5D Cyborg was there to mix-up things before unfortunately succumbing to a premature end. So let’s timewarp back to the age of the Cyborg.

Once upon a time…2001

When you look at the high-end VFX market of the late 1990 and early 2000s, there were two very distinct paradigms facing each other. On the one side you had very expensive high end turnkey systems, such as Quantel Henry or Discreet Flame & Inferno. Those did not only have a really astronomical price tag, they were also closed off systems. Quantels Henry for example ran on proprietary hardware.

On the other side you had an emerging market of software-only packages that were designed to run on off-the shelf hardware. While still pricey by today’s standards, those packages like Combustion, After Effects and Shake were only a fraction of the cost of the high-end counterparts, but they came at a snail-pace rendering speed and sometimes prohibitive limitations on resolutions and bit depth.

Enter the Masher

But, apart from the high price tag, the high-end systems had another predicament they were in – lack of connectivity. Especially Henry suffered from that and tried to find solutions to open up the system while at the same time sticking with its proprietary approach. One of these solutions was the 5D Masher. 5D Solutions at that time was a plug-in developer, supplying plug-ins for a range of hosts – this was years before OFX and basically every new point release of software on the host application required a plugin update as well. And Quantel was a special case as its proprietary hardware didn’t allow it to run third-party plug-ins. 5D came up with a very unique solution. They got a rack-mountable PC workstation – build by Boxx Solutions – with a video I/O that interfaced with the Quantel system and could basically be remote controlled from there, sending off a clip via the video I/O to that workstation, called the 5D Masher. On the masher it would be processed in the background and then be send back to the host system, ready to be inserted into your composite or timeline.

But there was a very tight bottleneck: The whole communication between the Quantel System and the Masher had to be built around Javascript. And while the processing speed of the Masher itself was acceptable, the update speed on the Quantel system to set up a plug-in was atrociously slow. Also, the artist was forced to set up only one plug-in at a time. Furthermore, plug-in setups had to be saved separately, basically undermining the whole Quantel concept of clip history. In the end, as explained in our previous look back at the Henry, the 5D Masher was a stopgap measure that was only slowing down the inevitable fall of the proprietary solutions from Quantel.

But the Masher also started something new at 5D Solutions: The British company got a lot of client feedback on the masher and that in essence was: Give us a Masher with a monitor and a User Interface so that we can put it next to our Finishing System. Now this part of the story might be a little bit of a retroactive legend building, but what we saw next from 5D was pretty much that: The 5D Cyborg.

Unleashing the Cyborg

In that first version it had basic 2D compositing capabilities and most of the 5D Monsters Plugins. In that iteration it couldn’t do much more than a Henry with a Masher attached but, wow, it could do that fast. The Cyborg system came – like Henry or Flame – as a turnkey solution. For that, 5D once again partnered up with Boxx Solutions and shipped it on a certified Windows NT Workstation with a Wildcat 3 Graphics Card by 3D Labs. Even the Sony 24” Monitor and the Wacom Tablet and Pen were part of that turnkey solution.

I started my very first employment as a junior Henry Artist at “Das Werk” in Frankfurt in the Summer of 2001. At that time “Das Werk” was a beta site for 5D Cyborg and Thomas Maier, now a respected colorist, was taking care of the beta as a student intern. Seeing how he was able to very quickly put something together that took me ages to run through the Masher really got me hooked. When he ended his internship I spent every free minute of my time in that beta suite. But unlike Thomas I was a full employee, expected to do my share of jobs. Trying to fit in my ever growing fascination with Cyborg into my daily work schedule was easier than expected. I just started to offload more and more effects work to that Cyborg system. Also, it was a gap I could jump into. I wanted to grow beyond the Quantel systems, but at that time, the only alternative would have been Discreet Inferno. Now those machines were not only expensive, but also fully booked. Also, there was a more-than-healthy rivalry between the Discreet Artists and the Quantel Artists. Back then you were either one or the other: The Quantel Artists were considered grunt workers that took brute-force approaches by the Discreet Artists. In turn the Discreet Artists were thought of as overthinking divas by the Quantel Artists. But in the end it was far easier for me to dig into the machine that nobody else cared about rather than fighting to get some precious screen time on a fully booked Inferno Workstation. Easing me into this was the fact that Cyborg was Windows-based. I knew my way around that OS as opposed to UNIX, which was back then the Infernos OS.

