W is for aWesome

The W or "duplicate" function in Action and Batch is awesome. I didn't know until three minutes ago that you could use it in Batch. Doesn't work on complicated nodes like action, but it will dupe 2d transforms, color corrects and logic ops.

All it does is make two nodes identical, so if you change one of them, the other changes too. It doesn't matter which way the green arrow is pointing, but you can't have a duplicate slave drive another duplicate--all the green arrows have to come from one source.

Beyond the general awesomness of this (when i have more time I'll post examples of why this is a handy feature) you can also set up one node like you like, then W-duplicate all the others, then sever the connections so you can modify each one off of the original.

Manipulating Front Source Nodes in the Result View

My friend just presented me with a problem that is now SOLVED!

How to manipulate an axis or bicubic distortion on your front source node without having to go into the source view node, which isn't all that helpful when you're looking to do a minor tweak to a comp.

So here's what you do:

Add your image, and add a source node.

Change the source node to "bicubic" and turn the "shape" channel button off (it doesn't seem to work with the shape channel on)

Add a layer of the same resolution that is black for both matte and fill and make that a bicubic too. "Dupilicate" link--the green line--the black (which will be transparent with the matte on) bicubic to the front source bicubic, and link it's axis to the front source axis.

Again, make sure "shape" animation is off on your bicubics.

Now you can manipulate the axis and bezier handles of your bicubic and have them in turn drive your transformations and distortions of the front source.

Nifty! (and extra handy on smoke on mac where you can't just do what' i'd generally recommend and precomp the effin thing)

Some tips from my broadcast days

When in doubt about what IRE to color correct to I default to 110. Your reds will be legal always (red can't ever get up to even 100 IRE), however yellows and cyans can be murder. On the bright side, sucking large amounts of saturation out of the highlights often has little to no visible effect.

If you don't have a vectorscope that shows you the IRE levels you can use the not-that-secret flame spark "Broadcast" which is found in /usr/discreet/(flame version)/sparks

you can set the IRE you want it to clamp and it'll be downright evil with anything above that setting. Since you dont' want that, you put a color correct node between the clip and the spark and a differenceMatte node with the CC as one input and the spark as the other. Set the difference gain way up (1000 should be fine) and set the difference node as the context (hold the + key and tap the node). Always go into the spark, even if you change no settings. I've seen it not take effect till you 'wake it up' in that way. At this point, go back to your CC and look at your difference matte. Drop the saturation in the highlights and possibly bring the gain on them down until you've got no difference in the two images and viola! broadcast legal color.

There's some other cool things in the /usr/discreet/(flame version/ directory. I use the basic 3d primitives from the "models" directory all the time, and there's pre-made gmask shapes and other useful sparks.

Let's talk about the Gateway

It's not a node, so it's never going to get listed in my goofy top 5 lists, but the Gateway is awesome. It's got a few issues still, but by and large it's so much nicer than the old "import image" command.

First off, it's generally pretty smart about things, so you have to spend less time setting up your aspect ratios and the like. The one issue I have here in PAL-ville is that image sequences still default to 24fps. I've been burned by that once or twice.

Mostly though it's very awesome. You can set up user and project bookmarks, and even establish autoconnects to wherever people are dumping footage.

The best part of it is that you can import your clip and start working with it off the server immediately (and even leave it on the server with no local copy). If you want a local copy the Gateway will send the import off to Burn (which you can set up to be your local machine if you don't have a burn farm). The non-local copies and immediate working are excellent. Once you get used to working this way, it becomes very annoying to have to go back and import the 'old' way.

Yes, the Gateway is scary, but it's a much nicer way to work. I did a whole job recently that involved very little actual flame (some grain and lens flares) and it was very easy to do the revisions without importing any media. Find the new clip, run it through the setup and we're done. Just make sure to check your framerates--haha.

Some real nice general tutorials

http://www.hollywoodcamerawork.us/vfx_sampleclips.html

There's some really useful tutorials and it's amazing they're giving them out for free. The depth and detail is quite good.

Warping Surfaces in Action Tutorial

I talk a bit of shit on the mediocrity of flame tutorials, but Grant Kay's got a great one here and I can only imagine how many times this could have saved my ass in the past if I had known about it,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRsV4_CFhXU

Trainyard

Kenny got me into the iphone game "trainyard" and after beating all the puzzles and bonus puzzles on the free version and unlocking the bonus puzzles on the paid version, I can say it's a very good game.

Basic puzzles: get the red train to the red station, and the green one to the green station, but it gets very complex when you have to merge and split trains into different colors and have them share tracks and not collide.

The reason I'm posting it here however, is because after all this obsession I realized today it's very similar to how I work with the flame. It's hard to fully explain unless you've played the game a lot (because I don't think the analogy really applies until you're doing 10+ star levels) but there's something to the iterative tweaking and breaking of the train tracks I find very similar to solving a complicated compositing problem.

so get it. the free version is called "trainyard express" and is plenty challenging to get started.