Introduction to Compositing in Blender

In this video, ‪@MartinKlekner‬ introduces you to a topic that is not mentioned nearly enough - Blender compositing. In this case, environment compositing, but you can apply this workflow to any of your 3d scenes. We will go through dicing up your scenes into Render Layers, rendering them out and then compositing the image sequences and improving upon the render.
⇨ Master 3D Environments course: bit.ly/b3d-env...
⇨ CG Boost Resources (with Project Files for this tutorial): bit.ly/cgboost...
⇨ Blender Secrets E-book (affiliate): gumroad.com/a/...
CHAPTERS
00:00 - Intro
00:51 - Before you start
01:23 - Scene overview
06:19 - Intro to Render Layers
08:55 - Render Overrides
09:27 - Rendering Render Layers
14:05 - Naming image sequences
14:55 - Render setup and Output settings
20:00 - Denoising in Compositor
22:07 - Intro to Compositor
28:40 - Quick color correction
30:53 - Adding light glow element
33:16 - Vignette
35:25 - Contrast, Blur, Chromatic Aberration
37:48 - Outro
MARTINS SYSTEM
CPU: Intel Core i7-7700K 4,2 Ghz
GPU: GeForce GTX 1070 Ti
RAM: 64 GB
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#b3d #environment #compositing

[@FirstLast_Nba]

Used to scare me, now love it.

[@KingKong19100]

Fucking hell, me too!

[@goatpepperherbaltea7895]

Thanks for this I need to hear it😂

[@OUTTHEMUDVISUAL]

It’s so fire

[@yugorisfriwan]

This is an example of great teaching, actually showing the problems that can happen, why they happen, with a solution for them, very well explained, this is why so many tutorials on the internet just have comments that say "when i click this button nothing happens for me" and i think the reason is most of these tutorials dont show what could go wrong in the process

[@aislingofay2013]

I think after watching 100's of tuts over the last year or so, your vids are some of the best. I took the full course on CGBoost and it's totally worth it. I was ignorantly fighting to render a giant scene all at once so the render layers was a critical step forward for me. Thank you.

[@MartinKlekner]

Great to hear!

[@realjayjobes1849]

Been digging deep into blender compositing the past couple days but it seems like a barely covered topic and last night I said out loud "watch someone is going to upload a tutorial soon just keep digging".👀 Need a masterclass.

[@cazalpine]

Pro teaching, pro teacher. Great learning ! Thank you.

[@drumSick66]

FINALLY a video that has everything I wanted to know in a single, well explained video. Thank you!

[@g_niac]

“i sometimes like to go with what’s nice, rather than what’s correct. i mean, uh, when it comes to compositing… not in real life, of course,” (clears throat) “uh, so…” : masterful subtlety of implication with emphasis. fr i lol’d. this level of comedic class can’t be taught and Martin exemplifies it seamlessly. also this is a super comprehensive vid that is demystifying a lot of the compositing process for me, a novice/intermediate Blender user using lots of open source apps for independent sketch comedy musical and atmospheric weirdness

[@sottozen]

I learned so much here, thanks so much for this great video!

[@TripTilt]

this is solid advice. Thank you! And I love the final cut from the composited mountain to the course page with the same image! Only the indiana Jones Intro can do it better :)

[@I_hu85ghjo]

bro, best compositing tutorial out there. seriously. I feel i own blender now,lol

[@akhromulhakim]

Best compositing tutorial in youtube

[@MartinKlekner]

[@vrmsali]

One of the best video on Layers and compositing that I have come across. Thank you.

[@USBEN.]

Amazing tutorial. Very engaging till the end. Thank you.

[@peterluxus7382]

What a great tutorial!!! Actually dust does not remove light from the point of view of the observer, IF the light source is positioned on a certain angle. Then the particles are lighted. So you did it right.

[@mansoorghani4006]

Man !! I gotta say, YOU ARE AMAZING !

[@athinasdesigns]

Thank you! Looking forward to trying it out

[@frezeryilma5735]

This is truly brilliant, Martin. Thanks!

[@mcan-piano4718]

I love the menu flipped at bottom toooooooo. Thank you. Finally someone who like 2.79 way of doing things

[@Nitinsingh_sith]

I was always confused about composting thanks to you not anymore < 3

[@BlenderFan]

Thanks for this very helpful tutorial and happy blending with blender.

