In this video, you'll learn how to add items to the Action Contextual Menus by editing the XML text files. A great example of this is making your favourite matchbox shader available through the Action contextual menu. The contextual or right-click menus were introduced in the Flame 2018.2 Update and hopefully they have increased your usability and speed when working in the Action 3D compositor.

One of the most powerful VFX toolsets in the Flame Products is the Action 3D compositing environment. Action allows you to seamlessly blend two-dimensional images and 3D-models in an environment that has traditionally been node driven for maximum flexibility. So typically, your interaction would be a mixture of node bins and connecting nodes in the Action schematic. This is a fast and flexible way to work. But through the integration of the new Action contextual menus in the Flame 2018.2 update, you can work even faster by performing multiple operations with fewer clicks. These selection sensitive contextual menus will give you all the options you need in a right-click as well as hidden functionality that used to only be accessible through keyboard shortcuts. This will benefit all Flame artists at any skill level.

In this short video, we’ll take a quick look at how you can now export different lists from the Flame 2018.2 Update. This can be really useful when working in the Flame products and you need to provide your producer or client with a list of various details from Flame. You can export any list view from Flame as an XML text file. This includes the file browser, Media Panel, Conform Events, Markers view and even the animation tables. Just ensure that you look at the tables in list view and you will be able to export them through the contextual menu.

In this video, we focus on a small but long time requested feature that editors and VFX artists use all the time.  This is the ability to hide a selected segment or segments as you work within a sequence.   It’s really quick and simple to use with either the contextual menus or keyboard shortcut.

Part 3 continues the Connected Conform Workflow and production progresses with the VFX. You’ll now start using Batch to create a more complicated composite with node based compositing. This will cover proper shot naming for VFX work as well as the Smart Replace function for automatic shot replace when rendering and replacing the same VFX media across all the sequences in the Connected Conform. And perhaps you might receive another version of the edit that also needs to be added to the Connected Conform even after the VFX work!

Part 2 picks up from where you left off at Part 1 where you conformed the first edit in Flame and created the Connected Conform. Shortly after a new version of the edit was supplied and this was added into the Connected Conform. Now you’ll start adding standard VFX to all the sequences using the Shots Sequence. This allows you to apply the VFX once and it affects all the sequences within the Connected Conform. As as always… you will get revised edits of the production at any point and you’ll deal with that when it happens.

In this set of videos, you'll experience the Connected Conform Workflow with an enhanced usability through the Flame 2018.2 Update.   The Connected Conform workflow allows you to share the same sources and VFX across multiple timelines.   So if you're working on any production that has multiple versions or cut downs of an edit, you can make changes anywhere and all your sequences will remain in sync.  The 2018.2 update now allows you to add more edits to the Connected Conform even at different stages of production.   It would be nice to receive everything at once but realistically you get your first edit and more sequences get added as time moves on.   So you'll be learning how to handle this situation.

This video picks up from part 2 when you have just conformed a sequence using Open Clips. At this point if you want to start versioning your media, you have two choices. If the media already exists, than you will use the Multi-version Open Clip. If the media does not exist yet and you want to create a place holder that can be monitored for media, than you will use the pattern Open Clip. The pattern Open Clip scenario is more common as new versions are typically introduced as the production progresses. So this will be the main focus of this video.

In this video, you start your way through the key stages of accessing the Open Clip workflow. This video takes you through an example of creating Open Clips on import with the new Open Clip Creator. So you can create Open Clips without any scripting knowledge and get started straight away. Open Clips are treated as regular media clips when working in the Flame applications. So you can import, Conform, Edit and apply VFX using Open Clips.

In this video, you are given an introduction to the Open Clip Workflow in the Flame Products. The Open Clip allows you to version external media within your master timeline. So as new versions are delivered from other applications, CGI or VFX, you can choose to use these new versions or automatically update the Open Clips to reflect the latest version of the media. The Flame 2018.2 Update introduce a new easy way to create open clips without any scripting knowledge allowing anyone at any skill level to take advantage of this powerful workflow.