Grain's Anatomy

Film grain has complex characteristics, both in spatial structure and in value/intensity. Many understand the basic principle behind how film works (in simple terms, light sensitive crystals - or grains - causing variations in density depending on the amount of exposure to light), and therefore why grain exists and why it tends to have the shape it does (lots of overlapping crystals/grains). What isn't immediately obvious to many is how the intensity of the grain is influenced by the nature of film.

A lot of guys ignore the laugh

And that's about standards.

I mean, if youre gonna get into the Evil League of Evil, you have to have a memorable laugh.

Loading a clipboard bitmap into Fusion

Just a quicky, since it's something I've often wanted, and the subject came up on fusion-l recently - a console util to copy a bitmap on the system clipboard to a file, and a simple fuse to load it back into Fusion.

Download here.

Easier 3D LUTs

I got some feedback from the boss about creating 3D LUTs, as described earlier: "too many steps". So I wrote a script to help out, and in a burst of imagination I called it "Create3DLUT". Thanks to the magic of automation, you can now create your 3D LUTs more easily:

• Set up a chain of colour correction tools on the flow.
• Select them all, and run the Create3DLUT script from the comp's Scripts menu.

Visualising filter kernel shapes

Here's a simple way you can visualise the shape of any convolution filter, such as a blur or defocus. Easy in Fusion, but the same approach works with most image processing apps.

• In a new comp, start with a black background, about 64 x 64 is fine, and make it float32.
• Add a single white pixel in the middle of it (I used Paint with the pixel brush).
• Now add a tool that does filtering, such as Blur.
• Normalise the image (in Fusion you can use the AutoGain tool, or just click the Show Normalised Image button on the image view toolbar, at the right).

Creating 3D LUTs

As of, erm, 5.2? Fusion has supported 3D LUTs, in the image view and on the flow, natively (I think Rising Sun had a plugin for that before then). These go beyond ordinary (1D) LUTs and allow you to do more than simply adjust colour intensities, but to map colours to completely different colours, like making the image sepia, or changing all the chartreuse pixels in your image to a sort of pinky-russet.

In fact, pretty much any non-spatial colour correction can be done with a single 3D LUT, limited only by the range and accuracy of the LUT. They're fast too, at least when accelerated by modern GPU hardware. The catch; you had to find your own 3D LUT files, somewhere.

No seriously

This is the site where we talk a bit informally about Fusion from a developer's perspective. Maybe we'd like to point out something shiny in a recent release, maybe we'd like to clarify how something works internally, maybe we just feel like having a chat.

Though I have to say, anything we might accidentally let slip about potential new features should be taken with the traditional salt mine. Consider them unconfirmed rumours, even from us, because often we work on bits and pieces that don't make it into anything released (for any number of reasons). So don't go getting all excited, coz you'll probably just end up disappointed and resentful. We're just floating ideas, getting feedback, OK? No commitment implied.

So, anyway, on with the show, s'pose I better put up a post about something.

Obligatory Welcome

First post!