Hello and welcome to this Compositing in Blender 2.6 Tutorial Series!
In this compositing in Blender tutorial series we give you an introduction for using the compositing nodes. This series will take you through all the basics of using and understanding the node system for compositing in Blender. After this series you should have a thorough understanding of compositing basics; including Render Layers, available nodes, blending modes, and much, much more. You will also learn how to do color adjustments, tweak curves, composite multiple images, and even adjust the lighting and color of your complete scene.
What You’ll Learn in this Tutorial
In part 3 of this compositing in Blender tutorial series we will composite more passes, introduce Render Layers and several ways of separating objects. We will also begin to set up rendering and compositing for car paint.
FIRST!!!!!!
WOW first comment! By the way the result looks so………… freaking AWESOME! Here are some of my artworks http://www.facebook.com/OZONr
Great! let’s see this Round 3
Bartek,
I could have sworn you had a tutorial on your site demonstrating the Blender-to-AE compositing workflow, but I haven’t been able to find it. Have you taken it down?
Chris
http://cg.bartekskorupa.com/b2ae/ has a video explaining the export process.
On my site I had something of a very poor quality, so I took it down. I also recorded video for cg.tutsplus.com about blender and After Effects compositing workflow, but it has two cons:
1. It’s considered “plus content”, which means it’s not available for everybody
2. It was created some time ago, so it may be a bit outdated.
Any plans for updating it? I prefer to use AE, but I’ve rarely seen anything regarding 3D passes compositing, mostly just motion graphics.
great tut.. only crit i have is the sound is mono when i listen through headphones..i only get it in one ear
Had the same problem. But you can download it with the FlashGot AddOn for Firefox and watch it with VLC selecting Audio->Channel->Left. It will spread the Left channel to both left and right.
Thanks for the advice dude
Hehe, isn’t it ironic your comment is number 5.1? XD
I am very sorry for that. It’s my fault. I must have made some mistake when converting the video.
I have corrected it and hopefully the new version with corrected sound will be online soon.
thank you bartek you explained everything so easily
Really nice and well explained.
I believe the issue of ID Mask is caused of AA. Best result, (but terribly tedious) is having 1 obj per layer, create a renderlayer for each of them with a shadeless white material overall. And using the mask layer feature. You’ll have a nice matte then.
I must say that I very rarely use ID masks just because of issues you point out.
In most of my compositions, when I really want to separate objects I do create render layers exactly the way you explain.
Sometimes I also use another technique: I give some of the objects pure red color, some – pure green and some – pure blue. This gives me kind of 3 IDs in one go. I can use red channel as one index, green as another and blue as yet another.
Hey, how this would relate to render passes/layers in cycles? any tutorials for that coming soon?
cheers
I like this guy…
“and whut cun I say? Is fabulous.”
this is invaluable! It’s so great to finally have a comprehensive explanation of the Mysterious Compositor:) Thanks so much for this Bartek and especially for your work on the Blender to AE plugin… it’s probably my most used addon.
Very clear and very precise tutorial. Bartek, you da man! Thank you very much!
“At the end of this tutorial, you will not find this node setup to be too complicated” (John scrapes jaw from floor and mutely stumbles away to find a bridge to jump off of…)
To be more precise, I said “at the end of this series…”, so don’t worry, Round 4 may make few things clearer. Bridge can wait
The node setup (Even the Car’s) Is perfectly clear to me and I’m new to this.
Great Job!
I’d like to make a note:
Please don’t treat the formula that I showed as “Truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth”.
It especially refers to Ambient Occlusion.
It’s worth mentioning that Ambient Occlusion is a hack. There is no such phenomenon in real world. In our composition we used it to increase shadows.
We could also use AO to increase environment, global light or to “modulate” the global light.
There are scenarios where you’d never want to multiply your resulting diffuse pass by AO, because it can make some areas “invisible”, although they should be visible because of some direct light hitting it.
Matt Ebb gives a very good explanation of how AO should be treated, especially when you use it to enhance the finished result, not combining passes together:
http://www.pasteall.org/29133
I’d also like to point out Indirect Lighting and Environment Lighting in Blender:
The way of mixing them in shown in this tutorial is just one of the ways. It shouldn’t be treated as the only proper way.
Combined pass gets recreated by mixing indirect light and environment light this way just because the way they are created in Blender. We can mix them in differently and achieve as good, or better results.
So once again: Treat my solution as one of the solutions out there. Not the only one.
I wish we didn’t have to re-create the setup that Blender is already using. It’s not hard to do (thanks to awesome tutorials like this) but if Blender is already combining the render passes, it would be nice to have access to the tweaks without re-creating the setup that is already there (somewhere in the great Blender unknown).