[@wrichards123]

Great timing, thank you, been diving into the compositor alot latley, and making my way through the environment course, all in all making my visuals next level fo sure !!! ;)

[@kaushikdesignstudios]

thanks for sharing

[@letsd0good]

this tutorial taght me more useful stuff than 3 years in uni. thank you! keep up the great work.

[@astalecookie6778]

I used davinci resolve for the color correction and composition but damn, this brings the believability of my vfx shots up like 500 %. I’m not going to lie my shots sucked before but now they actually look some what nice. Thank you so much Im your newest sub now

[@jamesriley5057]

This was perfect. I do mostly animation so I will try to use these tips and adapt them to motion shots. I thought single frame renders were easy - you showed me how awesome they can be

[@ahmadsunusi3162]

Thanks to cgboost.

[@captaincrispy2184]

This is just like a magician telling their tricks. Once I figured out that the background is 2D, my brain refused to see it correctly.

[@MartinKlekner]

😁

[@SanOcelotl]

ok i need to sub right away, thanks for your work dude

[@Joshwake1]

This video was super helpful I appreciate absolutely everything you talked about thank you so much 👍👍👍

[@LucaToumadiMatthews]

this was freakin awesome thank you for everything your doing for this awesome community. Keep it up

[@dyfx9788]

seems like an interesting video. Still 2 minutes in but my question is why use blender compositor (pretty slow and buggy) when you can use Nuke, AE, Fusion. still love the video but im just confused about this

[@MartinKlekner]

Hey there, thank you! CGBoost focuses on using Blender, so we aim at staying in it as much as we can :-) Those tools you mentioned are great for compositing, but would be a deviation from our CGB pipeline :-) Also, this is from Master 3D Environments course and I wanted to make it Blender-only.

[@dyfx9788]

@@MartinKlekner ah ok thanks

[@CraigRamsden]

Good question. I think personally learning how to compost in a free tool like blender is an excellent place to start. Not everyone can afford tools like AE or fusion and the skills you learn in blender can be transferred.

[@sahas1514]

Though nuke, after effects and fusion are really convenient and have a lot more features than blender. It's more of an affordable thing. Most people can't buy programs

[@JJ-im7cq]

Its just a matter of the price… Apart from Fusion you have to spend quite some money on the Nuke or AE, in addition I think Blender can be a great tool.

[@pardismack]

For the vignette, you can set the resolution and scale values to automatically drive the ellipse size by an equation. then you can for example scale it by a value of around 0.93 to make it slightly smaller

[@cgboost]

Thanks for the tip!

[@abiyyupanggalih854]

always interesting with the BIG scene project + render layer, always intimidate me 🤣

[@johnktrz]

This is brilliant!

[@bUildYT]

EXCELLENT VIDEO also cause u sound like Obi-Wan Kenobi:)

[@MWSculpts]

Thanks for the great explanation ❤️

[@_TetKaneda]

Thanks for the input. Great job. You have my like Greetings

[@s1amvwbug]

Awesome course. Learned a lot on compositing in Blender. Thank you! Just a quick question. What version of blender are you running?

[@MartinKlekner]

This was a combination of 2.9 and 3.0 :-)

[@ohimork2284]

This vid is great, quick question, my scene is using a big cube with a volume scatter for a fog effect, how would i go about rendering and compositing that

[@ensarija]

21:10 👀watching it on 480p👀 I trust you bro 🤣🤣

[@redrune4314]

I've been lowkey looking for a concise explanation of how to use the Render Layers/View Layer, and here I've found it in a Compositing tutorial. Now all I need to find is a similarly simple explanation of some use case scenarios for the Scenes Tab (dropdown menu?) and that would scratch an Inquisitive Itch. Side Note: does the Colour Management (Filmic/Standard) affect Compositing in any way?

[@chuckpenzone3407]

I used scenes once to have a machine in the foreground and a blurred air flow looking graphic behind it. It was easier to blur particle system bubbles into what looked like air flow than to create an actual air flow simulation. So the front scene has foreground elements and the background seen had the blue. After watching this though I think it could be accomplished with Render layers. Maybe scenes are like in a movie when you cut to a new location but scenes let’s you keep all the elements in your blended file vs starting a new one and trying to keep them consistent. I think the asset viewer will help with that in the future though. Okay done rambling.

