Fix Flat Renders in Blender: Compositing (5.2 LTS)

Why take this course?

A finished render is rarely the finished image. This course focuses on the compositor as a way to get more out of work you've already rendered: adjusting lighting, color, depth of field, and motion blur after the fact, without going back and re-rendering the whole scene. From there, the same ideas extend beyond a single 3D render into combining CG with live action footage and building a green screen composite.

What you'll learn

• View layers, light passes, and light groups, and how splitting a render into pieces gives you more control later.
• Combining render layers, light passes, and light groups back together in the compositor.
• Saving and organizing renders for a compositing first workflow.
• Post render effects, including motion blur, depth of field, and other finishing touches.
• Working with channels and building mattes, including Cryptomatte.
• Preparing and compositing 2D visual effects elements, including glare and fog glow, into live action footage.
• Building a full green screen composite: keying, despill, edge treatment, and light wrap, applied to real footage of two actors in a car.

Compositing in Practice

Early lessons split a guitar and amp studio scene into view layers, then rebuild it in the compositor using nodes like Alpha Over. Later chapters apply glare and fog glow effects to real live action footage, before building a complete green screen composite: keying out the green, removing spill, and blending in a new background around two actors filmed in a car.

By the end of the course

By the end, you'll be able to treat rendering and compositing as one connected workflow rather than two separate steps, and you'll have a working process for combining CG, 2D effects, and live action footage into a single finished shot.

Recommended preparation

This course assumes general comfort with Blender's interface. No prior compositing experience is required. Project files are provided for every exercise, including the guitar and amp scene and the green screen car footage used throughout the later chapters.

YOUR INSTRUCTOR

Zach Easton

Zach teaches Compositing at CG Cookie. He takes you from view layers and render passes through 2D visual effects and a full green screen composite, using both a CG guitar and amp scene and real live action footage along the way.