access to different categories of nodes (ie. image processing tools)
that Natron offers to process or create images

The Menu bar

Located on top of Natron window, it gives access to various actions other than adding nodes to
the node graph. Most actions are done on the whole project like saving, rendering…

The Viewer panel

Here is displayed the result of the image processing. To choose what is displayed, each viewer is
related to a viewer node in the graph that can be connected to any intermediate point in the
graph.
The Properties editor

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This panel shows the parameters of one or several nodes from the graph.

The Node graph

This panel is where connections are made between the nodes to define the processing order of
the image.

The Curve editor

This panel allows one to graphically edit the changes in time of the parameters of the nodes
(these are the same as the numerical values shown in the Properties editor).

The Dopesheet

This panel allows one to quickly edit the timing of the animations but without access to the
actual values. Each little box corresponds to a keyframe set on a parameter from one of the
nodes.

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The File Browser

This panel allows one to choose where to write or read an image to/from the disk.
It is opened from the properties of a read or write node

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RESULT:

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 [Link] WORKING WITH COLOR AND USING
DATE: COLOR GRADING

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
WORKING WITH COLOR
How to use Natron color correction nodes and tools to adjust the appearance of the images in
your composites. When starting, this information provides a good overview of Natron scopes and
color-correction nodes, however not all options are covered here.

THE NODES
Really important nodes are marked with an asterisk:

Add*
This node affects all values within the image in the same way: literally adding to them. Positive
values will brighten all parts of the image. As a stand-alone color manipulation, it is of limited
use, though it is ideal for lightening the blacks of distant objects.
Multiply*

It can be used to brighten or darken an image, or to fix a color cast. In maths, Multiply has no
effect upon zero (black). Hence, the Multiply node will have no effect on the blacks of an image.

Clamp
The Clamp node, like the ColorLookup node, is not explicitly designed to provide feedback on
images, however it can easily be used to do so. It functions in much the same way as the ClipTest
node: it flattens out the user-defined lower and upper lightness range of the image and, if you
tick MinClampTo and MaxClampTo, can replace these values with user defined colors. Properly
used it can provide clearer information than the ClipTest node.

ColorLookup*
A color lookup is what image editors Curves tool does. It is a very powerful tool, capable of
replicating the function of many other color nodes. Its disadvantage is that it requires more
processing than many of those nodes. The curve of a color lookup can also be a bit more difficult
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 to read than nodes featuring sliders

ColorSpace
Engineers think of color as existing in things called spaces which are mathematical, 3D models
the purpose of which is to organise them. Different color spaces serve different purposes: some are
meant for printing, some are meant for screen-based work, some are meant for TV. The ColorSpace
can move an image from one color space to another. The neat thing about this is that it makes it
possible to use channels from exotic color spaces as masks to simple RGB operations or to perform
adjustments on images to produce results that would have been impossible in ordinary RGB space.
The workflow is: convert from Natron default Linear color space into the color space of your choice,
perform your funky magic, then convert back to linear. The saturation channel of HSL can, for
example, have a contrast adjustment applied to it which could desaturate the less saturated parts of an
image and super saturate the remainder. Woot! Try that in Photoshop! Lab color space is another
useful fellow. It is the quantum physics of the color world and I shall but kiss the shadow of it’s vast
and complex form. The fascinating thing about this space is that it separates the lightness values of
an image (the L channel) from it’s hue and saturation (the a and b channel combined). HSL also does
this but not nearly so well. You can take the a and b and move them into those of another image. The
effect of this is similar to image editors hue blend mode. I have found it useful to augment the
colorfulness of a dull sky by using the blurred color values from a vivid sunset. Try also blurring the
a and b channels. This will blur only the hue and saturation components of an image and leave its
lightness values alone. A novel use for the ColorSpace node can be found in the Assets page (see the
Double Rainbows asset).
ColorCorrect*
Artists have for thousands of years been separating the lightness values of their paintings into
three bands: shadows, midtones and highlights. The ColorCorrect node is a collection of
operations that not only can effect the entire image but can address separately these three ranges

Gamma
This raises or lowers the middle-ish point of the color curve. The default value is one, with
smaller numbers darkening the lower registers and higher numbers lightening them. There is a
Gamma node but I find that stand-alone gamma adjustments are best done using ColorLookup so
as to give you flexibility over where the ‘grab point‘ of your curve is. Both ColorCorrect and
Grade have built in Gamma value sliders.

