The Flame Learning Channel

In the Flame 2019.2 update, the file browsing experience has now been unified across the entire application. So if you’ve been using the file browser in the MediaHub, you will now have the same experience when loading setups, fonts, 3D models, media and more. The bookmarks have also been totally revamped to give you a much better user experience in any production scenario. Finally session history has been added to remember the last paths you visit in the current Flame session.

In this video on the MasterGrade, you’ll learn about the Printer Lights shortcuts in the Flame 2019.2 Update. For those of you who may not know, Printer Lights go back to the old photo-chemical days before digital colour. They were measured in points and the idea was that you could add or subtract exact amounts of red, green and blue light in order to change the colour balance within a given shot. With celluloid film, technicians used filtered red, green and blue light but now days, you perform the same operation digitally within an application. This may be considered as a basic grading tool but it is very powerful because of the adjustment precision… That is more accurate than using the mouse or a pen and tablet.

In this video, you'll learn how to perform segment nudging. In short, this is a quick and easy way to push video or audio segments around the sequence by 1 frame or a set amount of frames using various keyboard shortcuts. It’s really handy because you don’t need to zoom into the timeline and you don’t even need to move the positioner around.

In this video dealing with the Effects Environment, you’ll learn how to create and use searchable presets. This enables you to navigate your sequence quickly by using segment metadata to search and filter the segments. The search presets are available in the Effects Environment as well as in the Timeline View. Lots of pointers given as well as the differences between using the presets in the Effects Environment and the Timeline View. This will certainly speed up your workflow!

Part 4 of the Image toolset shows you how to deal with external matte inputs as well as embedded channels when it comes to working with the Selectives in the Image toolset. The Image toolset does have its own masking and keying tools for image isolation but it’s also quite common to be provided with external mattes/alphas or even multi-channel media for flexibility. These assets can be a major help when it comes to isolated look development but there is a certain workflow you need to know in order to use them with your media in Flame. Please note that external Mattes and RGB matte passes are currently only supported in Batch and BatchFX. They are not available in the Image TimelineFX.

This may not be a flashy or creative task but it comes up in quite often in every form of production. This practical video covers the way to set a custom start frame for your composites. Normally the default is frame 1 but there are quite a few cases, including sequence publishing or shot collaboration with Shotgun, which would require a custom start frame. We'll run through the preferences and options of how the start frame works in Batch as well as BatchFX.

This video focuses on media versioning or shot versioning when working in a collaborative production pipeline. In other words, you may start off with the original camera media in your timeline or your composite. But later in the production, other artists may give you the same piece of media with grading applied or even additional VFX from a 3rd party application. This is quite common in a multi-artist production pipeline. So with Flame being the central point in the pipeline, you need to be able to manage and choose all these incoming versions. You could manage the versioning using the Open Clip workflow shown in previous releases of Flame. However with Flame 2019, a more developed workflow known as “Pattern Browsing” can do the same thing but without having to create or script separate Open Clip XMLs. Pattern Browsing works on a series of pattern-based tokens that you can set and this allows Flame to recognise multiple files as part of the same versioned clip as its developed.

When it comes to masking or rotoscoping in the Flame products, the Gmask Tracer is a very powerful option that allows you to isolate a part of your image. Now when you are in the process of masking your image, there are a number of views you can use to view your progress. With Flame 2019, there is another viewer you can use that is called the “Matte Viewer”. This is a Matchbox shader that provides some additional overlay functionality when working with masks and mattes. This tool can also be used in Action to overlay the mattes within a 3D composite.

In this video, we’ll run through the interoperability between Autodesk Flame and FilmLight Baselight. So through the use of Flame’s Pybox architecture and the FilmLight BLG plug-in, you’re able to load the grade information from Baselight directly into any edits and composites in Flame. So regardless of their complexity you can load Baselight grades into Flame, see everything in the context of the grade without rendering and even process the final results within Flame using the BLG plug-in. Only metadata is passed between the applications allowing you to work faster without constantly rendering. This workflow is currently only available for Flame on Linux as the BLG-Plug-in is currently not available on Mac OS X. The FilmLight BLG for Flame plug-in is available as a separate purchase from Filmlight and for more information, please contact FilmLight - www.filmlight.ltd.uk

In this video, you will learn how to draw a motion curve for freehand animation. This allows you to record the movements of your cursor on the screen and apply the X and Y values to any animation curve. This helps achieve very organic looking animation without trying too hard. Basic example to start, followed by more complex one with linking expressions.

In this video, you'll learn a great workflow to connect and link your sequences with any VFX work that you may do in Batch. So unlike the BatchFX workflow where everything is always contained in the timeline, this workflow will allow you to start in a sequence, automatically separate your segments and load them into Batch. And finally the flow graph renders will automatically update in the timeline. This is not replacing BatchFX but it does give you an alternative way to do VFX work in separate Batch Groups which still have a connection to your sequence. Some people like to keep everything in a timeline using BatchFx while others like to break things apart. You now have the option of both with a great degree of connectivity between the various parts of the application.

In this additional video on the Connected Conform Workflow, we are going to take a look at the Flame 2019.1 update changes to managing Time-warps or speed changes when using multiple sequences in a Connected Conform. If you’ve never used the Connected Conform Workflow before, please watch the previous videos to take you through the whole workflow step by step.

With the Flame 2019.1 update, there have been a few enhancements to the Connected Conform Workflow allowing you to sort your source media in two ways in the sources sequence. So you can now sort your sources by either source or record timecode. If you have never used the Connected Conform Workflow, please watch the whole series to get you up and running.

In Flame 2019, we introduced the MasterGrade for floating-point HDR capable grading within the timeline and VFX toolsets. Now with the Flame 2019.1 update, the MasterGrade has now been enhanced with RGB curves allowing you to have even more dedicated control when it comes to grading the colours within your image. We’ll start off with an explanation of the curves and then we’ll take a look at how they work.

In this short video, you learn how to swap and replace nodes in your batch flow graph. This means you don’t have to disconnect and reconnect your flow graph if you’re trying out different nodes as your flow graph develops.