Render like a professional in Blender (ACES, View Layers, Passes)

How do professionals handle passes, view layers, and color management? I show you my full workflow from render to finished composite in Resolve Fusion.

▶️ LINKS ◀️

▶️ KEY TAKEAWAYS ◀️

🔹 Professionals render the hard way because they save time in the long run
🔹 When you render passes and composite them later, you don’t need to re-render for a lot of changes
🔹 When you render view layers, you can re-render parts of the image
🔹 When you render with proper color management, compositing is more accurate, and the colorists will love you for it ❣️

▶️ CHAPTERS ◀️

00:00 - How studios render
00:55 - Passes
08:17 - Video sponsor
09:19 - View layers
18:57 - Color management
21:00 - Exporting a real shot

▶️ CREDITS ◀️

Music used in my videos:

Most is from PremiumBeat. They have a referral program, and here’s my code: HBUSIIGL (Gets you 25% off)

Anything by Cullah is great.

▶️ WHAT TO DO NOW ◀️

[robinsquares]

Animation? Yes! The workflow is the exact same. Just replace the single image files with image sequences.

[robinsquares]

I had to take down the last video because of a background music track. I had misunderstood the license, so I couldn't earn anything from the video. We should be all good now.

[DownTownDK.]

it being a re-upload is a good enough excuse for me to re-watch it

[Maarten-Nauta]

Amazing explanation! And thanks for the little clip in the background being honest about its usefulness.

As a professional CG artist I've found that its not necessary for a lone artist in 99% of cases. Studios do this because going back down the pipeline for minor changes means dozens of people have to redo certain parts (and get paid for those hours haha). I've used passes a few times to adjust my render, but I have never found a usecase for rendering out every collection in its own renderlayer yet.

I think the best use-case for rendering so many separate layers and passes is to create a killer VFX breakdown of your project ;)

[Ajee]

A good excuse to rewatch the video for a 4th time!

[CubedGamerOfficialYT]

saving this video so i can come back to it in a few months once im half decent at blender

[pragyandas]

As a beginner trying to make my works more controlled and professional, this is absolutely a godsend. Thank you!

[elsf]

Blender is SO damn amazing! I'm still confused by basic shit because it's not my primary obsession lol. When I see channels like this do these things it looks like magic even when I watch you do every step!🔥🤯

[arcticfox]

A piece of gold! The only video you need to render and composite your works.

[planenerd]

This is single handedly the best blender tutorial video I've ever seen. Every chapter of it felt composed and to the point. Really well done man

[konichiwatanabi]

Very cool. I've been wondering about all of this for like a decade! But I stayed away because it was the big bad wolf until you came along and blew his house down. It all clicked as I watched. Thanks for the tour! Cheers

[Luixxxd]

Why do you talk to the camera like im having a meltdown and you are trying to let me know everything will be ok? Will it be ok tho? You promise?

[khanhlammaune]

Really like how you explain things. I have something to add for this video:

- ACEScg, ACEScc, ACEScct are all working colorspace. You should treat your 3D render like camera footage: capture as much info as possible. Therefore, ACES2065-1 (AP0 - linear) is the colorspace for handover and archive. While cg, cc, cct or (AP1 - linear, log, log) are the purpose of working colorspace. SO, render them in ACES2065 instead of ACEScg is better. However, you have to do another mapping from ACES2065 to ACEScg, which takes time. I think fusion on resolve 19 has that color management for fusion as a project setting, which can automatically do things for you. (I’m a colorist, I don’t work much in Fusion page so… learn it yourself, IDK fusion 😅)

- For color grading purposes, output it to ACEScg and let the colorist do their job (colorist will map those out to ACEScc or cct, or whatever working colorspace they prefer). PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE don’t do rec709 transform or anything. Once you squeeze things down to a smaller gamut, there is less information to work with, and it hurts. You would not want to waste all the effort of doing all those render separately and then squeeze them into a sRGB or rec709 and hand it to the next step 🙂, b/c they will punch you 🤛.

Hope those help some 3D + VFX people🤞.

[PoiTorres]

I saved the previous one to my playlist, I got so worried where it had gone,
thank god this one popped up in my homepage.

[beol_]

Liking and Commenting for the Algorythm.
This was an amazing video, and deserves the views it had on it's original upload.
Great work Robin!

[nicolas]

This is one of the best videos I've seen in a long time

[NielsRiisgaard]

This is a lovely tutorial! So high quality and well paced. This is rare on youtube! Thank you:)

[I_am_Spartacus]

I think this video is pure gold and is a subject that's rarely covered on YT... it would be amazing Robin if you could do a tutorial video encapsulating all these processes.. even just for one scene.... I don't think any other blender channel has done this :)

[froggydesign]

Wow! I knew before about render layers but never rendered it like that, and finally it seems that ocio fixes exr colors

[maharishikashyap]

What an absolute banger of a video. I might not follow or need the complete workflow but I know I would need parts of it. But leaving the point of what I need or do not need, it was an absolute delight and a knowledge boost to watch the entire video. The way you told everything in sequence was so awesome and easy for me to understand and I don't even use resolve. Thank you for making this video. You, good sir, earned yourself a subscribe.