Grade*
This node is a collection of operations that combine to work upon the lightness and hue values
of an image. It is mostly a fixer: used for correcting and matching, though of course it can also
be used for more aesthetically lavish purposes.

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Histogram
HueCorrect*

This can be a very tricky node to get to know. We can conclude that the perception of the
amount of hue within a color (its chroma) is linked to two things: saturation and lightness. When
adjusting color it is important to have separate control over these values, which is something
that the HueCorrect node offers. This effect it masks by two further values: hue and
saturation. Its interface offers control over nine values:
Saturation (sat) This can change the saturation value of an image, with respect to particular
regions of hue.
Luminance (lum) This can change the luminosity (i.e. brightness) value of an image, with respect
to particular regions of hue.
Luminance components (red, blue, green) This can change the r, g and b channels of an image,
with respect to particular regions of hue.
Suppression (r_sup, g_sup, b_sup) This is similar to adjusting the luminance components, but
instead of nullifying them (replacing them with black), replace them with white.

Saturation threshold (sat_thrsh) This only effects the image if first the ‘Luminance’ or
‘Luminance components’ have been adjusted. Adjustments to this value will act as ‘per hue’
saturation level mask to the effect.

HSVTool
The HSVTool has three functions: Color replacement, Color adjust, Hue keyer

Saturation*
A color becomes a grey if its RGB values are all identical. The Saturation node desaturates an
image by averaging its RGB channels. More localized control over saturation is offered by the
HueCorrectnode.

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: USING CHANNELS

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
CHANNEL NODES
The following sections contain documentation about every node in the Channel group. Node
groups are available by clicking on buttons in the left toolbar, or by right-clicking the mouse in
the Node Graph area

 . Shuffle node

SHUFFLE NODE

This documentation is for version 3.0 of Shuffle ([Link]).

Description
Rearrange channels from one or two inputs and/or convert to different bit depth or components.
No colorspace conversion is done (mapping is linear, even for 8-bit and 16-bit types).

Input

optional Input Description

B Yes

A Yes

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CONTROLS

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RESULT:
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 [Link]
DATE: MERGING IMAGES

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
MERGING IMAGES
With the merge node you can control how your images are combined.

LAYERING IMAGES TOGETHER WITH THE MERGE NODE

1. Select Merge > Merge (or press M in the Node Graph) to insert a Merge node after the
images you want to layer together.
2. Connect your images to the Merge node’s A and B inputs.

3. Connect a Viewer to the output of the Merge node so you can see the effect of your merge
operation.

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 4. In the Merge node’s controls, select how you want to layer the images together from the
operation dropdown menu. The most common operation is over, which layers input A over input
B according to the alpha of input A. Just click through the various operations to figure out what
they are doing.

5. Set which input’s bounding box you want to use for the Merge output:

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• union - resize the output b box to fit both input bboxes completely.
• intersection - use only those parts of the image where the input bboxes overlap.

• A or B - use the selected input’s bbox for the output.

6. With using the A Channels and B Channels checkboxes you may select which color and
alpha channels to use and to output.
7. The Mix slider is used to fade/mix in the image from input A.
Note

A is always the foreground layer. B is always the background layer.

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: USING ROTOPAINT

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
USING ROTO / ROTOPAINT
Natron features a vector-based RotoPaint node for help with tasks like rotoscoping, rig removal,
garbage matting, and dustbusting. You can draw Bezier and B-Spline shapes with individual and
layer group attributes, including per-point and global feather, motion blur, blending modes, and
individual or hierarchical 2D transformations.

Roto or RotoPaint?
There are two similar nodes in Natron for rotoscoping, Roto and RotoPaint. The main difference
between these two is that you can only create and edit Bezier and B-spline shapes with Roto,
while RotoPaint allows you to draw paint strokes too with various brushes. So the Roto node is
an optimal choice if you’re doing rotoscoping only, whereas RotoPaint gives you a broader scale
of tools to use.
All tools and controls in the Roto node work the same way as they do in the RotoPaint node.