My interest in Cyborg didn’t go unnoticed. As a Junior Artist, I often sat in the passenger seat of client-attended Henry sessions. With my knowledge of Cyborg I could apply myself much more. It started with really simple conversion tasks. Load a file sequence into Cyborg and let it play in loop so that we can capture it into Henry. By today’s standards it is unfathomable that a seven-figure workstation was not able to do that on its own in the early 2000s. From there it continued with Rotos, Tracking and of course Plug-Ins. And the senior Henry artists saw the added value. “Das Werk” had four Henry Infinity suites at that time and it was decided to equip two of these suites with a Cyborg System.

The delivery of those two machines coincided with the release of version 2 of the Cyborg software – and this was the time where one could see that 5Ds ambitions were much higher than a simple assist workstation. EDL Conform, 3D Compositing environment and Timeline Editing truly unleashed the Cyborg. It was also at that time that 5D further defined the product line-up: There was a Cyborg S with Standard Definition I/O and just 2D compositing capabilities for roughly € 120.000 and a High Definition version called Cyborg M with all the bells and whistles for € 210.000 – an astronomical sum by today’s standard, but, as Alex Gabrysh wrote in his Cyborg v2 review in Digital Production 2002:04 “No matter which configuration of Cyborg you wish for, the price is a battle cry to competing systems and will definitely shake things up.”  

The 3D environment was blistering fast compared to all the competition out there. It really took advantage of the Wildcat 3 Graphics Card and the software utilizing OpenGL. In that regard 5D was unique – while the hardware was not custom-built like Henry nor the operating system customized like with Discreet, it was not written for generic off-the-shelf hardware either. When you ran Cyborg without that specific card, the 3D environment was much more unresponsive and more on par with the performance of Shake and Combustion at that time.

What makes a Cyborg?

The user interface took its lessons much more from the high end workstations than from the software-only solutions. The interface was clean, had no floating windows and was very clip-centric. Clips could be organized on reels and also edited there. But the real timeline, which was introduced in Version 2, didn’t live on that desktop. Rather, it was sitting right inside the compositing module – called “Create” – and it lived there as a node. This was a revelation. Neither Henry nor Flame/Inferno possessed a multi-layer timeline. Those were only privy to editorial systems at that time which in turn couldn’t deliver broadcast quality. But with a timeline as a node, artists were able to insert effects up and downstream of the edit, host multiple edits in the same compositing set up and change timings of layers while working inside their composite.

Another feature that made Cyborg unique between the two giants of Henry and Flame/Inferno was the native implementation of Primatte. At that time Primatte was so far ahead of its competition and having that right inside of your finishing system was just awesome. But Cyborg also broke new ground in other areas. Already in version 1 it had optical flow functionality quite ahead of its competition. Not only were the results pretty good, it also had a very clever approach to rendering. With Cyborg being clip-centric, the Motion estimation was rendered as a separate clip just once, giving the artist the ability to process multiple versions of a timewarp without going through constant re-Renders. Once again, this is expected behavior today, but at that time, almost all software packages were either rgb or rgba-based. Nuke was the first software to really embrace the concept of multi-channel and really utilize AOVs, and that was made available to the industry only in 2002.

The point tracker inside of Cyborg was far superior to the one in Henry and also the first one that could give the famous discreet tracker a run for its money. Also it came along with the very nice pre-tracking feature, where you could already see a HUD preview of your track while placing the tracker. And the paint module, while not being vector-based and hence destructive, introduced the ability to rotate the canvas either by shortcut or the 4D mouse that shipped with a Wacom tablet at that time. If you think that some of these features sound somewhat familiar, just keep on reading, we will get to that part of the story. 

Making an impression

To describe the impact Cyborg had onto our industry at that time one simply had to walk Hall 7 of the IBC in Amsterdam in 2001. Discreet had a huge booth with multiple workstations and Quantel’s booth doubled the discreet one in size, sporting a stage with seats for up to fifty attendees. Quantel presented its new flagship product, the iQ. While the hardware was impressive, the software was really not there yet, especially in regards to compositing. There were rumors that discreet was working on a new architecture, but it would take until NAB 2002 for Mezzo and Strata to be revealed. And then, near the south wall of Hall 7, was the 5D booth – and that one was crowded. Not for the plugins, not for the swag, but for Cyborg. Cyborg was the buzzword of that show and people talked about this machine being a potential Flame-killer. 

