Compositing
Pass-aware beauty stack. Subtle grade. Delivery-ready outputs.
When to Use
- Final beauty composites from Cycles/Eevee
- Grade, glare, vignette, chromatic subtlety
- Pass recombination (diffuse, glossy, volume, cryptomatte)
- Shot delivery plates
Workflow
Enable passes → Render multilayer EXR (or needed passes)
→ Compositor graph → Grade → FX (glare/fog glow)
→ Output viewer + File Output → Validate exposure
Recommended Passes
| Pass |
Use |
| Beauty / Combined |
Base |
| DiffCol / DiffDir / DiffInd |
Relight flexibility |
| GlossDir / GlossCol |
Spec control |
| Volume |
Smoke/fire isolation |
| Cryptomatte Object/Material |
Isolations |
| Mist |
Depth grade / fog |
Beauty Stack (Default)
Combined
→ Exposure / Color Balance (AgX-aware)
→ Glare (fog glow / streaks sparingly)
→ Lens distortion (subtle)
→ Vignette (subtle)
→ Output
Grade Rules
- Fix exposure before creative grade
- Prefer lift/gamma/gain or color balance over crushed curves
- Keep skin/product hues plausible
- Match reference stills with side-by-side
Outputs
OUT_Beauty_[Shot]- Optional:
OUT_Alpha, OUT_CryptoID
- Prefer EXR for archival; PNG/JPEG for review
Constraints
MUST DO
- Grade on view transform–aware pipeline (AgX)
- Keep creative FX reversible in node graph
- Document exposure/look settings
MUST NOT DO
- Crush blacks to hide lighting problems
- Over-glare every bright pixel
- Flatten multilayer to JPEG as only archive
Reference Guide
| Topic |
Reference |
Load When |
| Pass Stack |
references/pass-stack.md |
When needed |
| Grade Presets |
references/grade-presets.md |
When needed |
| Delivery Outputs |
references/delivery-outputs.md |
When needed |