[@JJSnel-uh3by]

@@chuckpenzone3407 Yes exactly, it is more to have mutlible scenes in one file. So in onie scene you have a forest and a cabin in that forest but in the next scene you can cut to inside that cabin. It splits the complexity a bit and makes it a little easier when compositing those scenes. Tho I never use it, only seen teams that use it or people that want to make a short.

[@reveninja5252]

Oh, You're good. Subscribed.

[@mdm-prods1184]

great tuto thanks

[@AndreeMarkefors]

If it makes you feel better: it isn't necessarily wrong to layer over the dust elements using 'add'. Sandy dust in the air will reflect incoming light and scatter it, acting is a "passive emitter" of sorts. I think what you've intuitively noticed (it looks better) is actually correct. This phenomenon is not in opposition to the fact that dust in the air will block or filter light that passes though it. It's an anisotropic effect where the front of the dust looks brighter (light scattering back) and the backside of it will be darker (less light after filtering/scattering).

[@cgboost]

You are absolutely correct and at the end of the day it really just comes down to what looks right :) ~ Daniel

[@ahmadsunusi3162]

Yeah great, i had many problem with that "convert pre multiplied" in the alpha over node, i have a simple scene and i want to composite some fire flies and what happen is that the edge of each individual fire flies look weird and when checked that convert pre multiplied they look good but I loose the glow of the flies!! Please help me out.

[@aegisgfx]

Im starting to realize why the credits for the CGI artists on movies scrolls for 15 minutes.. damn this is convoluted process.

[@tgs1766]

Everything in blender is convoluted. It’s a mess. Worst interface ever.

[@coolbluesky4078]

this guy is so good at advertising his courses, i was almost convinced to steal my moms credit card

[@nicolasleonnarino3159]

I hope that's a joke

[@coolbluesky4078]

​@@nicolasleonnarino3159 it is

[@BrianHuether]

Hi, going through this now. WHen I set up the compositor and render, it saves files to the mountains, dust and sky layers, but no file is saved in the base folder. Any idea what might be causing this? Thanks! I am on Blender 4.0.

[@Ruuubick]

Is not plugging the Noisy Image socket in the Denoise node ok because you've disabled denoising in the render settings?

[@lolkorea8841]

omg i love you

[@krzysztofnowakcccvv]

thanks blender master. i'm looking for more.🙏

[@Udiiii]

Why did you render twice? Once after adding the file output nodes and once after tweaking the output properties settings from the side panel? Why is it double the amount of work? Can we not directly render the layers after we create different layers and save the image sequences through File output node by specifying the folder name right there in the File output node itself at a single time? Why is that you went ahead and tweaked some output properties settings again in the side panel and hit render again? Made me super confused anyway. Hope you can reply

[@mohammadnaeemi]

thanks

[@rusticagenerica]

Very mOUshy result

[@nathitappan]

What's the best workflow if I prefer to finalize my composites in After Effects? Do you still render multiple times? And would you even touch the compositor in Blender?

[@cgboost]

hi, thanks for the question. If you want to composite the scene inside after effects, you still export multiple PNG layers but then instead of uploading them to Blender trow them directly to AE. touching or not Blender compositor in this case is up to you. If there is any function of compositor that helps you more then AE, you might use it for that and the rest you do in AE. ~ Masha

[@nathitappan]

@@cgboost Thank you for getting back to me!

[@mantovannni]

Many thanks.

[@AnouarBrissel]

A real course!

[@AnouarBrissel]

definitely gonna buy one your courses

[@gordonbrinkmann]

I really like your Environment course, it's great 👍 The only thing here is when you're explaining the output settings, I don't think it's important to mention you set it to 30 fps since you're rendering an image sequence and you can change it freely afterwards when compositing for a video output.

