The Flame Learning Channel

In the Flame 2018.3 update, we have introduced a 360 VR option in the player and Batch viewports. This will allow you to take any Lat-Long VR mediaand view it correctly. This video will show you all the controls you havewith the 360 VR player.

In this video, we’ll go through the process of incorporating CDLs into the Flame products as part of your production pipeline. CDL stand for Colour Decision List. This gives you the ability to make colour decisions in the early stages of production and carry them through the production pipeline. You’ll learn how to apply a CDL to a shot using the LOOK node as well as applying a bunch of CDLs to an editorial sequence.

This user requested video will cover how to set up centralized colour management within your facility using shared folders. The great point is setting up the centralized colour management can all be driven through the graphic user interfaces (GUI) making it easy for everyone to access without too much technical know how. This allows you to standardise your colour policies on multiple workstations and keep everything looking right!

This goes through the various workflows of using a region of interest when masking. The “Region of Interest” refers to the area of a matte or alpha when it’s been combined with a mask or multiple masks. You’re basically adding to or removing from an existing matte or alpha. A typical use case is when you have created a matte or alpha, like a key for instance, and you want to isolate portions of the matte or alpha with a mask. We’ll cover the various techniques covered in the Classic Gmask node, Gmask Tracer Node and Action.

Localization is a daily task in post production. This refers to preparing a timeline for delivering a multitude of different versions of a production. These versions could be different languages, graphics or footage. In addition to localizing the production, you could also have multiple versions of a timeline as different deliverables. For example a common scenario at the end of a production, you could be tasked with delivering a 10, 15 and 20 second version in English, a 10, 15 and 20 second version in French and maybe a 10, 15 and 20 second version in German. So localization and versioning is quite a big subject in almost every production And the tools in the Flame 2018.2 update give you enough flexibility to set up your initial localizations, management them as you build the different versioning and still keep things connected to make last minute changes. We’re going to cover all of these points in this video.

This video continues with the Projector UV tracking functionality in Action. Part 2 shows you how to track projections on an extended bicubic surface. You would use the same workflow if you were using the deform mesh functionality in Action. This workflow is slightly different than projecting onto 3D models so this video is worth watching. We also talk about the workflow of applying animation and keyframes before using the Projector UV tracking to ensure it works correctly.

This video shows how you can customize a paint brush in desktop paint. You can save these brushes as custom presets and load them into any project to use in either Desktop Paint or Batch Paint.

In this video we’ll look at the setting marker durations using the Flame 2018.2 update. So now you can set marker durations over areas of the sequence as well as segment marker durations within a segment.

This video show you how to colour your segments in the sequence. You can colour code your all your segments with your Flame user or you can apply specific segment colouring through the contextual menus. This is a great functionality to track any segments in the sequence or if you just want to define each type segment with a different colour. This visual usability tool should be useful in all your Flame projects.

This video highlights the new Python Scripting in the Flame 2018.2 Update. This initial implementation mainly affects the Batch node compositing in the Flame products. So you are now able to automate a variety of tasks when integrating within a facility pipeline. This includes running a python script when launching Flame. There is also additional functionality to execute python scripts while Flame is currently running which allows you to validate python scripts directly in the Batch flow-graph as well as apply certain functions to help move things along. We’ll examine some scenarios but our main focus will be applying the general Python workflow. Please note that you will already need to understand the basic fundamentals of programming with Python scripting. If you want the detailed breakdown of all the available Python functions and attributes, please visit the Flame Online documentation.

In this video you’ll learn about some of the enhanced UV tracking and shading that you can now use with Action Projectors in the Flame 2018.2 Update. This will definitely help you with various texture projection tasks as well as motion graphics type work.

In this video, you'll learn how to add items to the Action Contextual Menus by editing the XML text files. A great example of this is making your favourite matchbox shader available through the Action contextual menu. The contextual or right-click menus were introduced in the Flame 2018.2 Update and hopefully they have increased your usability and speed when working in the Action 3D compositor. 

One of the most powerful VFX toolsets in the Flame Products is the Action 3D compositing environment. Action allows you to seamlessly blend two-dimensional images and 3D-models in an environment that has traditionally been node driven for maximum flexibility. So typically, your interaction would be a mixture of node bins and connecting nodes in the Action schematic. This is a fast and flexible way to work. But through the integration of the new Action contextual menus in the Flame 2018.2 update, you can work even faster by performing multiple operations with fewer clicks. These selection sensitive contextual menus will give you all the options you need in a right-click as well as hidden functionality that used to only be accessible through keyboard shortcuts. This will benefit all Flame artists at any skill level.

In this short video, we’ll take a quick look at how you can now export different lists from the Flame 2018.2 Update. This can be really useful when working in the Flame products and you need to provide your producer or client with a list of various details from Flame. You can export any list view from Flame as an XML text file. This includes the file browser, Media Panel, Conform Events, Markers view and even the animation tables. Just ensure that you look at the tables in list view and you will be able to export them through the contextual menu.

In this video, we focus on a small but long time requested feature that editors and VFX artists use all the time.  This is the ability to hide a selected segment or segments as you work within a sequence.   It’s really quick and simple to use with either the contextual menus or keyboard shortcut.