Blender 2.7 Tutorial #57 : Post-Processing & Video Effects #b3d Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Blender (English) - Professional Skills

welcome to part with these seven or
thirty season how to use blender 2.7 in
this video I'll be talking about
post-processing and adding video effects
to your animations as you render them
out as many of you know blender is not
only a 3d modeling and animation program
but it's also a video editing program
and a powerful compositing program we're
going to using some of those tools in
this video to add effects to our
animations as we're rendering them out
which will save us the problem of having
to bring our video
once that's rendered out to a different
video editing program to adjust colors
and brightness and contrast and add
effects when we can do it all in one
step for this video I'll actually be
providing you with a link to download
this exact file so you can follow along
with me if I don't like to download it
in the description area below let's go
ahead and jump in this scene or this
file has an animation of a snowman
sliding in from the left side of the
scene and kind of stopping and doing a
little way to the camera the animation
is done the modeling is done the cameras
in the right spot I'm all happy with it
I'm ready to render except I want to
adjust some of the colors and effects of
my scene so what I can do here is change
my big 3d viewport window into a
different window it's called the video
sequence editor window so I'll click on
the button on the header of the 3d
viewport and change it to that window
it's called a video sequence editor and
this is blenders video editing window
when it first comes up it looks just
sort of like a timeline a video editing
program but there's no video port and
that's because there's three ways of
looking at this window right now we're
looking at it as the sequencer and there
are three buttons for these three
options the first button is for the
sequencer view the second button is for
the viewer view so you can actually see
your video here when you're working on
it
and the third way it looks is both it's
a split view and watch out those three
buttons sort of slide around a thing on
which view that you're in let's go ahead
and have both on the screen now so I'll
click that third button there we go I
have a viewer up here and a sequencer
down here and when you first bring this
window up it has nothing in it and
that's because we haven't added anything
to it we could add external video files
and images and sound files but we'll
actually do is under the add menu where
you see all those options you have you
see movies you see images you see sounds
that you can add from other files but
you can also add scenes from your
current file now when I add a scene in
this for me here what scene I want to
add only have one scene it's just the
animation of the snowman and I never
named that scene let's go ahead and do
that first though so up here on the
information bar in blender this is my
current scene and it's not named or its
name just the default so I'll type in
snowman - animation and I'll press Enter
so now if I go down to add scene it'll
list snowman animation here when I do
that it adds it to the sequencer and it
sort of lost in my sequencer timeline
down here but it's actually over here
let's go ahead and scroll down to zoom
out as you can see when you add
something to your sequencer it adds it
in what's called a strip and you can
press G with its legend to move it
around and of course if you have
multiple strips you can right click to
select each one which you'll see in just
a moment you can move it to different
tracks and the higher up the track is
it'll be in front the higher up it goes
you'll see that in just a moment as well
I want to make sure when I press G to
start this clip right at frame one you
can see the bottom left corner of that
strip and it ends at frame 105 which is
the same length as my timeline let's go
ahead and scroll up to zoom in to make
it a little bit larger the first thing
I'll do is I'm going to adjust the way
that my scene looks in the viewer of
this window right now it's sort of
cropped at the top in the bottom that's
because it's zoomed in I can scroll down
and scroll up a little of us in this
window so I'll scroll down you can also
orbit by pressing your mouse wheel down
to move it around let's bring up the
properties panel on the right-hand side
with its a little plus or the N key as
always and there's a lot of things going
on here but what I do is find the
section I'll collapse them all lets me
change my display
type and what that means is right now my
scene is not rendered which means that
it's giving me like a preview here but
there are no colors I have to be careful
here because I can't have a rendered
preview because rendering takes a long
time but I can have colors or materials
in this viewer so once these are all
collapsed in the properties panel I can
change my scene preview render from
solid up to material and again it's a
warning here do not change it to
rendered that might crash blender or
even crash your computer it does not
work very well this is an OpenGL preview
which means a very quick preview sort of
like a game engine
I would not uncheck that I would not go
to rendered again it does not work very
well even on a fast computer great I can
see the colors on my scene I can't see
lighting very well but it's looking me
an idea what my effects will do before I
render them out let's go ahead and scrub
around and we can see the animation that
works out great let's go ahead and add
an effect there's two ways of doing that
we can add what are called modifiers and
we can add what are called effect strips
let's add some modifiers first what the
scenes trip selected I'll go over to the
modifier section and expands it out and
