Speaking of under-appreciated Matchboxes

[allklier]

As part of our post on the next Logik Live we were talking about all the matchboxes that exist and we don’t know or appreciate them.

And for all those asking for some color matching tools. This is whole image, not selective color, but still useful.

Let’s add one more AFX_ReverseGrade by @Ashby

I was just watching @ChrZap’s latest fxphd course on Nuke. In there he demonstrates an interesting color matching technique I hadn’t seen with the Nuke Grade node. You pick the White/Black point in the FG Plate, and then you pick the White/Black point in the BG Plate. In the Nuke Grade node those go into White/Black point, and Life/Gain respectively. And you end up with a decent starting point to match the two, which cna then be refined further.

I was thinking that might be useful in Flame, and my mind went to how to build a matchbox for that. While researching that, I realized, we already have it, AFX_ReverseGrade.

Quick sample (I hope Christoph doesn’t mind that I used the images from his tutorial)…

part of the FG plate:

end-result (super fast, not detailed GS key); all color correction is automated by the matchbox, no manual adjustments:

Simple node tree:

Shader controls:

[ChrZap]

Thanks Jan!

This is one of the things i really miss(ed) in Flame, as the Color Match inside the Color Corrector inside of Flame is not useable. Will definitely give this a spin. Also, you just earned yourself a spot in one of my future classes on color correction in “Flame for Nuke Artists” on Logic Academy Pro… Alright, enough of the shameless self-promotion, thanks a lot, Jan!

[allklier]

This matchbox is not quite as malleable as the Nuke implementation. It gets you the right starting point and you can make some adjustments with positive values. But if you turn them negative, things get wonky, whereas the Nuke node handles that better. Not sure if this a Flame issue, or the simplicity of the math used.

So best to use this as a static point and then adjust in a separate node to taste.

Maybe this can also be improved further. But glad I discovered John’s work. I only found it because I was doing an ‘fgrep hitepoint *.glsl’ in the matchbox folder, trying to find examples of the transforms that would be required.

PS: There’s a companion AFX_Grade matchbox, that duplicates more of the Nuke Grade node, but only implements a subset of the controls. Though it may be of interest in the context of Flame for Nuke artists.

[allklier]

Slightly off-topic of this matchbox, but on Nuke for Flame Artists and vice versa.

I’ve gotten so used to the Axis being parented to very mask in Flame, and the simplicity of a one or two point tracker improving the roto speed, that I miss it in Nuke and cringe when I see a Nuke artist manually keyframing a roto node (and how I used to do it too), regardless of how fast it is.

In my version of the node tree, I added a quick one-point track node for the fg plate, and then each roto root is linked to that tracker as a quick ‘parent axis’…

Good example of why working in multiple apps can make for better workflows as you cross-pollinate and not just stay in one tried and true swimlane.

[Ashby]

Hey!

Glad you are enjoying the nodes, i’m sure they can be improved my glsl skills were laughably basic and this was all before our chatgpt overlord

J.