The two Cyborg systems were set up at Das Werk right alongside two of the Henrys. That really kickstarted my involvement in productions. What happened was that a symbiosis formed between the Senior Artist and me as a Junior Artist. While I would introduce them to the capabilities of the Cyborg and a file-based workflow, they would teach me about compositing itself and – even more important back then – the fine art of working with clients. To this day I am still grateful for all things I learned back then and for having such great teachers.

The Cyborg also broadened the spectrum of jobs I could participate in: Unlike Henry, Cyborg was resolution-independent. So when a Barilla Commercial directed by Wim Wenders came in and it was clear that the two Infernos would not be enough compositing power to finish this project in time, the Cyborgs were a welcome addition and I got my very first taste of high-resolution work. And while the crashy Paint module gave me headaches, the crowd replication work we did on that was really something for the twenty-two year old me.

However, not everything was great. With 5D still being a plug-in manufacturer, support for third party plugins was not exactly exuberant. There were no Gen-Arts Sapphire Plugins, neither was there a Cyborg version of the Tinder Tools by The Foundry – Yes, back than The Foundry was still a plug-in company. Versions of Knoll Lens Flare Pack and Digital Arnachy’s Text Arnachy were announced, but…

Stock market disasters, legal battles and new adventures

Out of the blue customers were hit by the news that the 5D closed offices on October 11th, 2002. That was only one month after IBC, where 5D announced a cheaper solution based on Cyborg called Eclypse and previewed the 2.5 version of the Cyborg software. So what has happened? A couple of years before, 5D Solutions sold a totally different part of their business, the printing division, to a company called Global Graphics for 24.7 Million Euro. Most of this amount however, was paid in stocks. During the dot com crisis, these stocks plummeted, but 5D was still liable for taxes on the original price of the stock at the time of the purchase. One could basically call this second degree murder by the stock market. The offices in London, L.A. and Miami were closed and all the assets went into litigation.

At the time I thought my time with Cyborg would now come to a very abrupt end – I was heartbroken. Little did I know that it would take another five years for me to finally part ways with that little monster of a machine. What took much less time was the liquidation of 5D itself. The people responsible for the plug-in division bought the division out of the liquidation mass themselves and founded Speedsix software. For seven years they maintained the Monster plug-in set until they eventually got bought by rival GenArts, known for their set of Sapphire plug-ins, in 2009. It should be another seven years before GenArts, in turn, is bought by Boris FX. While the monsters themselves are no longer around, some of them found their way into the Sapphire’s Suite of plug-ins.

And Cyborg itself? For two months, the user base held its collective breath.There were rumors that Quantel, Thomson, Avid, even Apple might be interested in picking up the reins on Cyborg. In the end, Discreet, by then already part of Autodesk, bought the intellectual property on Cyborg. Naturally, I hoped of course that Quantel would win the bid – but the “best of both worlds” scenario that I envisioned back then might have been a little bit biased. 

Now suddenly Discreet owned the property that was once labelled as a potential Flame-killer. They did what you would expect – kill the product. But, eventually, over the years, some of my more beloved Cyborg features found their way into Autodesk products. It would just take a couple of more years for me to find them there.

Some of the developers and management divided however that this was not the end and founded Assimilate Inc. and build Scratch – a color grading and digital intermediate solution that is still on the market today. While many of us tried to see in Scratch the spiritual successor to Cyborg, it was clearly a very different product aimed at a different task in our industry. The only ones that begged to differ in this matter was Autodesk, who sued Assimilate Inc. in 2008 on the grounds that they allegedly infringed on the Cyborg intellectual property that they purchased back in 2002. The example Autodesk gave was the functionality of a Confirm/Escape button and the concept of a pop-up calculator window. It seemed as petty back then as it does now, as these concepts even back then were not unique to neither Cyborg nor Flame. However, in 2010 Assimilate settled with Autodesk, acknowledging that Cyborg code was actually used in Scratch. 

