Book Image

Blender Compositing and Post Processing

Book Image

Blender Compositing and Post Processing

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Preface

Blender Compositing and Post Processing is a one-stop solution to attain state-of-the-art compositing skills to create mind-blowing visuals and productive composites using Blender Compositor.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Blender Compositing – Overview, provides a basic understanding of the role of compositing in a CG workflow and Blender's importance as a compositor. It also provides an understanding of what can go in and out of Blender Compositor in terms of formats, color space, passes, layers, and bit depths.

Chapter 2, Working with Blender Compositor, explains the Blender Compositor's node-based architecture, different types of nodes, and working in linear workspace using color management. Many useful compositor shortcut keys are detailed in this chapter.

Chapter 3, Working with Input and Output Nodes, covers different ways to get data in and out of Blender Compositor. These nodes essentially form the head and tail of the compositing flow.

Chapter 4, Image Manipulation Techniques, explains the different image manipulation nodes and their utilization procedures available in Blender Compositor. These nodes play a major role in grading a footage to attain a desired look.

Chapter 5, Beyond Grading, deals with advanced compositing techniques beyond grading. These techniques emphasize alternate methods in Blender Compositing for some specific 3D render requirements that can save lots of render times, thereby also saving budgets in making a CG film.

Chapter 6, Alpha Sports, provides an understanding of the significance of the alpha channel and some issues related to it. Different matte extraction techniques such as keying, Matte ID, and masking are detailed in this chapter through practical examples.

What you need for this book

Readers should have basic lighting and shading knowledge of Blender to be able to comprehend and extract the required passes for compositing. Blender 2.68 is used in this book.

Who this book is for

This book is for digital CG artists longing to add photo realism and life to their footage. This book also assists technical CG artists to strategize and implement productive lighting and compositing pipeline in CG filmmaking. If you are new to Blender or compositing, do not worry because this book guides you using a step-by-step approach to help you gain compositing skills.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this:"Relighting is a compositing technique to add extra light information."

Tip

Tips and tricks are shown like this.

Reader feedback

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Customer support

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Downloading the color images of this book

We also provide you a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. The color images will help you better understand the changes in the output. You can download this file from: http://www.packtpub.com/sites default/files/downloads/1127os_graphics.pdf.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/support, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded to our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title.

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Questions

You can contact us at if you are having a problem with any aspect of the book, and we will do our best to address it.