[@MartinKlekner]

Once you change a framerate of your image sequence, the animation will get slower or faster depending on whether you go lower or higher with the FPS, so I rather mentioned it :-)

[@gordonbrinkmann]

@@MartinKlekner Yeah, but it only goes slower or faster on replay, which doesn't matter because after rendering you start a new file for compositing which starts with the default framerate set in the startup file - if that's already 30 fps, then I guess the file with the animation is most likely the same without having to change it. 😉

[@MartinKlekner]

@@gordonbrinkmann Well, if your animation is important for the shot and you need to see it in proper tempo, it is important to set the proper FPS even for compositing. Not for Blender, true, because so far it doesn’t have caching of the animation in compositor so you can never see it in realtime. But for other compositing packages (like Nuke or Adter Effects) it’s important, so it’s a good practice to retain the same FPS throughout your compositing workflow.

[@gordonbrinkmann]

@@MartinKlekner That's exactly what I meant, since it doesn't matter at all for rendering image sequences, but might be important in compositing or rendering as a movie, it might better be mentioned elsewhere.

[@nailsNhammers]

Thank you, great intro. Just, please, don't suggest to use 8bit images for rendering, ever. Especially with lossy compression.

[@yessinebellaaj6360]

hi, thanks for the tutorial, although i faced a problem when i check the denoising data box in the passes tab it doesn't want to update in the render layers in compositing, i need help please, because i couldn't find a solution for it. although it works fine in new blender project it can be updated but in my current one it doesn't want to.

[@infotreetv1379]

I love this chennel and his explanation, ❤️❤️❤️❤️ master

[@naresvirojtanachai3821]

You are Welcome

[@bUildYT]

to 30:40 is there a way like in after efects to lower the quality to have 25% quality to make play through fluent?

[@cgboost]

You can try to lower the samples for the viewport inside the rendering properties panel. ~ Masha

[@bUildYT]

@@cgboost aha, and is there a way to lower the price with a beautiful code? If so ill buy the course today! :)

[@cgboost]

@@bUildYT maybe :) email us, and we'll see if we can find something that fits www.cgboost.com/contact ~ Masha

[@egorsorokin2760]

This is an old video but still is really cool! But could you please tell if something has changed within these two years? Isn't now more productive to composite using passes, cryptomatte and EXR?

[@MartinKlekner]

Yes, EXRs are a good way to go, they pack a lot of color information and can contain more passes. Otherwise, this the workflow I still use 🙂

[@tcrmnk6370]

Hello! Great tutorial! But i have a question. Why worry about denoising a render layer in compositing when you can select the 'denoise' checkbox for the render?

[@MartinKlekner]

It used to be that you couldn't select this denoise option in the REnder menu and had to do it through compositor. Nowadays, it works both ways, I just got used to the older one 🙂

[@adamwong1444]

哥 太有用了 爱你

[@drgily]

Thank you So much. Just wondering why there is need to make so many folders and things when you could just do it all at once?

[@cgboost]

Once the project gets really big and you want to change just some part of it you realize the benefits of having a good structure and everything broken down to small chunks. With smaller projects made by just 1 man a 'one take' approach might work sometimes but that doesn't scale really well :).

[@ezrahollis]

Project file doesn't work in newest version of blender, Super shame i was looking forward to learning

[@francoriverti]

wouldn't be easier and faster to just composite the different layers of the scene in After Effects?

[@cgboost]

I guess this depends on whether you have AE and your level of knowledge of AE. There are also other compositing options like Nuke but unlike Blender they are not free. As of free options there's the free version of DaVinci Resolve that also allows for compositing.

[@shwarma_ketchup.123]

How was I not subbed till now

[@TheHologr4m]

I wanna know how you made the header transparent.

[@cgboost]

Hi, what do you mean exactly? ~ Masha

[@TheHologr4m]

@@cgboost your header buttons are floating without a gray background behind them. My header is opaque and the same color as the rest of the menus top and bottom.

[@cgboost]

@@TheHologr4m This kind of things you should be able to control from the preferences panel (themes section). ~ Masha

Awesome

[@juanp.5364]

genius

[@lightcursor1522]

If anyone is having trouble trying to get their base layer to render, don't worry. You probably have it right and the only reason your aren't see it is because you aren't rending it as a animation. You need to render it as a animation for it to auto save.