Not quite dead yet

But the effects of companies getting into rough water and new companies emerging were not limited to software companies. In spring of 2003, while “Das Werk” itself was in chapter 11, a new company emerged, with me being one of their first employees. The company was called “Acht Frankfurt”, and started off with two Henrys, one brand-new Quantel eQ and four Cyborgs. Three of them were actually previously owned by CIS Hollywood and used on the first Season of “Star Trek – Enterprise”. This fact  thrilled me – being a huge Trekkie my whole life – to no end.

So why would a freshly founded company invest in a defunct product? Well, the answer is quite simple: By then all the Artists joining Acht were quite skilled in using Cyborg – we were able to work on these machines from day one. We couldn’t anticipate that these actually held up until October 2007. That was when Acht switched to Autodesk Flame. Up until that point we threw so much work at those machines they were not necessarily designed to do. For Lexus we did a 10:1 master, 5760×576 pixel. In 2005 we actually increased this to almost 8K for a installation for Mercedes Benz. This was something no other workstation could do at the time, most of them being limited by 4k width at the max. We also did a music promo with a runtime of three and a half minutes, containing up to nine layers of bluescreen. Comped by a single artist in nine days. This would not have been possible without the native primatte keyer.

But there were also drawbacks. Cyborg stopped being developed before it reached a critical mass in the industry – hence we had no freelancer base to scale up our workforce. And while we were able to squeeze an impressive number of years out of the system, with it being centered around the Wildcat III, we had no option to increase the performance of those workstations. As long as the jobs were predominantly SD, this was not an issue, but by 2007 it was clear that Acht needed workstations for the HD age.

For me, there was a certain irony that Acht took delivery of the Flame systems that were going to replace the Cyborgs on the very last day I worked for that company. But at my next location, Deli Pictures in Hamburg, i was finally able to get my hands on a Flame and boy, did i find some old friends. A number of features have actually made it into Flame. The concept of a timeline residing inside of the compositing environment, the rotatable canvas in paint and of course the optical flow for slow motions and many more little features showed up.

So what is the legacy of cyborg? In my opinion, it cannot be underestimated how cyborg bridged the gap between the proprietary world of the nineties and the open, networked and connected world we do find ourselves in today. Cyborg entered the scene at just the right time and dared to do things differently. In a relatively short timespan, 5D was able to put together a system that gave the two market leaders a run for their money. Also bear in mind that around that time a lot of companies tried to enter the compositing market. There was Sony’s ill-fated Soccrato, there was Tremor by Nothing real and some more tried. Even the established companies Quantel and Discreet tried to reinvent themselves with new products, and both of them failed as well. Developing a compositing, let alone a finishing application is very hard work. There is a reason why all the major compositing applications out there today reach back for at least thirty years. And for a very brief moment, there was a Cyborg out there who was about to shake all that up. One can only dream what would have been…

The post The Rise and Fall of Cyborg first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Christoph Zapletal.

Disclaimer: A Hollow Flame is a non-commercial fan cinematic. Fallout, Brotherhood of Steel, Vault-Tec and related logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Bethesda Softworks LLC in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Nikita’s family bought their first computer when he was just 10 years old. Like most people living in the 1980s and 1990s, the purchase of a home PC opened up a world of gaming. It was 1999, and the game was Fallout. His infatuation continued, and those who know it are not surprised that it garnered so much praise and has been consistently ranked among the best video games of all time for the past 25 years. After playing the game, Nikita was a completely different boy than before and decided to work as a 3D artist and later as a game designer and game producer. His parents had no idea at the time that their child’s contact with this new technology would have such an impact on his life. When he was thinking about a personal project, he decided to design a tribute to the game.

Why BMD and Blender?