Roto (Mask)
You can use Roto for masking things, similar to mask tools on other known VFX software. In the
following example we will mask the person in the picture:
1. Insert a Merge node.

2. Insert a Roto node.

3. Plug the B pipe of the Merge node to the footage.

4. Plug the A pipe into Roto node.

5. Double click the Merge node, in the Poperties panel under Operation select: mask and make
sure that all A Channels are ticked (This is the first thing to double check if the result is not as
expected!).

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6. Double click Roto node and in the Viewer’s left side apears a menu, select Bezier tool.

7. Draw your Bezier directly in the viewer. While holding the mouse it draws curved points,
when just clicking it draws edges. Try it yourself to get the feeling. 8. Close your Bezier with
hitting Enter or clicking the first point drawn:

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9. To feather some parts, you can drag the red handle lines. To feather everything just add a Blur
node between Roto and Merge.
10. To animate the mask, just move the cursor in the Timeline, then move your mask, it will
Keyframe automatically.

Roto (Stencil)
If you want to invert the mask:

1. Change the Operation in Merge node to: Stencil

RotoPaint (Paint)
The RotoPaint node gives you a broader scale of tools to use than Roto, though many of the
controls are shared across both nodes. As with the Roto node, you should use the Viewer
tools to create shapes and paint strokes, and then edit them using the control panel.

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: PERFORMANCE TRACKING AND STABILIZATION

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
TRACKING AND STABILIZING WORKFLOW SUMMARY
In order to track a planar shape and move a Roto mask or a texture corresponding to that
shape
: • Track some points inside your mask (shape)

• In the Transform tab, set the transform to CornerPin and to match-move

• Disable the CornerPin and set the from points of the corner pin at the reference
frame where you want your object to move in (basically the bounding box of the shape to
track)
• Export to CornerPin
• Append your CornerPin to the Roto node

In a future version we will have a planar tracker that will do that automatically for you in a
single click.

DETAILED USAGE

To link parameters in Natron, it is the same as in Nuke except that you drag and drop the
widget of a parameter onto another one by holding the control key (or cmd on macOS).
The tracker works differently than the Nuke tracker regarding the “Transform” part. For the
tracking itself, almost everything is the same. Basically, in Nuke they can only output a
CornerPin with exactly 4 points, and they map 1 track to each corner of the CornerPin. For
the Transform node they may use 1 (translation only), 2, or N points to find the final
transformation, however that will never be something other than a similarity, which means
that it cannot handle perspective deformation.
In Natron, we offer the possibility to compute a CornerPin with N points, that is an

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homography, which encompasses all distortion-free perspective transforms.
This is much better, because the more tracks you use to compute that CornerPin, the more
robust it will [Link] homography is typically used to contain information about a perspective
deformation, whereas a similarity is more constrained: a similarity is translation, rotation
and uniform scale.
In The Transform tab, this is what we call “the model”. Basically, the problem we are trying
to solve is to fit a model (i.e. similarity or homography) so it is the closest to the N point
correspondences. Each correspondence is the position of a track at the reference frame and its
position at the tracked time.

Hence the more correspondences you have (i.e. the more tracks), the more robust the
homography is in the region where you tracked features.

The Fitting error parameter (in the Transform tab) is an indication of how much difference
there is in pixels between the reference point on which we applied the computed
transformation and the original tracked point. This is the RMS (root mean square) error
across all tracks, and gives an estimate of the quality of the model found in pixel units.
For each tracked frame, the correspondences we use to compute the CornerPin are the tracks
that are enabled at this frame (i.e. the Enabled parameter is checked at this time) and that
have a keyframe on the center (i.e. they successfully tracked).
When you press Compute, it computes the model (CornerPin/Transform) with all the tracks
that meet the aforementioned requirements over all keyframes.
When Compute Transform Automatically is checked, whenever a parameter that has an
effect on the output model is changed, this will recompute the Corner/Pin transform over all
keyframes again.

The parameters that have an effect on the output model are:

• The motion type
• The Transform Type (i.e. Similarity or Homography)
• The Reference Frame

• Jitter Period

• Smooth: this can be used to smooth the resulting curve to remove some of the noise
in the high frequencies of the CornerPin/Transform. Note that in “Add Jitter” mode, you can
increase High frequencies to simulate a camera shake that follows the original camera
movements.