[@emerysheldon9006]

Hello, my file output nodes (6 total) appear to be set up properly, but my render layers still do not appear to show up in there selected base path outputs. From what I can gather is the output nodes are rendering and saving the final frame of each render layer, but only in blender. What does get saved and outputted into a folder is the output path from the side bar settings. Is there a way to override the sidebar so my renders only happen via the file output nodes? Each time I have rendered as a png alpha animation. Rather stumped

[@lightcursor1522]

@@emerysheldon9006 Would you mind sending me a couple of screen shots? That would help me figure out what the problem is. You can send them to my email.

[@lightcursor1522]

You should be able to find my email at my about.

[@emerysheldon9006]

@@lightcursor1522 SENT!

[@emerysheldon9006]

SOLVED: I was trying to render to drop box local, once I switched over to rendering out to a desktop folder it worked!

[@Wyntrfang]

Totally a noob question here, but is there a way to use an EXR file to transfer out the Render Layers to, say, Resolve or Fusion instead of staying in-house with Blender's compositor? I'm aware that you can render out the passes for the image as a whole, but the actual grouped layers; would you need to use multiple EXR files per scene, or can you have the grouped layers and their passes in one EXR file?

[@cgboost]

Hi, yes, if you render out an EXR file it will automatically store inside the file the different layers you created and the passes you selected in render properties. I personally tried it with my colleagues using nuke, and it worked pretty fine, so I guess it should be okay for any other compositing software. ~ Masha

[@Wyntrfang]

@@cgboost Hah, that's awesome! Thank you very much for the feedback, and your environmental course is amazing and very insightful by the by

[@abstract_duck]

the Issue I have with compositing is that despite working in or with 3D enviroment you don't get the ability to use your assets elsewhere ... like in game engine ... or I mean you could bake the texture and use it ... but ... Im just mindblown about how good displacements look especially for hilly terrains ... the scene setup just wow ... nice I can't hate it Im just weirded out

[@SirEatsCrackAlot]

Thank you for posting this, it was a really interesting subject! May I ask something? How do you control the values of the compositor "Denoising Node"? Using the Optix Denoiser gives you some strength controls, but the node seems to just have arbitrary values?

[@MartinKlekner]

I dont think you can control the amount of denoising using this method... ✌

[@colymoli4311]

hi CG Boost :) if i render out an image sequenze to finaly a movie, why blender is so slow doing it? does blender also actualy render the image like 3d objects? becouse, if i render the same sequenze in sony vegas, its mutch faster

[@MartinKlekner]

Hi, if youre using the same scene for rendering out your 3D scene and your Composition, it may be that you are rendering both. I suggest using a separate .blend file for the compositing.

[@franktseng2425]

Hi Martin, excellent job! Thxs for sharing it! I noticed that u create desert and desert-particle. for desert u use displacement in meterial-node to make dune-looking. And for grass-particle u create another displacement using modifier which is more less the same result as above in material node. So that the grass could position on the right position of dune. How is it possible the create same displacement in diferrent method? (material-node and modifier) and why not directly use the same displaced modifier model for particle?

[@MartinKlekner]

Hi, I displaced the geometry using Node displacement workflow in the Shader Editor, using the Microdisplacement option. Unfortunately, unlike when using Displace modifier to do the same thing, one cannot stick particles to a terrain displaced in this way. That's why I had to bake the result, use the texture in a Displace modifier and put my particles on this baked terrain.

[@mrfeathers3938]

Did I miss something? I’m trying to find a way to render a scene with w lot of high poly models in it but it’s way too much memory for my gpu. How do I render only certain objects to while keeping the shadows and reflections etc casting onto those objects?

[@MartinKlekner]

That you do by using Render Toggles in the Outliner, you set various toggles for your Collections, for example Holdout to make everything on the collection transparent in the render, or Indirect, to make everything on the collection transparent, but retain its reflections and shadows...

[@RickHenderson]

Wow your course looks like it would have been perfect for me a week ago. I'm suffering through drive space and graphic card issues trying to the Kitbash3D contest. Great video!

[@cgboost]

What would have been useful a week ago can be also useful in the future :). Big projects is where compositing shows it's true power! Seems like some more work at first, but less suffering in the end :)

[@denielrdd]

Could you please make the files for this video available? The gradient used at 31:03 would be very useful

[@cgboost]

The files are available for free in our resource library: www.cgboost.com/resources (Click on "KZbin Tutorials & Project Files")

[@markoTardito-BePartOfMyWorld]

great tutorial, and very interesting to subdivide the layers. but I think that if you work in video a video editor or after effect will made it easier than compositing the final sequence. Is nice to now that possibilities in blender anyway !!!