if we click on add strip modifiers we
can see what we have available here
these are all pretty well color
adjustments we have color balance curves
hue correct brightness and contrast this
one's a little bit different it's for
masking you can add masks if you've made
mats already you can add them here white
balance and tone maps let's go ahead and
add brightness and contrast and let's
see what it looks like this is sort of
like modifiers in our 3d world in the
properties window under the wrench tab
where you add more modifiers and they
get put in a stack so we have our first
one here it's the brightness and
contrast modifier you can get rid of it
and you can add multiple modifiers there
it is again we can adjust the brightness
and contrast of our scene so if I drag
this down the scene will get darker and
the contrast up and of course it'll get
more contrast II I can collapse this
modifier and add more and let's go ahead
and add a hue correct modifier and as
you can see we get a place where we can
actually
whole colors out of our scene or add the
intensity up of certain colors so if I
pull all of the red markers down there
were kind of three of them you can see
that the red in my scene disappears
that's kind of interesting let's go
ahead and add another one let's go ahead
and add curves this is a very powerful
modifier if you're not familiar with
curves in any program like Photoshop or
GIMP I'm not going to talk too much
about color theory but basically you can
click anywhere in the diagonal line to
add a new point to make a curve and this
will make your scene be more contrasted
or done you can really play with these
curves and make it really look wacky if
you want to get rid of points in your
code you can click on a little X and
left-click to select more and click on X
let's go ahead and go back to the
default if you drag the points
horizontally inwards you'll make your
scene more contrast to you as well
although you get much much more control
here over your scene if you don't want
some of the modifiers anymore of course
you can click X to get rid of them and
your scene will go back to the way it
was originally great the other way that
you can change your scene is by using
effects strips and the way these work is
they actually get placed above your
original scene or video file in the
tracks of your sequencer so with this
scene selected I'm gonna go down to add
or I'll press shift am like keyboard I'm
gonna add an effect strip and you get
different options here I'm gonna add a
Gaussian blur effect which we did not
have with modifiers so shift a effect
strip Gaussian blur and when I do that
it adds a new effect strip above in the
same duration as the original scene now
with that effect strip selected it
hasn't actually done anything yet and
that's because over here in the
properties panel there is now a
different set of areas we have effect
strip options and edit strip as well
what I'll do here is under effect strip
I'll change the X and the y values in
fact I little click in them and I'll
type maybe 30 and 30 for x and y and as
you can see the scene is now
learn as a Gaussian blur effect on it I
can add more effects trips all I'll do
is with my original clip selected I'll
press shift a on my keyboard I'll add a
glow effect and it'll add itself to a
track in the sequencer and as you can
see it's already had an effect if I have
it selected and I press H it'll hide
that effect if a college that's too blur
as well I'll select it and press H if
you want to show or unhide effects trips
you can select it and press alt H and
that will unhide it so select each one
alt H just like this one alt H and it'll
show up again
so let's adding modifiers and effect
strips I'm not going to talk anymore
about this window because we're gonna
switch over now in a much more powerful
area of using nodes specifically
compositing nodes to add color
adjustments and effects to your scenes
before you run into them out let's go
ahead and delete all the strips in our
video sequence editor so I'll select
each one and press X on my keyboard
let's do that and I'll change this
entire window type into a node editor
window right here
if you've used blender cycles to add
materials you know what nodes are a
little bit funny and it's a bit of a
learning curve to understanding them but
the more you use them the more they make
sense we're not going to be using
material nodes this time to add effects
we're going to be using compositing
notes and to do that we have to change
the mode of this window down at the
bottom on its header from material nodes
over to compositing notes it looks like
a couple of photos that are stacked one
above the other and we also have a check
use notes in fact I'm gonna check all
three buttons use nodes backdrop and
auto render I'll talk with all three
three things are if you use nodes before
to add materials to objects and blender
cycles you'll know that you always have
to have the same start and end nodes in
order for the whole thing to work in
this case we have our render layers node
which I'll move with the G key over the
left side and we have a composite node
which I'll move over to the right side
when you're compositing it's going to be
anything for you to see what the effect
is right away on your scene that's why I
click on this little backdrop checkbox
because what we want to happen is for
our effects that
we're adding the color adjusting notes
to actually show up the preview in the
background of this window we also want
to have this window update if we make a
change in our 3d scene I'm not gonna do
that so actually we'll have to do to
make a backdrop show up in this case is
I'm gonna press shift a on my keyboard
to add a note I'm gonna add what's
called a viewer and what this does is it
basically enables the backdrop to work