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 • Robust model: this is quite complicated, but in short: When trying to find a model
that best fits all correspondences, you may have correspondences that are just wrong (bad
tracking for example). These bad correspondences are called outliers, and this parameter when
checked tells we should not take into account those outliers to compute the final model. In
most cases this should be checked. However sometimes, the user may have for example
required to compute an homography (i.e. CornerPin), but the given tracked points
(correspondences) just cannot make-up an homography. In this case, if the parameter were to
be checked, it would fail to compute a model. If you uncheck this, it will take into account all
the points and compute a model that averages the motion of all correspondences.
Also when Compute Transform Automatically is checked, the model will be computed
automatically when the tracking ends.
We cannot compute the model after each track step (i.e. during tracking) because the model
at each frame depends on the model at other frames since we may smooth the curve or add
jitter.
So all in all it works differently than Nuke, the whole transformation computation can be
more robust and happens as a second pass after the tracking is actually done.
One last thing: to compute the CornerPin in the “Transform” tab of the tracker, the to points
are computed using the from points as reference.
Basically, what happens is that the tracking outputs a transformation matrix at each frame.
Then when computing the model, this matrix is applied to the from points at each frame in
order to obtain the to points.

So if you were to change the reference points (i.e. the from points) with the Set to input RoD
for example, then you would need to recompute the model at all frames, because the to points
would just not be the same.
The work is usually done in two steps:

• First, disable the CornerPin so that even if the viewer is connected to the Tracker there
is no deformation going on, and set the from points to be the RoD (bounding box) of the
Roto shape at the reference frame.
• Then, export the CornerPin. It just links the parameters of the CornerPin to the ones in
the tracker, so if you change something in the tracker transform tab the changes will reflect
onto the CornerPin.

Basically, what the Planar tracker will do in the future is automatically do all the steps for
you: it will place markers inside the mask for you, track them and output a CornerPin from
the bounding box of the roto shape.

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: TRANSFORMING ELEMENTS

AIM:

TRANSFORMING ELEMENTS
Transform nodes are used to deal with translation, rotation, and scale.

TRANSFORMING IMAGES
1. Select Transform > Transform (or press T in the Node Graph) to insert a Transform node
after the image you want to transform.

2. On the viewer there will appear a control element called “Gizmo” (the circle with the
crosshairs). Use your mouse within the “Gizmo” to scale, rotate, skew and move your image.
Just hover with the mouse over the crosshairs or the circle of the “Gizmo” to quickly select
the operation you need.
3. In the Controls Panel you can also input your values by typing in numbers, highlighting
the value and scrolling the middle mouse wheel, or dragging the sliders (with CTRL pressed
the slider reacts in a higher resolution).

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CORNER PIN IMAGES

1. Select Transform > Corner Pin to map the position of the four corners of an image.

2. Now you can move the corners directly with the mouse or enter values in the Controls
Panel.

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: STEREOSCOPIC COMPOSITING

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
IMPORTING STEREOSCOPIC SEQUENCES
When creating a new project in Natron, by default there is a single view present. It is called the
“Main” view.

You can add, remove and rename views as desired. Clicking the “Setup views for stereo”
button will make exactly 2 views named “Left” and “Right”.
Upon importing an EXR file containing multiple views within the file, Natron will prompt
you to create the appropriate views in the project:

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If clicking yes, Natron will create the missing views in the project:

You can remove the “Main” view if needed (in our case it does not make sense to leave it in
the project). You can do so by clicking either Remove and selecting the “Main” view or
clicking “Setup views for stereo”:

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The Read node will have a special “V” mark on its top-left corner, indicating that it has
multiple views available. When hovering the “V” indicator with the mouse, more information
is available regarding which views are present in this Read node

Hovering your mouse over the Output Layer parameter will detail which layer is available in
which view:

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When the project has multiple views available, each viewer will have a drop-down with
available views. You can select with view to display:

If we take a look at our Read node’s properties, you can see that we have 2 layers in this file:
RGBA and depth. Layers may sometimes not be present in all views in the file, but the Read
node will show the union of all layers available across all views:

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JOINING SEPARATE VIEWS
In Natron you can join different simple-view files to a multiple-view stream by using the
JoinViews node, like this:

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EXPORTING STEREOSCOPIC SEQUENCES
Exporting multi-view files in Natron can be done in multiple ways: Either you want to have
a separate file for each view, or you want all views to be in the same file. The latter is only
supported by the EXR file format. When exporting to EXR, the Write node properties panel
will have an extra “Views” parameter:

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This is quite straight-forward: you can select which views you decide to export.
You can also select which layer you would like to export:

The “All” choice is only available for the EXR and TIFF file formats which allow embedding
more than 1 layer per-file.
Another interesting parameter controls how the EXR/TIFF file is written, this is the “Parts”
parameter:

When set to “Single Part”, the Write node will aggregate all views requested to render in a
single “part” of the file. Single-part files are what is written by OpenEXR 1. x applications,
thus selecting “Single Part” ensures compatibility with other applications that do not support
OpenEXR 2.
When set to “Split Views”, all views will be scattered in different parts of the file. The
resulting file will only be readable in applications that support OpenEXR 2 but with the
advantage of being faster to read than the single-part files. Note that if you select “All” layers
to render all layers will be aggregated for each view.
When set to “Split Views, Layers” each layer of each view will be written to a separate part,
ensuring EXR is optimized for decoding speed, though the file will be larger.

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WRITING TO SEPARATE FILES
You can choose to export views to a separate file by adding a %v (which will expand to the
letter ‘l’ or ‘r’) or %V (which will expand to the word “left” or “right”) to the output
filename:

In that case, the “Views” parameter will no longer be available. This is how you should
proceed if you want to output multiple views but do not want to write EXR’s.
By default for files that do not support multi-view (i.e.: anything besides EXR), if requesting
to write multiple views to the same file, Natron will only write the first view in the project’s
views. If you do not want to render all views but a specific one, you can use a “OneView”
node before your Write node to specify which view you would like to write out:

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: COLOR MANAGEMENT

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
Color Management
Color management is one of the most important tools that an artist can use. It allows an artist
to make sure that an image stays the same from rendering, to saving, to post-processing.
Color management also allows an artist to tweak things like exposure, gamma, or the overall
color grade.

Different views and exposures of the same render.

To achieve color management in Blender, the OpenColorIO (OCIO) library has been
integrated into Blender. This library offers fine control over different LUT along with
integrating your own set of color profiles to keep your work linearized with other software.

Scene Linear Color Space

For correct results, different color spaces are needed for rendering display and storage of
images. Rendering and compositing is best done in scene linear color space, which
corresponds more closely to nature, and makes computations more physically accurate.

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An example of a linear workflow.
If the colors are linear, it means that if in reality, we double the number of photons, the
color values are also doubled. Put another way, if we have two photos/renders each with one
of two lights on, and add those images together, the result would be the same as a
render/photo with both lights on. It follows that such a radiometrically linear space is best for
photorealistic rendering and compositing.

However, these values do not directly correspond to human perception or the way display
devices work and image files are often stored in different color spaces, so we have to take
care to do the right conversion into and out of this linear color space.

Settings

Reference
Panel: Properties editor ‣ Scene ‣ Color Management

Scene settings for color management.

Display
Correct display of renders requires a conversion to the display device color space, which can
be configured here. A computer monitor works differently from a digital cinema projector
HDTV. The scene properties have these settings:

Display Device
The device that the image is being viewed on.

Most computer monitors are configured for the sRGB color space, and so when working on a
computer usually this option should just be left to the default. It would typically be changed

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 when viewing the image on another display device connected to the computer, or when
writing out image files intended to be displayed on another device.
Rec709 is commonly used for HDTVs, while XYZ and DCI-P3 are common for digital
projectors.

Color management can be disabled by setting the device to None.

Conversion from linear to display device space.

Render
There is also an artistic choice to be made for renders. Partially that is because display
devices cannot display the full spectrum of colors and only have limited brightness, so we
can squeeze the colors to fit in the gamut of the device. Besides that, it can also be useful to
give the renders a particular look, e.g. as if they have been printed on real film.
Another common use case is when you want to inspect renders, to see details in dark
shadows or bright highlights, or identify render errors. Such settings would be only used
temporarily and not get used for final renders.

