Hello all - I’ve got a general question that I’d love to pool all of you on
I’m a finishing editor who works with Flame (and nowhere near any of your realm in VFX talent!) But now our company primarily does all the conforms on Resolve and while I’ll do opticals in Flame I’m not in that environment enough to learn/be up to date on the features. So that brings me to Fusion which is now part of Resolve - any thoughts on this program? I know some VFX artists who prefer this because of its node simplicity. Or any tips how can I keep up to date in Flame and get better without actually being on it full time like I used to be?
Thanks so much - Chad
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Whats up Chad! Hope you are well!
First, I’ve never used Fusion and don’t know anyone that uses it that does what we do. So, someone else will have to chime in on that one.
Here are some challenging questions/thoughts. It’s not my intention to pick on you, just make you think a little bit and start a dialogue.
Regarding Flame, well, your question is super broad and vague. What are you goals? What do you do now that you wish you could do better? Are you advancing in your career? What kind of work do you want to do? Is there someone out there that you envy and want to be like? If answering some of those questions is challenging, then perhaps it’d be helpful to just be exposed to more stuff. Give yourself a goal of spending just 15 minutes a day on this. That’s 1% of your day.
When’s the last time you watched a Logik Live? When’s the last time you watched someone do something and thought damn, that was cool, I want to do that! Have you seen a Renderdome? Was anything there inspiring?
Lean in a little bit if you can. Join the Discord (link at the top of this page) or join a Logik Hivemind for some small group support.
Thoughts? Questions? Comments? Concerns?
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Welcome aboard, Chad!
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Hello Chad,
In my experience, if you want to keep up to date then there’s no substitute for just using Flame as often and as much as you can.
Why not try and convince your company to let you do the conforms in Flame (it’s briliant at that), but you could also offer to do any clean up, VFX stuff you feel comfortable with, anything else that you think you can do a good job on. If you can show you’d be useful and do a good job, they might let you keep on doing it, they might even start all jobs in Flame first! You’d be on the kit day in day out and you’d be able to keep your chops up.
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Learn it all and like Randy says, watch their Logik Live videos. So many ways to use flame and different companies require different things from it, my point is that maybe it’s time to see whether you can find another company to work for?
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If you’re doing long format color work in Resolve there’s little chance that moving everything over to Flame makes any sense whatsoever. In almost all those workflows Flame gets relegated to shot based workflows and then there’s that financial argument to be made for keeping it in Fusion. Sure you can make the argument that the artist driving their preferred kit can be more productive but that argument oftentimes falls on the deaf ears of CFOs worldwide.
Hi Randy and all!
I’ve been reading all of these and promise I will have an actual response …today’s just been one of those crazy days
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All good sir, all good. You’re too kind. We’re not in front of your computer with your clients and your needs, so all we can do is help you throw some noodles at the wall and see what sticks. Everybody’s role is uniquely shaped and requires care and thought.
You bait the hook to suit the fish, right? We’ll share what bait we’ve used but you’re gonna have to see what…ahh snap this analogy ain’t goin nowhere. Chat soon!
Create problems for yourself. Which is to say, give yourself tasks that you want to be able to solve in a current version of flame, then use said current version to solve them. Do this regularly. An hour a day will stack up in your mind better than blasting ninety tutorials in a week. I’ve done some crazy houdini tutorials, but when I boot it up three months later I’m lost again.
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Ok, Hi Randy and all again,
I know - my post was sort of random thoughts just coming out of my head but I’ve meaning to write something here for awhile and wanted to make sure I got it out.
So the gist is this - I know Flame but want to be better in it - the technology today is advancing every year and I don’t want to be one of those who gets out of the loop. Conform nowadays sometimes moves towards such an automatic process especially on the bigger shows and your job becomes more of a managerial flow of keeping track of everything and the constant changes. I work on longform projects and our company has pretty much transitioned to a Resolve based conform/color workflow with the exception of Lustre and any optical heavy show which is supposed to be discussed beforehand but you know how that works out sometimes. Resolve conform does have plusses and minuses (although that’s a whole other debate I could have with you on another forum) and since we work on large scale shows the turnaround and constant updating often suits Resolve better especially color wise but in the process I lose the ability to work on Flame.
I do bring in shots to Flame for anything that’s not simple optical work and basic cleanups but lately I have’t been using it at all simply because we’ve been working on larger VFX heavy shows. I know at my current job I can’t be an editor and VFX artist at the same time - the machine keeps moving and stand alone shots are often just kicked out to our in house team. And I don’t want to give up being an editor - I do quite enjoy it but also want to continue to get better and up to date on Flame.
