VFX Stack #1

Welcome to VFX Stack—a community-driven newsletter celebrating the technology that powers visual effects artistry.

In this newsletter, we will talk about specific technologies, tools, workflows, and more each week. And the most important thing: we will showcase community tools, plugins, setups, and workflows that help others improve their workflows or open their minds to new ideas.

This is just the presentation and opening letter, but we are going to start with the community stack of the week—talking about 3 amazing tools that can be useful for artists, TDs, and developers.

A free, open-source web app for generating 1D and 3D LUTs. When working with camera data, it's really important to check the LUTs and have the right technology to preview the operations done by them.

Generates multiple formats (.cube, .3dl, .lut, .spi1d, .spi3d, and more) compatible with DaVinci Resolve, Adobe SpeedGrade, and camera systems. Includes real-time preview with test images, ASC CDL controls, and support for various camera log gammas.

Web App: https://cameramanben.github.io/LUTCalc/LUTCalc/index.html

Tool web: https://lutcalc.net/

Author: Ben Turley

If you are a Pipeline TD or a Developer, you will already know the importance of taking the time to design the user workflow of the tool you are implementing—the use cases, the tool workflows, operations, and more.

You will also know that we do not have much time to do this as properly as we would like, but it's always good to make a quick concept at least. Apps like Diagrams allow us to quickly design a programming workflow and allow us to see the different cases that we need to consider.

Web App: https://app.diagrams.net/

Github: https://github.com/jgraph/drawio

And of course, we cannot avoid talking about our own tool. The VFX Stack platform now includes a Pipeline Designer that allows TDs, producers, and developers to quickly design pipelines and tool workflows.

This is a really important step in preproduction (even if we know that it's almost never done in preproduction but 1 week before production needs the pipeline running). Taking the time to design the workflow can help you understand the right files to move between departments, allowed file formats, the number of bridges needed between DCCs,…

In this specific tool, you can quickly create DCCs and connections between them and define the file format of each connection to take a global view of the workflow.

Web App: https://vfxstack.dev/pipeline

That's it for this week's stack! Hope these tools help you level up your workflow. See you in the next VFX Stack!