FilmLight Shows Baselight 5.0 for Avid and NUKE at IBC

FilmLight will demonstrate new releases of the Baselight Editions plugins for Avid and for NUKE at IBC2017, in line with Baselight version 5.0.

The Baselight for Avid plugin was developed to add colour control and previewing functions to Avid editing workstations. Owing to FilmLight’s renderless workflows that use colour information based on metadata, Baselight for Avid always displays the grade with the most recent updates. Editors can make their own adjustments without leaving the Avid environment. This functionaliity is useful when Avid facilities want editors to have the same functionality that the colourist has, and see exactly the same grade.

In this new release, users can see and move between shots using a new visual timeline and have new relational navigation tool that narrows down material quickly and only moves between shots that have the same clip or tape name. The workspaces tool, for customising and arranging panels within the UI, is also available in Baselight for Avid 5.0.

Updates to the grading functionality include relational grading, which replicates Baselight’s multi-shot grade application that allows grades to be copied and imposed on shots defined by the same category, such as clip name, bin name, camera and so on.

The other new grading tools introduced in Baselight 5.0 also apply to the Avid workspace now, which hinge on the core Base Grade concept from FilmLight that gives the artist access to a set of controls that imitate the way human eyes understand colour, rather than the traditional lift/gamma/gain approach.

Critical to colourists, Baselight for Avid is part of FilmLight’s unified approach to colour management, as mentioned above. The raw images are retained throughout, with the grade captured in metadata in the FilmLight BLG (Baselight Grade) format. Any FilmLight device, from Prelight ON-SET or the Daylight dailies tool through Baselight for Avid to the colourist suite, will interpret the BLG metadata and impose the latest version of the grade in real time.

Also available is the texture equaliser for skintone fixes, which editors can use to clean up skin issues on the fly without handing the shot to a colourist, perspective tracking for grading windows, gamut tools for moving between colour spaces, and denoise tools.

Baselight for NUKE 5.0 Supports VFX Artists

The new version of Baselight for NUKE also extends the plugin's main purpose of displaying the latest grade within the NUKE environment using metadata, recreating the precise look from a full Baselight suite so that the two looks are visually indistinguishable. Baselight’s BLG metadata format is used to transfer complex grades including spatial operations such as shapes, and keyframes for grades that change over time.

Like the Avid version, Baselight for NUKE gives access to the complete Baselight 5.0 grading tool kit where necessary, supporting collaboration. It can load quite complex grades delivered from a colourist's Baselight system, including shots with multiple inputs, mixed formats or numerous EXR channels. The BLG file now contains format mappings along with the grade metadata and colour space information, so that even if the full Baselight grade uses material from several different sources, the NUKE plugin will combine the elements using the exact same grades and transforms.

The result is that the individual elements of an animation – rotomattes, relighting and repositioning and so on – can be graded independently in Baselight, and the final grade fully replicated for all elements in NUKE. This would allow, for example, the colourist to set colours using an albedo or flat colour pass, and then overlay it with textures for specular highlights to match complex virtual lighting.

Using the multiple input function with the new perspective area tracking in Baselight for NUKE also means that sky or screen replacements can be completed more simply and directly.

For those interested in custom automation, Baselight 5.0 supports beta functionality for generating NUKE scripts alongside BLG grade files for EXR input material. When the scripts are loaded into NUKE, the various inputs and the BLG grade are located and connected automatically, using the correct format mappings and colour spaces.

FilmLight will be showing these two plugins and all of its grading and colour management systems at IBC in Amsterdam, in particular the BLG render-free workflow. Baselight for Avid can also be seen on the Avid stand.  www.filmlight.ltd.uk