[@jordan4longshaw]

Do I hear the theme to Majula in Dark Souls 2 at the start? 😅👀

[@customgaming4947]

how do you do sky replacement

[@MartinKlekner]

The sky is a single image, look at this video here kzbin.info/www/bejne/f32zlqtum5J2j68

[@soumyadeepdas8638]

I'm a beginner so I can't understand that totally how you create this at the root. Some I understand but maximum not. So please give a tutorial for 1st to last begginers?

[@cgboost]

This is course about an advanced methods of creating environment, thus intermediate users tutorial. If it is for beginners the content would need to be deeply simplified. ~Egon

[@corgi5143]

How can I make the dust transparent?

[@_Mr_Hexo_]

what do i do if its not saving the changes when i render it?

[@cgboost]

Hi, sorry for the inconvenience. What do you mean by saying that it's not saving the changes? Do the nodes disappear or the effects are not being rendered? Have you checked if everything is connected to the output node? ~ Masha

[@_Mr_Hexo_]

I already fixed it with another tutorial, thanks!@@cgboost

[@vithaii918]

❤️

[@georgefilmanimation]

Do you know how to render composites? I have a good one, but it just renders my layout render instead of the comp.

[@cgboost]

Yes, it is described through the course. ~Egon

[@andreyserov4636]

wha do you mean by "limited loss of quality" in PNG format? I thought it's a lossless format, no?

[@cgboost]

PNGs only really natively support up to 16 bit colour depth whereas a format such as EXR can handle 32 bit colour depth which essentially means a smoother transition from darker to lighter values (and vice versa). There are other quality compromises with PNG but they are fairly minor for most uses. ~ Daniel

[@yumpyblend]

Yay

[@joshuaborner]

I can't afford the course 😭 any chance for a discount any time soon?

[@cgboost]

Hey Joshua, just get in touch with us here, and we will find a solution for you: www.cgboost.com/contact

[@junhaoma1760]

how did you get the desert i am just a starter

[@MartinKlekner]

A combination of displacement textures in Shader Editor, plugged into the Displacement socket of the Material Output :-) I go over this in the course...

[@user-wy3jj9yg5t]

Is this course relevant for version blender 3.0+?

[@MartinKlekner]

Yes, definitely, except for chapter 5, that one is best done in Blender 2.92 or 2.93 :)

[@user-wy3jj9yg5t]

@@MartinKlekner thanks a lott!

[@talkingSkunk]

You rendered multiple times. Can you do the last render as the only render, and still get the same result?

[@MartinKlekner]

Well, not really, that is the purpose of compositing - to enhance the final render. If you do not want to use a layer-based approach in compositing, you can render in one layer though 🙂

[@talkingSkunk]

@@MartinKlekner I'm sure I'm missing something, but he rendered everything out again with compositing at the very end. I am trying now, but when I hit Render, it seems it is just rendering out all over again everything without compositing, even though I hooked up everything to Composite node.

[@MartinKlekner]

@@talkingSkunk Are you using the same .blend file as you use to render out your scene? Or a new one?

[@waltage]

when i use compositing first time. i have hard butthurt about wasted days for render

[@2slick4u.]

28:10 LOL

[@Barakooda3D]

11:05 png by definition is lossless,kind of zip mechanism. not:"limited loss of quality"

[@MartinKlekner]

Youre right, bad phrasing on my part 😊

[@chuckpenzone3407]

Couldn't you apply all of this before the initial render pass so that the first render is giving you the final product? Not sure why you need to render the separate .png files first?

[@redrune4314]

The separate files are a backup of sorts. Because of the way movies are made small tweaks and adjustments are very common. For example, should some Big Wig Producer come by and want to change the colour of the Sky, you only need to bring the Sky Layer into the program the studio edits in (usually After Effects or Nuke) instead of Rendering the entire scene. Also should a glitch or mistake be seen after the fact, it is simpler to fix this way.

[@chuckpenzone3407]

@@redrune4314 ahhh… that totally makes sense now. Thank you for taking the time to explain that.

[@redrune4314]

@@chuckpenzone3407 Anytime