Color Grading and Compositing in Blender - a Tutorial

[@enrico_jato]

it's only me or the lens distortion node doesn't work for the digital noise?

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Hmm yeah it works as expected in 4.1 but not 4.2. Looks like the new size inference broke the current setup. It sees the solid white input as a "single pixel" (or no pixel), so no jitter is visibly applied. Good news, there is a workaround. Connect your render as an input to that lens distortion node. But in between the render and the lens distortion node, add a Math node, set to "Greater Than" a negative number. Makes it all white. That way, it sees a white image the same resolution as your render, and it'll add noise as expected. Thanks for checking that in 4.2!

[@enrico_jato]

​@@SpencerMagnusson works perfectly tysm, it's a really great video and no one ever talks about this method to make digital noise, is super simple and super effective

[@MarkBTomlinson]

Very nice demo Spencer! The mist pass is something I will be trying out next. Thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge.

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Thank you! Glad you found it useful.

[@fullyleaded]

WOW ! So good to watch a video where someone sounds like they REALLY know what theyre talking about and there is no gapfilling or self promotion or half the screen is taken up with someone's head!

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Thank you so much! I try my best to make tutorials I'd like to watch: to the point 😄

[@slamm600]

This is so much more than I was expecting. Nicely done. I'd be interested in watching more of you breaking down the histogram wave form and vector scope. That's black magic to me but I think it might be key to some neat things.

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Thank you so much! Captain Disillusion does a couple quick breakdowns on his channel (in the CD Color video I believe), but I'll keep that in mind.

[@novacore2776]

Took my render from average to handsome squidward.

[@SpencerMagnusson]

As it should 😂 glad it’s been useful

[@prestonparish]

Solid breakdown! Very helpful, thank you.

[@SpencerMagnusson]

You're welcome! So glad you found it helpful 😊

[@violettracey]

Thank you! This was amazing!

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Thank you so much! Glad you found it helpful.

[@VertexRage]

Very nice tutorial. Thanks for sharing!

[@SpencerMagnusson]

You're welcome! Glad you enjoyed it.

[@3DFella]

4:42 The scopes tab isn't there for me, am I doing something wrong?

[@SpencerMagnusson]

It should appear once you have an image loaded. Works in 4.2 and 4.3.2 (with no add-ons, at least). Make sure you're in the right area type: Image Editor, with the "View" display mode.

[@ic3way355]

This is a really great video ;) learn something today . My question is how can I do the same with my animation/video ?

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Glad you learned something from it! With animation, the principles are still the same in terms of what to add. Ideally you render an image sequence without any compositing, then use the compositor to post-process and render into a new sequence or straight to video. Although I've used Blender's compositor for animation, at that point I'd recommend a dedicated app for grading and compositing like Davinci Resolve or Nuke (both have free versions).

[@ic3way355]

@@SpencerMagnusson thank you for response :) I have a question . How can I fix rendom quit from render ?

[@SpencerMagnusson]

@@ic3way355 good question. If your drivers and hardware are good, it could be a matter of managing your system memory so the render doesn't overwhelm it. Rendering an image sequence can help mitigate this, as your whole render isn't ruined if it fails a frame. If it keeps failing a specific frame, then try reducing your render settings or disable some objects to see what's causing it. Edit: another option is to mitigate this is to render from the terminal/command line, which I actually plan to do a quick tutorial on in the next couple weeks.

[@ic3way355]

@@SpencerMagnusson I already render by image and not video direct . Small scene with a car run animation and some fog nothing big in night .. I use laptop 3070ti .. can’t understand where is the problem to render so long . I using also setting render from tutorial to increase the speed of render .. but still tooo long very long , I can say

[@SpencerMagnusson]

@@ic3way355 volumetric and motion blur can slow it down, but it's honestly hard to know the real reason without more info from seeing the file :/

[@Artist.Verse1]

I got lost at the Historgram part, it's challenging to understand

[@SpencerMagnusson]

@@Artist.Verse1 that's fair, honestly color grading and those diagrams could be their own series of videos. This was more like a brief summary 😄 let me know if you have any specific questions, or feel free to look up other color grading beginner videos first and then come back to this.

[@Artist.Verse1]

@@SpencerMagnusson I actually tried it on my own and I think I can make sense of it but it's hard to understand it enough to explain.

[@MacadamiaDelicious]

I believe the link to the written tutorial is borken - it tells me it can't be reached...

[@SpencerMagnusson]

Hmm I tried it from my phone browser and no issues. I'll add it here, just in case it's any different for you: blenderartists.org/t/tutorial-basic-compositing-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-blenders-compositor/1469805

[@MacadamiaDelicious]

@@SpencerMagnusson Thank you very much! I edited my comment - it works for me in FF but not Chrome, quite strange. Also thank you for the tutorial! I was looking for the written one because I still need to wrap my head around a few of the things but it's very good as far as I can already tell.

[@SpencerMagnusson]

@@MacadamiaDelicious ahh I see. Sorry to hear that! Glad Firefox works at least. I'm using Chrome, but also without extensions or ad blockers (which I've heard the latter breaks some Blenderartist pages, from what I've searched). Worst case, for anyone where the link seems broken, you can search "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blender’s Compositor" on BlenderArtists and you'll find it.

[@cbogishe2521]

tysm for this

[@SpencerMagnusson]

You're very welcome!