Before Nikita decided on his editing, colour grading and compositing software, he first had to decide how he wanted to create the footage himself. He wanted to create everything in 3D without the luxury of shooting his film in real time. As a hobby filmmaker, he also needed to keep costs as low as possible to make the project financially viable. Fortunately, Blender exists and it was Nikita’s choice for this project.
He only used a small package of branches and some video assets. Apart from that, all cinematic assets (models, textures, animations, mocap, effects) were created just for Hollow Flame – all assets used can be viewed here: bit.ly/hollow_assets

Those familiar with Blender will know that it has a range of compositing features and functionalities. Like Fusion, it is node-based and has a number of features that allow modelling, rendering, comp and post to be performed in the same application. With version 3.5 of Blender, a new feature has also been added to the compositing toolset: a real-time compositor. The fact that compositing can now be done interactively and on the GPU means that the results are almost instantaneous and the efficiency of the creative workflow is greatly accelerated.
However, Nikita decided against using Blender for this part of the workflow and instead opted for DaVinci Resolve with Fusion. DaVinci Resolve and Fusion have a more powerful and comprehensive set of tools that are essential for complex projects. They are also faster and more responsive, which proved to be perfect when editing, colour correcting and compositing shots. Nikita knew that with DaVinci Resolve Studio and Fusion he would have a one-stop shop, and although he had never used Fusion before, he was willing to give it a try, mainly because he had previously found DaVinci Resolve to be very intuitive.
As well as all the editing, colour grading and compositing features, he found the audio editing features of DaVinci Resolve Studio more than adequate. He could have opted for a programme like Adobe Audition, but he found this alternative less intuitive. He also didn’t like the subscription pricing structure and the unnecessarily slow installation process. The ability to consolidate everything into a single application was a big win for Nikita.

Floating Pipeline

Nikita wanted a strong cinematic feel, especially in the area of colour grading. It was important that his files had the high dynamic range required to handle this – for a 32-bit workflow.

For live action filming, videographers can use cameras such as the Alexa, RED or Blackmagic Ursa to record in file formats that support this amount of data. Traditional DSLR cameras like Canon and Nikon can record in a RAW format, which can then be converted to EXR files that can be used in Resolve. In 3D, it works a little differently, but still pretty simple: export directly from Blender to 32-bit EXRs and bring all that beautiful data directly into DaVinci Resolve.

One of the advantages of working in a 3D pipeline is that you can export a lot more data from a 3D application like Blender than just the final rendered image. Nikita took advantage of this by exporting depth and motion blur data. These additional layers to each image were included in each exported EXR file. Once the files were rendered, Nikita was able to bring all of these layers into Resolve Studio to target his grading and post-production effects. Unfortunately, access to these different layers of information is not always possible in traditional live action film projects.

Colour grading

One of the most iconic types of colour grading in the film industry is the contrast of teal and orange. These two colours are particularly popular because they look beautiful in contrast to each other, and Nikita has taken advantage of this. One of the best implementations of this technique in the film is the shot with the industrial fans and the metal bar. The fans on the left and right side of the shots are fiery orange in colour, while the walkway is turquoise. This effect is achieved by pushing the blues into the shadows and the oranges into the highlights. This is something that is very easy to achieve in DaVinci Resolve, and Nikita has used it to great effect.
The debate over whether colour correction is an art or a science continues – some colourists are very much guided by their eye and what feels good for the scene, while others rely on histograms and charts to determine what changes need to be made. Nikita, as an amateur and inexperienced colour grader, did everything by eye.

Using reference images from the original game, he was able to play with curves, colour wheels and other colour adjustments to get something that matched the original game. This is probably most evident towards the end of the film when the monster is bathed in aggressive red light, which is compared to the sickly greenish light that fills the scene outside. This kind of cinematic effect is easy to achieve in Resolve – especially if the artist has spent the necessary render layers to isolate parts of the image.

Post Effects

Fusion in DaVinci Resolve Studio and Fusion Studio are true compositing powerhouses. Nikita used only a small portion of Fusion’s features, but used them effectively. He also utilised a range of post-production effects that took his work to a new level and added layers of depth to his already impressive work. The post-production effects he used were motion blur, film grain, lens distortion, chromatic aberration and a vignette. These effects are easy to add if they are not present in the original material. Rendering these effects in 3D is often very time consuming and when using film cameras it is also difficult to get them perfect.
There are no such problems when adding effects in post-production. Effects can be added or removed and customised for a perfect look and feel. Fusion’s node-based workflow allows for a completely non-destructive choice for any digital production pipeline.

Lessons learnt

The advantage of not having a client was that Nikita could do exactly what he wanted. For hobbyists, these projects offer a high level of experimentation and the flexibility to learn new skills while still in the middle of the project. When a project comes to an end, there are still lessons to be learnt and implemented next time.