I'm not really sure why they didn't
build this in the blender without having
to add it but we need that note there I
also have to connect it just like the
composite which is our real output to
any nodes that we have before it so I'll
drag the image of our render layers that
means our 3d scene to that viewer as
well and I need a render that means I
need to render one scene of my animation
right now I'm on frame 70 let's go ahead
and press render I actually spent that
render up for the sake of this video
let's go ahead now and close this render
window and as you can see now that I've
done one render I have a backdrop in my
node and your window it's actually
cropped though because the render is
quite large so what I'll do is I'll
press V on my keyboard without a mouse
in the node editor window and the V key
zooms out on the backdrop it's sort of a
funny key for that if you press it too
many times I guess too small you can
press alt V on your keyboard and Alt fee
will zoom the backdrop back in and if
you want to kind of pan around the
backdrop if I orbit in this window it
actually pans around the nodes but if I
hold alt and orbit it'll pan around the
background so orbiting with your mouse
wheel it pans around the nodes and
holding alt and orbiting pans on that
background great it's in the middle of
these nodes that I already have that I
can add any effects or adjustment notes
that I've like let's go ahead and add
one I'll press shift e on my keyboard to
bring up the add menu and under color
you can see what options I have here I
can do things like adjust the curves or
color balance or hue saturation value or
gamma of
my render let's go ahead and press shift
a I'll add a color and let's use curves
again now I really need to in order for
this to work
drag this new node in the middle of the
noodle that goes out to the composite so
if I drag this up into there you can see
the noodle gets highlighted and if I let
go it inserts itself in the middle of
that noodle making two smaller noodles
but in order for this backdrop to work I
need to reconnect the output of this new
adjustment node to the viewer as well so
I'll drag the output of this curves node
to the viewer and so now it'll actually
show up in the backdrop and not only
when I render out of my animation let's
go ahead and play with the curves I will
make a little bit more contrast II
that's great and be able to with the
middle as well the curves window also
lets you specify between the brightness
and darkness or the red or green or blue
channel so you can adjust each one
independently I can make the scene more
blue if I walk by taking down some of
the red value maybe I'll make the port
the bright colors a bit red and the dark
values of it blue by adjusting that and
maybe I'll make the green a little bit
higher in this scene as well just a
little bit though great let's go ahead
and add another adjustment note so I'll
press shift a on my keyboard will add a
color balance note just like I did
before again and this time I'll put it
before RGB curves that's easier because
it's only one noodle to insert it in if
I put it over here I could repeat the
process where I had to reconnect the
viewer to the output of my last
adjustment node let's go ahead and do
that so now if I adjust these three
colors and I'm not gonna get into what
lift gamma and gaming in this video I
have the effect that I want there is a
really cool effect that I've recently
found let's go ahead and edit I'll press
it's a on my keyboard I'm gonna add a
distort and lens distortion effect and
so when I add that I'll add it last in
the sequence of adjustment notes so I'll
add it right there and I'll reconnect my
output on my last adjustment node to the
viewer and what this node does I'll kind
of move it
the way is it simulates distortion of
either a fish eye or a wide-angle lens
and what I'll do here is I'll turn out
distort a lot it only goes up to one
actually and you can see what this looks
like it looks like a fisheye lens I can
click on the fit checkbox and that will
make it so that it fits within a
rectangle it's very sensitive I find and
if you go the other way it looks like a
very very wide angle lens be careful
with these values they can get pretty
wacky and I can also turn up dispersion
that's what that last where it says
dispersion will make it look like the
colors are separating in my scene and it
gets very very blurry towards the edges
of the frame it looks pretty cool if I
don't want that same exact effect what I
can do is check on projector and that
way you won't get the same lens the
source and effect but you will have
color separation that looks pretty cool
to me but I'll leave it with a projector
unselected great I think we're pretty
much done here I'm ready to render out
if I want to do that I can do that right
away of course I can change all of my
output settings I'm not gonna run her
out to a PNG image sequence though I
want to action this to a video file I'm
gonna use the h.264 video codec which is
a very very common video codec I need to
change some of my coding settings as
well because of a video file I don't
want an avi file I'd rather have a file
that ends in dot mpeg-4 or mp4 and I'll
leave everything else the same I'm not
actually gonna render out in this video
the entire animation but I will click
render so you can see what that looks
like when you click render it'll
actually show you the original file or
the original image first but every time
it renders out a frame once it finishes
that frame it'll then apply the
distortion so you'll see it running out
the original image and then you'll see
it become distorted once it finishes the
edges of the frame and there we go
that's the final result that'll be for
this video thanks for watching please
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