I must admit, that I didn’t even think about it, but having read your post I begin to believe that it indeed would be awesome. On the other hand, probably most of us would anyway re-create the setup to get more control… At least I would
But the idea of yours is great anyway. I think though that it’ll never come true, but who knows?
I must to see it!! I must to see it!!
Bartek please do it for Cycles
I dont know why but the sound isnt working for me.
Currently the audio is mono on this video and will only play through the right channel. We are working to upload a fixed version, though
thanks for fast reply. I’ll keep an eye out the tut looks interesting.
Wow Bartek this was very useful, I know tonight I won’t be able to sleep just thinking about these tutorials, which gave an idea that you should write a book on compositing; having a book with seperate information from videos can be a useful tool for us. I think I’ll download the source files, I need to see your noodles and review this over and over so I can be ready for part 4. Thanks Ron.
Andrew Price of Blender Guru has written a book for compositing, Called The Wow Factor, you might want to check that out.
this is possibly the best series of tutorials i have ever had the pleasure of sitting through. the way it is explained allows me to understand the reason why things are done and how and the final result. 55 minutes flew by
Thanks, Bartek, I’m on my third (or fourth) round, and trying out the tutorial on the side. I’m learning alot, much appreciated!!
Is it supposed to say Intro to compositing round 2 at the very top bar of the page (of firefox on the same row of the X and -
Hey Bartek,
I’m getting stuck at first steps, when I multiply Diffuse with Shadow. I get white lines at corners, or on the contour of objects. It gets worse when I add reflections : it adds black contour.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17029626/screenshot.87.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17029626/screenshot.89.png
Any idea ?
Btw, very nice tutorial, keep it up ^^
The problem you have here is a result of the way that shadow pass is created.
You are using the floor that don’t “cover” the whole image.
Take a look at the shadow pass alone:
You’ll notice that wherever you have alpha of 0 – the shadow pass is black.
In may opinion (I’m not the only one) this is a bug. In those areas shadow pass should be white.
If it were as it should be, i.e. white – your image wouldn’t change in those areas (multiplying by white doesn’t change image as you remember).
Here we have antialiased edges of your object and you get dark fringe around it.
The way to solve it is to take the alpha, pass it through “Invert” node, add it to shadow pass and use the result as the shadow pass.
I was trying to apply these principles to a scene I’m working on, and apply some glow/blur to an object in the back of the scene using Object ID. After trying all week, I’m still seeing a problem… the blur doesn’t apply to just the object I want. It either applies to all objects or seems to not apply at all.
And in some versions, I find I can apply blur to the correct object, but then it lays on top of all the other objects, rather than tucked behind… so I must not be assembling it correctly
I also tried breaking out the objects to different Render layers, but I’m not sure how to reassemble them so things show up in the right layers.
Hoping to learn more when part 4 comes out soon! Thanks Bartek!
Just a great detailed tutorial as how and why we do things.The deeper you go into and explain this does this but lets see why this is.Its at this point that i am learning blender not just (click this button and setting on 3 thats just showing how to do it) Your tutorial really teaches!excellent work.
Do part 4 in IMAX 3D
also your name should replace the john carter movie coming soon.Bartek Skorupa in theaters march 9th
I love the depth this goes into, fantastic work explaining things in detail Bartek
Bartek! One of the BEST tutorials on any Blender topic! Absolutely informative- I feel like I’m REALLY learning something, instead of just “what to click!” Thanks so much! You’re awesome man, keep it going.
One (idem the part 2) of the best tutorials about Blender (and 3D) I´ve ever seen. Thank you so much.
thank you kind sir, i am
looking forward to round 4
and putting this information
to good use.
Great series I have learned heaps. I have been looking forward to the next part but it hasn’t arrived yet. Any progress or has this been abandoned?
Bill
ahemmm! that was a fantastic series and I was wondering when will round 4 be delivered
Bartek please !
Bartek and Jonathan – Thumbs up and hats off….Series is awesome however….I still hate Compositing.
Hello Bartek, thanks for a great tutorial. I have a question. To be able to change the color of the monkey through nodes, you create a new “energy” layer using a set of duplicate objects just like you did for the “intensity” layer, the object materials are white so the diffuse pass for them just transmits their “energy” which can be multiplied by color from main pass. But if the lights used to create diffuse pass for “energy” layer have strong color (colored lights), the coloring appears in this diffuse pass? Then if we multiply color from main pass by diffuse from energy, we are multiplying colors by colors? Could this create a problem? THANKS AGAIN for a great tutorial, thanks to you I am beginning to understand node compositing.
One of the best tutorials I have ever seen. At the end I was a bit sad when it was over
. Thank you!
It is almost scary to see how much you can actually do after the render!
It would be interesting to hear more in detail about how the mix node deals with alpha values. I have played around with this and even though the blender manual states differently, it seems like it always just passes the top input image’s alpha values to the resulting image.
Links for tutorials 2 and 3 are swapped.