Nikita would have chosen to implement a lot more of the post-production effects in DaVinci Resolve Studio with Fusion instead of shooting them with the 3D camera. Effects such as particle effects, volumetrics, steam and smoke can be time consuming and difficult to set up in 3D or on the film set, whereas this is much easier and cheaper in post production.

Conclusion

A Hollow Flame is a rarity: an enthusiastic fan has created a beautiful homage to a game he loves. He skilfully uses Blender and DaVinci Resolve Studio with Fusion to create something truly cinematic. By combining 3D footage, audio, colour grading, compositing and post-production effects, Nikita has created something amazing. His heart and dedication will hopefully inspire other creatives to get their hands on some excellent free tools and try something similar themselves. And now let’s dive into the actual pipeline and creation of “Hollow Flame”!

Resolve/Fusion for Hollow Flame!

Now in the tutorial I want to show you how I used DaVinci Resolve and Fusion to give my short CGI film “Fallout” a cinematic look. I used Blender to create the footage, but this workflow will work with any footage you have created, whether it’s 3D or live action. I rendered a footage in 32-bit, which is ideal for extensive colour grading and post-processing. It provides the necessary data to make significant changes to the colours without unsightly results. Only the best cameras allow output with such a wide dynamic range, but if possible, always record at the highest possible bit rate, then at least you have the best chance of getting good results. In terms of time, I was able to use the Colour tab immediately and make adjustments straight after importing capture sequences. With Fusion, it took a little longer because I’m not familiar with the node system (I mainly used Blender nodes), but I quickly got used to it. After that, colours and post-processing were done in a few minutes. In this tutorial, I assume that the footage is already imported into DaVinci Resolve and ready for colour grading. It’s important to realise that the workflow in DaVinci Resolve is perfect for experimenting with different ideas. With good hardware, the results can be seen quickly and you can make comparisons. I encourage you to play around with the parameters and controls to get a good feel for what’s possible.

Step 1: First steps in colour correction

Now that the files are imported, we can start colour grading. I’m not a professional colourist, but it’s pretty easy to make basic adjustments. You can use colour wheels to do this. First try changing “Contrast”, “Pivot” and “Shadow/Highlight” to adjust the contrast, highlights and shadow intensity. For basic colour correction, use “Log Wheels” to change the colours of the shadows, midtones and highlights separately. Then you can use “Temp” to apply a colour filter to the entire image
Image. Later you can use more sophisticated methods such as colour curves, qualifiers and colour distortion for detailed corrections.

Step 2: Save colour edits

You can save your edits for later use by using the “Still image” function. Simply right-click on the sequence preview and then click on “Still image”. The preset will be saved in the gallery. You can simply drag this preset onto the preview to apply it to the sequence. It’s worth noting that you can experiment with colours on the “Colour” tab without worrying about messing up the image. Simply create a new “Serial Node” and make any changes here. If you delete this node, the standard sequence will still be available to you.

I’m a hobbyist and a novice when it comes to colour correction/grading, so I used my knowledge of colour correction in Photoshop and optimised the colours by eye. To do this, I used “stills” to test colour correction “samples” I had created, but ended up using a LUT as a base, correcting them for brightness/contrast and adding some masks to highlight some important parts of the shots. I worked with a very specific colour management profile, “Blender Filmic”, because I rendered all my shots in Blender with this profile. So before colour grading, I tweaked DaVinci a bit and installed the Blender Filmic
LUT to make sure that the colours in Blender and DaVinci matched.

Step 3: LUTs

LUTs (or Lookup Tables) are sets of predefined colour values. They are easy to use and can give the sequence a specific look in seconds
in seconds. However, it can happen that you spend too much time searching for the “perfect” LUT and end up using some favourite preset that makes the video look very “standard”. I used the LUT “Matilde – Rec709” as a base preset and optimised each clip. You can easily install and use all these LUTs by placing them in the “LUTs” folder on the “Colour” tab.

Step 4: Compare LUTs

You can add different LUTs to different serial nodes and compare them by using the key combination “Ctrl D” to deactivate the node and
to see a different image and adding new serial nodes to optimise each LUT the way you want. You can use colour wheels or curves to edit the LUT, or simply mix two nodes with different LUTs applied – it’s up to you,
the software gives you many options to work with colours.

