Blender Scene

Estimated reading: 4 minutes

Supported software version: 3.6.2

VFX & 3D Integration

Blender Scene is a powerful feature that combines all VFX elements from Autodesk Flow Studio into a 3D scene. Some capabilities of the Blender Scene:

Edit animation directly on your character – With Blender Scene, MoCap and Facial animation data are loaded directly to your character. You don’t need to import the animation from external data; you can start editing the animation right away.
Edit lighting in a 3D scene – Blender Scene includes the lighting information from Autodesk Flow Studio in a 3D scene. You can freely add light sources and change the parameters of scene lights, reflection, and environment maps.
Compose your shot – Continue compositing directly in Blender. Do post-processing and color correction. Render out a separate character pass. Add shadow catcher objects to your scene and render out shadows as a separate pass. Render out the final shot by utilizing preloaded nodes that enable you to load the Clean Plate.
Edit camera – Reframe your shot. Change the focal length or any other camera parameters. Reposition or animate your camera. Enable effects like depth of field for even more cinematic effects.
Add props and environments – Change the context of your shot completely by adding a CG environment. Or simply add props and other CG objects to enhance your shot.

Export Scene files do not come with character textures. If you are using Autodesk Flow Studio Featured characters please visit the Download Textures for WS Featured Character section of the documentation.

How To

Reload Textures in Blender

Download a texture set for a character and unzip it.
In Blender, go to File > External Data > Find Missing Files.
Navigate to the folder that contains the extracted textures.
Click Find Missing Files and wait for the Blender to load images.

Blender may display warning messages related to various missing links and/or paths. Please double-check if the textures loaded successfully by rendering a test shot.

Avoid setting Viewport Render preview mode to Material Preview or Render while using the Find Missing Files feature. These modes can prolong the process since they will immediately start rendering the character with newly added textures.

Setting up the Compositor

Go to the compositor tab.

Arrange nodes.

If you do not see the Arrange tab go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons and search for Node Arrange. Enable this add-on.

Adding Clean Plate

To add the clean plate that you downloaded from the platform locate the CleanPlate node in the Compositor.
Under the Node tab on the right side, locate the Properties section, expand it, and click the Open button.

To add the clean plate that you downloaded from the platform locate the CleanPlate node in the Compositor.
Under the Node tab on the right side find the Properties section, expand it, and click the Open button.

Adding Custom Roto Passes

In Compositor, you’ll be able to locate a group of nodes to handle your own personalized roto pass for each individual character.

In the example provided, there are two characters in the scene. On the left side, you can see two Image nodes that require roto passes for each character. Alternatively, these nodes can be left empty.

FusedRoto pass is used to fix potential problems with Cryptomatting. A fused roto needs to be a mask that consists of all of the individual roto masks combined (if they exist).

Please note that these nodes are not required and can be left blank.

Render/Compositor Export Settings

Render Export Setup

The compositor is set up with a Composite node which enables the rendered shot to be saved using Blender’s Output properties. After tweaking the scene and/or including the clean plate in the compositor you are able to render the output using Output settings.

EXR Export Setup

The compositor is set up with a File Output node that exports EXR files. To render the scene in EXR format, simply provide the output folder path in the Path field under the Properties section.

The resulting files will include separate passes for each character, an alpha mask, and the combined image.

Character Pass Export Setup

You can render out a transparent pass easily by disabling the Use Nodes setting in the Compositor and making sure that the Transparent option is enabled in the Render Properties tab under the Film section.