View
These are different ways to view the image on the same display device.

Default
Does no extra conversion besides the conversion for the display device.

Filmic
For more photorealistic results and better handling of high dynamic range. The contrast can
be adjusted by changing the Look option for the Filmic view transform.

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RRT
Uses the ACES Reference Rendering Transform, to simulate a film-like look.

Film
Uses a technique known as film emulation to give renders a look similar to what might be
expected from a film-based camera. This is usually done by crushing the blacks and
decreasing the contrast of the image.

Raw
Intended for inspecting the image but not for final export. Raw gives the image without any
color space conversion.

Log
Intended for inspecting the image but not for final export. Log works similar to Raw but
gives a more “flat” view of the image without very dark or light areas.

False Color
Shows a heat map of image intensities, to visualize the dynamic range.

Exposure
Used to control the image brightness (in stops) applied before color space conversion. It is
calculated as
follows: output_value=render_value×2(exposure)𝑢𝑡𝑝𝑢𝑡_𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒=𝑟𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟_𝑣𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑒×2(𝑒𝑥𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑢𝑟
𝑒)

Gamma
Extra gamma correction applied after color space conversion. Note that the default sRGB or
Rec709 color space conversions already include a gamma correction of approximately 2.2
(except the Raw and Log views), so this would be applied in addition to that.

Look
Choose an artistic effect from a set of measured film response data which roughly emulates
the look of certain film types. Applied before color space conversion.

Use Curves
Adjust RGB Curves to control image colors before color space conversion. Read more about
using the Curve Widget.

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Color Space
The color space that the Sequencer operates in. By default, the Sequencer operates in sRGB
space, but it can also be set to work in Linear space like the Compositing nodes, or another
color space. Different color spaces will give different results for color correction, crossfades,
and other operations.

Image Files

When loading and saving media formats it is important to have color management in mind.
File formats such as PNG or JPEG will typically store colors in a color space ready for
display, not in a linear space. When they are, for example, used as textures in renders, they
need to be converted to linear first, and when saving renders for display on the web, they also
need to be converted to a display space. Other file formats like OpenEXR store linear color
spaces and as such are useful as intermediate files in production.

When working with image files, the default color space is usually the right one. If this is not
the case, the color space of the image file can be configured in the image settings. A common
situation where manual changes are needed is when working with or baking normal maps or
displacement maps, for example. Such maps do not actually store colors, just data encoded as
colors. In such cases, they should be marked as Non-Color Data.
Image data-blocks will always store float buffers in memory in the scene linear color space,
while a byte buffer in memory and files in a drive are stored in the color space specified with
this setting:

Color Space
The color space of the image file on a drive. This depends on the file format, for example,
PNG or JPEG images are often stored in sRGB, while OpenEXR images are stored in a
linear color space. Some images such as normal, bump or stencil maps do not strictly contain
‘colors’, and on such values, no color space conversion should ever be applied. For such
images, the color space should be set to None.

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 Image settings for color management.
By default only renders are displayed and saved with the render view transformations
applied. These are the Render Result and Viewer image data-blocks, and the files saved
directly to a drive with the Render Animation operator. However, when loading a render
saved to an intermediate OpenEXR file, Blender cannot detect automatically that this is a
render (it could be e.g. an image texture or displacement map). We need to specify that this is
a render and that we want the transformations applied, with these two settings:

View as Render
Display the image data-block (not only renders) with view transform, exposure, gamma,
RGB curves applied. Useful for viewing rendered frames in linear OpenEXR files the same
as when rendering them directly.

Save as Render
Option in the image save operator to apply the view transform, exposure, gamma, RGB
curves. This is useful for saving linear OpenEXR to e.g. PNG or JPEG files in display space.
OpenColorIO Configuration
Blender comes with a standard OpenColorIO configuration that contains a number of useful
display devices and view transforms. The reference linear color space used is the linear color
space with Rec. 709 chromaticities and D65 white point.

However, OpenColorIO was also designed to give a consistent user experience

across multiple applications, and for this, a single shared configuration file can be used.
Blender will use the standard OCIO environment variable to read an OpenColorIO
configuration other than the default Blender one. More information about how to set up such
a workflow can be found on the OpenColorIO website.