Step 5: Shot Alignment

We’ve sorted the shots and we like them, but we still need help with the overall consistency. Some shots look too light or too dark. That’s why we need to
align all the shots together. I did this “by eye” with the help of clips in the “Colour” tab. The clips show all the shots of the video in one place, which is
useful – by taking a quick look at them, you can already spot inconsistencies and optimise individual shots. In my case, I needed to emphasise some bright areas. To do this, I used a simple mask, added a “Parallel” node and created a simple mask with the “Curve Mask” tool. Then I edited the node to increase the intensity of the light from the arc.

Step 6: First post effects

Now that we’ve edited and graded our video, what’s next? To make the look of the video even more cinematic, I added some effects that simulate an old, analogue film look. To do this, we need to go to the “Fusion” tab and use special “Fusion” nodes. I used the “Film grain” node to add some grain to my video. Then I used “Lens Distortion” to simulate the imperfections of a real camera lens. In addition, I used “Chromatic Aberration” to simulate a slight colour channel deviation.

Step 7: Even more pose effects!

Following on from the previous step, I scaled the image a little using the “Transform” node. Finally, I used “Vignette” to slightly darken the edges. All these nodes are available in the “Effects” list on the “Fusion” tab. Each node has its properties that can be easily customised, so the result depends entirely on your taste and vision.
And – this also applies to chromatic aberration – I believe that subtle effects create a more believable, natural image. It’s easy to overdo the effects, so I prefer to add just a touch.

DaVinci Resolve is nimble and perfect for quick editing. The nodes of the Fusion and Colour tabs are different entities and work independently, so it’s better to split the colour correction and post effects into different stages.

Step 7.5: Motion Blur

Another post effect I added was motion blur. This one was the most complicated to set up, but a quick note: Normally, motion blur takes a lot of processing power to render directly from the 3D software. I was using the EEVEE renderer in Blender, and although EEVEE is a very fast renderer (almost real time), rendering motion blur takes quite a long time. I therefore decided to add the motion blur only in the comp.
I used Cycles for the motion blur, rendered the V-Pass in Cycles and used it in Fusion to get the motion blur with the “Vector Motion Blur” node, but then used the “Optical Flow” node for most scenes instead because the result was better. I tried to render the motion blur in Eevee, but each frame took ~40 minutes, which was too long (considering I have more than 3500 frames). Basically, I used Eevee instead of Cycles because I wanted to create a good looking cinematic with a real-time renderer. And of course, because Eevee is much faster than Cycles (well, was, until the current time).
I ended up rendering a separate vector layer in Cycles and saving it as a sequence in MultiLayer EXR format. Then I imported the sequence into DaVinci Resolve and added it as a parallel input to Fusion. To use the layers in Resolve (they are called channels here), you need to select the sequence node in Fusion and click on “Inspector” to open the node settings, go to “Channels” and assign the vector layer to the speed channel (both X and Y). Then both inputs need to be routed through the “Vector Motion Blur” node (also in the effects list) to add motion blur to the shot.
This is one option, but there is another. With the built-in functions, you can add motion blur much more easily. Instead of rendering a vector layer and blending it with the sequence, you can simply add the “Optical Flow” node and connect it to the “Vector Motion Blur” node, and voilà – you have motion blur in your shot
blur in your shot! I used the optical flow in almost all of my shots and it saved me a lot of time.

Step 8: Final check

After all these steps, it’s time to render the video. All output settings can be found on the “Deliver” tab. Here you can set the file format, output quality and file path. Resolve offers several presets I recommend rendering your video in the lowest output quality first – just to check that everything fits. I rendered my short film several times in low quality, and each time I found minor errors, fixed them and rendered it again. To speed up this process, you can render individual clips or a custom area to check specific parts of the video.

Step 9: Output

Okay, we’ve checked our project and found no problems. Let’s set it to high quality and render the final result! Set the settings, click “Add to Render Queue” and then click “Render” on the right side of the screen. That’s it! With DaVinci Resolve and Fusion we can cut, colour correct, apply post effects and edit audio in a single package. The fact that it fully supports a 32-bit workflow makes it an unbeatable tool.

The post Fallout becomes cinematic. first appeared on DIGITAL PRODUCTION and was written by Bela Beier.