An analogy I’m going to use (forgive me if you think its bad but it’s the only thing I can think of right now!) is that I’m in a popular band right now - it’s successful and financially good and I’m playing the game. But as time goes on, you get content, you coast then maybe get a bit lazy, then you get older and are replaced by a younger person making half of what you are. Now I’m not saying I want to go make my own artsy solo album and try to be a star all by myself but I want to be able to succeed without the machine in looking towards the long term future. Some things I’d really like to get better at are tracking and keying and be able to do more of the work that I might say I can’t do now - like more advanced clean ups/replacements. I’ve attended several Autodesk gatherings when I was living in the city and have watched a lot of the Grant Kay videos but I find it hard to follow/retain unless I’m actually doing something that I could apply it to. (And yes I know its a cliche to say this but I do find some of his examples perfect situations where everything works) I will often hit up the in house team and friends of mine who are Flame Artists for advice and knowledge as well but am looking for other ways to get better on it by myself. You mentioned the Hive group but wasn’t sure if that was more geared towards people ready to start their own businesses? Anyway I welcome and appreciate everyone who has commented on here!
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Hey there Chad!
Among the many great ideas already posted here; may I also suggest subscribing to FX/PhD for a few months. They have a lot of GREAT classes on all aspects of Flame and many other VFX tools. Christoph Zaplatel’s new Mocha course taught me a TON about the program!
Best of luck!
Michael
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The hive would be perfect for this situation! A Hive is for anything we make it. There are other artists involved who want to learn more specific skill sets like you mention. There are artists who love teaching tips and tricks on a detailed level so we make sure those ingredients are in the mix. It’s all a matter of how we create the room and make sure everyone gets something out of it. 
I agree FXPHD would be super helpful as well! Getting shots and doing the work is the only way to stay on top of any skill. There are a few things I do only once a year and every time i have to re-watch a tutorial to remember how to do it. Flame does a lot of stuff and depending on the type of shots you’re handling, you’re not going to use all the features often enough to stay on top of things. 
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Hi Chad, as an editor you are probably aware that Flame is, uhm, an editor. I’m using Flame as my go-to NLE, as I did with Smoke back in the days. For short-form work that needs polishing, there is simply nothing remotely comparable to Flame. Even the sound tools are excellent, being the limiter world-class.
Using Flame daily will make you comfortable with the software; you’ll get to know the quirks and workarounds. You’ll be digging deeply into Effects and Image because you’ll be doing your grading all in Flame. You will learn everything about Flame’s fabulous colour management and why re-graining works best in log.
For the more complex stuff, you’ll be using Batch, but you will know why there’s a Timeline Batch BFX and the traditional shot-base Batch. Both have their places. And if you are really into compositing, Action’s 3D CGI capabilities are a universe that I’ve never explored because Flame is larger than my brain and interests.
If this is all an old hat to you, my apologies. However, my young co-workers learned their take on Flame on daily work, which is in my line of work, mostly editing and finishing (which often requires compositing skills). After 3 or 4 years, they constantly leave me to advance their skills elsewhere. I support that gladly. So perhaps, in your case, it’s time to move on.
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I’d also like to add that while you are spending the time learning, log into the Flame Discord channel and you can chat to whoever is online at the time. It’s another great way to get a quick answer.
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Thanks all! These are all very much appreciated - I wasn’t aware of a lot of these resources to be honest. The hive definitely sounds very appealing to me as well - that might be the best way for me to focus on a few specific things I want to take up a notch.
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One thing we could do is create a custom kinda boot camp for you, complete with test footage for you to work on with weekly live screen shares to work through some tasks in a small group with a teacher artist.
For example, I thought it’d be kinda cool to have a general shot cleanup curriculum, where we start with easy cleanup tasks like tracking stills and some light restore work, some procedural removals, and then work our way up to some medium and hard cleanup tasks. Since that’d be a different kinda deal with a different schedule, I’ve been loosely putting together some thoughts as to what a weekly course would look like that had that structure, but wasn’t 8 weeks, and maybe had either a weekly or biweekly live screen share with a teacher.
If there were a 2-4 artists that are interested, I could put together some rough structures and schedules for you.
If machine access were an issue, hell, i could probably swing cloud machines to use.
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I’d be very interested in this. I’m getting loads of this sort of work these days. Some deep explaination of clean up with geos and multiple projectors would be great!
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I’d be interested in this as well.
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Interested!
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This would be great for up and coming flame artists.
Gonna ask anyways …. Could there also be something for more advanced Flame artists. Let’s say if “Joel Osis” had a shot that really gave him a hard time, love his work, hence the reference. Could there be a platform where some of these troublesome shots from the more advanced flame artists, with a VFX brief possibly be shared. I know it’s tricky with any client/commercial work.
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