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 We currently use the following color space rules:

scene_linear
Color space used for rendering, compositing, and storing all float precision images in
memory.

default_sequencer
Default color space for the Sequencer, scene_linear if not specified.

default_byte
Default color space for byte precision images and files, texture_paint if not specified.

default_float
Default color space for float precision images and files, scene_linear if not specified.

The standard Blender configuration also includes some support for ACES (code and
documentation), even though we have a different linear color space. It is possible to load and
save EXR files with the Linear ACES color space, and the RRT view transform can be used
to view images with their standard display transform. However, the ACES gamut is larger
than the Rec. 709 gamut, so for best results, an ACES specific configuration file should be
used. OpenColorIO provides an ACES configuration file, though it may need a few more
tweaks to be usable in production.

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 [Link]
DATE: VIGNETTE SETUP IN BLENDER COMPOSITOR

AIM:

PROCEDURE:

Vignette setup in Blender compositor

To create a vignette effect in Blender follow these steps:
 Go to the compositing workspace and enable use nodes.

 Go to Add > Search > Ellipse Mask and place it in the graph, add a blur and mix node the
same way.
 Connect the Ellipse Mask Mask out to the Blur image input. Connect the Blur image out
to the second input of the mix node. Connect the render layer image out to the first input
of the mix node. Connect the mix image out to the composite image in.
 Set the mix mode to multiply and the blur mode to Fast Gaussian.

 Adjust the Ellipse Mask width and height until they match the image size or use Width 1
Height 0.5625. Use the same value for blur x and y to smooth out the vignette or use 500
for both. Use the multiply factor to adjust the intensity of the vignette or use 0.5

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In the rest of this article, we'll go into more detail about vignette and why you should use it. will
also go over some positives and negatives. Finally, we'll go over how to refine this down to one
easily adjustable node.

Why should you use a vignette?

Vignette can help with the look of a render as well as helping us guide the viewers eyes towards
a point of interest. Vignette can also be helpful for making a render look realistic.
While Vignette can look good it's important not to make it too intense or so subtle that it isn't
visible. If the vignette is too intense it'll become distracting and take away from the render. At the
same time we need to make sure it's intense enough to actually be visible.
In the guide we go over how to add a vignette in the compositor but this isn't strictly necessary
for creating a vignette effect. We can also create a natural vignette in the scene by lighting it so
that the focal point is brighter than it's surroundings.

A vignette setup with more control

There are a few changes we can make to our node setup to make our vignette easier to control
and more simplified.
Feel free to reorganize the inputs or rename them to whatever you think makes the most sense in
the examples below. Make sure to keep the mix nodes order the same as they are in the example
though or the vignette will not work properly.

Setting up viewer node

 Go to Add > Search > Viewer and place the node in the graph.

 Take the output that's going to the Composite Image in and connect it to the viewer image
in so that they are both connected.
Note that we'll need to render the scene first before the viewer will become active.

Creating a node group

To create a group follow these steps:

 Hold shift and right click on a node to select it

 Keep holding shift and right click on another node to add it to the selection. Do this for
the Ellipse Mask, Blur, and Mix nodes.
 Once you have all of these nodes selected Press Ctrl + G to group the nodes.

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 Press N to open the properties window on the right then go to the view tab and make sure
backdrop is enabled and then click on fit.

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Once our nodes are grouped we can press tab to exit the group and then if we select the group
node and press tab we can enter the group again.
Each input we add inside of the group will show on the node just like the other nodes in Blender.
This lets us control a bunch of different variables directly from the group node instead of having
to go inside it adjust each node in the group individually.

Adjusting vignette scale

To make the scale of the vignette adjustable follow these steps:

 Inside of the group go to Add > Search > Scale and place it in the graph. Connect the
Ellipse mask mask out to the scale Image in then connect the scale Image out to the Blur
image in.
 find the group input image out, under this you should see a gray unlabeled node. drag
from this node to the Scale X value.
 Press N to bring up the properties panel on the right if it isn't open already then go to
Group > Inputs and select X and change the name to scale.
 Drag from the scale node on our group input to the Y value of the Scale node so that both
the X and Y are controlled by the scale value.
 drag from the unlabeled gray node on the group input to the size input on the Blur node.

