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VFX shots. Grade before or after?
I’m wondering what’s the best procedure with VFX shots. If you should grade the plates and then send to VFX or grade after the VFX shots are finished?
I would think grading the finished VFX shot would be better. That way you grade it as a whole. If you grade it before, it would need to be graded in the compositing software to make the added stuff match. Or send it back to regrade in Resolve, which will add another unnecessary compression step, unless it’s uncompressed. Not to mention that it would be harder to grade now since you would need to isolate the VFX stuff. Much easier to do that in the compositing software where they are already different plates. But it would be up to the VFX guy to do your grading then.
Like let’s say you have a shot where gun muzzle fire, blood hits, dust etc must be added to the shot. If graded after, all that will automatically match the grade of the original shot. If you grade before, who knows how it will look after it’s put on. Specially if you are going for a look.
What do you think?
P.S. For noise reduction I normally do after grading. Unless the shot need to be saved and is nearly unusable without NR.
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29 Replies
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Depends! Always a safe answer!
If its only one or two elements in a shot, I like to get the matte and fill and grade the separate elements in context. This works well if you have good integration with the graphics folks, color space, timebase(fps) and TC all need to be right for it to work.
Love the add matte feature of Resolve!
Clark Bierbaum
Color Grading / Post Consultant
GarnetColor.com
Charlotte, NC -
Thanks.
But it also means to depend more on the VFX people, which always complicates things. Do you see any problems with just grading after? Grading the finished shots that is.
Besides, I’m not talking shots with only one or two elements. -
[MichaelMaier] “But it also means to depend more on the VFX people, which always complicates things. Do you see any problems with just grading after? Grading the finished shots that is.
Besides, I’m not talking shots with only one or two elements.”There are two downsides to grading afterwards. One is that depending on where you take the grade, there’s a possibility that artifacts that weren’t visible in the ungraded shot — like imperfectly matched black levels for different elements, edges of rotoscoped objects, etc. — may become visible.
The other is that if you’re working with raw footage (like R3D or ARRIRAW), whatever settings were used to decode that footage to do the VFX work will be baked into the VFX shot. So, for instance, if you’ve decided to change the raw white balance of a bunch of shots in a scene, but there’s one VFX shot containing elements that were ‘developed’ with the in-camera white balance, you might have some tricky matching issues.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Yes, the experience of the graphics person(s) / companies vary widely! The most important thing I’ve found is to give them your specs about color space, time base, time code matching and shot naming.
The color space and matching gamma in and out of the efx program is critical, would suggest you test and document the steps and traps.
EFX is hard to do (see) on log footage but if the file they return has been linearized it may be hard to match with the camera original footage. I’ve had LOG background plates with linear foreground elements, FUN!
Suggest (demand?) to test a clip through the entire process before the project starts, and be prepared to explain why this is so important. Email or other documentation is a great CYA (Cover your A$$) method.
It’s always nice to hear from the client they are using someone who gets all of this. I spent many hours dealing with elements from people who don’t and it really is frustrating, especially when working for a fixed price!
Clark Bierbaum
Color Grading / Post Consultant
GarnetColor.com
Charlotte, NC -
[Chris Kenny] “There are two downsides to grading afterwards. One is that depending on where you take the grade, there’s a possibility that artifacts that weren’t visible in the ungraded shot — like imperfectly matched black levels for different elements, edges of rotoscoped objects, etc. — may become visible.”
In that case, just send it back to the VFX guy to correct it? 🙂
Unless I misunderstood you?[Chris Kenny] “The other is that if you’re working with raw footage (like R3D or ARRIRAW), whatever settings were used to decode that footage to do the VFX work will be baked into the VFX shot. So, for instance, if you’ve decided to change the raw white balance of a bunch of shots in a scene, but there’s one VFX shot containing elements that were ‘developed’ with the in-camera white balance, you might have some tricky matching issues.”
I will be working with DNxHD files for this specific project.
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[Clark Bierbaum] “EFX is hard to do (see) on log footage but if the file they return has been linearized it may be hard to match with the camera original footage. I’ve had LOG background plates with linear foreground elements, FUN!”
I will be working with DNxHD for this specific project.
[Clark Bierbaum] “It’s always nice to hear from the client they are using someone who gets all of this. I spent many hours dealing with elements from people who don’t and it really is frustrating, especially when working for a fixed price!”
I can definitely relate to that. 🙁
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[MichaelMaier] “In that case, just send it back to the VFX guy to correct it? :)”
Sure, time and budget permitting.
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Digital Workflow/Colorist, Nice Dissolve.You should follow me on Twitter here. Or read our blog.
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Yeah, I know. Budget. 🙁
But for the clips that become problematic, maybe I could ask the mattes to the VFX people to try to isolate the problem? Unless most of the clips would become problematic.
It’s starting to look like you either trust the compositor to match the added elements to your graded look or you have a lot more work. Dang!
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“If you grade it before, it would need to be graded in the compositing software to make the added stuff match.”
That’s weird statement. Are you saying, that VFX guys, when they composite, they don’t match the new material to the plate?:-)
And, yes, it is much better to pre grade the material properly and not leave this step to VFX guys, if you don’t want to get back horribly graded material with weird color metadata choices and baked-in color. Any VFX artist worth his salt knows how to properly linearize supplied LOG material and then return composited shot back with a proper Cineon curve applied. In Nuke it’s super simple. Using supplied mattes is great, unless you have hundreds of them and then you have to manually match them with the material. Once Resolve starts supporting material with alpha channel mattes, then it’s different story. Right now I’d hope, that VFX artists would match composted material with pre-graded plates and then just grade it all together. -
I was not talking about pre-grading. I was talking about fully grading it, giving it a look and then sending the plate to them. I know VFX artists can match plate colors. But when you already have a stylized look to the plate it makes it more difficult.
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