 In the properties panel rename the new input to Blur size.

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The reason we use a scale node to set this up is because the mask node doesn't let us adjust the
with and height using its inputs. The scale node works just fine for this though and basically
achieves the same effect.
We also set the blur node size in x and y to 500 so that the blur is already close to what would be
used and we can use the size value for fine adjustment. Feel free to change this if it isn't intuitive.

Changing vignette color and intensity

 inside the group disconnect the blur node image out and connect the group input image to
the second input of the mix node.
 Drag from the unlabeled gray node on the group input to the first input of the mix node.

 Press N to open the properties window and in the group tab rename the input we just
created to Color.
 Go to Add > Search > Mix and place it in the graph.

 Drag from the unlabeled node on the group input to the factor input of the new mix node.
Connect the Blur Image out to the second image in of the new mix node on the first input
click on the color and in HSV make sure the value is set to 1.
 In the properties window rename the new input to Intensity.

 Drag the new mix node out to the original mix nodes factor input.

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Note that in this example I used reroute nodes to organize the graph a bit. I also used their label
text to show where each wire is coming from when needed.

With everything setup now we've simplified this effect down to one node that we can easily
adjust and we can use reuse in multiple renders.

Possible adjustments for the node group

One thing we could change about this setup is using a box mask instead of an ellipse mask. This
is up to you but if you want a vignette effect that surrounds the whole image use the box mask
node. Just make sure to copy over the settings and connect it to the same inputs.

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For the blur we set the mode to Fast Gaussian, we can achieve a better quality blur by setting this
back to Gaussian but in the example, we use fast since we're working with such large blur values
that would take longer to process if we had the mode set to Gaussian.
We can also just set it back to Gaussian once we're ready for the final render and we're done
previewing changes.

Final thoughts
Vignette can be a nice artistic effect to add to a render, it can also help with realism. With the
example above we can add this effect directly in Blender.
The basic example we setup in the beginning is pretty versatile and should be adjustable enough
to work in most scenes.
With the more adjustable vignette setup we can fine tune it even more if needed and it should be
much more reusable and versatile. We could also expand on the example setup to achieve
whatever kind of look we're going for.

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RESULT:

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[Link] CALM-FX
[Link]
DATE:
DATE: CALM-FX
PROCEDURE:
AIM:

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RESULT:

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 [Link]
DATE: MULTILAYER RENDERING

AIM:

PROCEDURE:
Render Layers
Render layers allow you to render your scene in separate layers, usually with the intention of
compositing them back together afterwards.
This can be useful for several purposes, such as color correcting certain elements differently,
blurring the foreground as a fast manual method of creating DoF or reducing the render quality
for unimportant objects.
Using Render Layers can also save you from having to re-render your entire image each time
you change something, allowing you to instead re-render only the layer(s) that you need.
Layer List

.This is a list of all the Render Layers in the current scene.

Only layers which are enabled (checkbox on right is ticked) will be rendered. If the pin icon at
the bottom right of the list is enabled, only the active (highlighted) layer will be rendered.

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Render Layers can be added and removed using the + and - buttons on the right, and existing
years can be renamed by double-clicking on their name

Layer Panel

Layer panel
The Layer Panel shows the settings of the active Render Layer from the list above.

You can select multiple layers using Shift-LMB .

Scene
The Scene Layers, showing which are currently visible and will be rendered.

Layer
The Scene Layers are associated with the active Render Layer. Objects in those Scene Layers
will be rendered in that Render Layer. When an object is in the Scene Layers but not the Render
Layer, it will still cast shadows and be visible in reflections, so it is still indirectly visible.

Mask Layer
Objects on these will mask out other objects appearing behind them. This can be used for
compositing objects into footage, to take into account objects in front of the virtual objects
blocking the view from the camera.
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Material Override
Overrides all material settings to use the Material chosen here.

Examples of where this might be used:

• To check lighting by using a plain diffuse material on all objects.

• Render a wireframe of the scene.
• Create a custom render pass such as an anti-aliased matte or global coordinates.

USAGE
Each Render Layer has an associated set of Scene Layers. Objects which are on one of the
associated Scene Layers are shown in that Render Layer, as long as that Scene Layer is also
visible.

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RESULT:

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