Mastering Clarisse - Proteus VFX School

Fundamentals

Shading & Texturing

Lighting & Shading

Massive Environments

Final Project

ISOTROPIX CLARISSE iFX | LOOK DEVELOPMENT AND MASSIVE ENVIRONMENTS

Isotropix Clarisse is an amazing new generation software, it is a long time since we had something so powerful in VFX software market. Made by some developers who had collaborated in the R&D departments of well-known VFX studios, it includes many high-level productions in the cinema and television field.

Initially designed for look development and as a support tool for matte painting, Clarisse has gradually become a very powerful work tool for the Look Dev, photorealistic rendering, set dressing, massive environment creation and much more.

The high realism of the Path Tracing rendering engine, the speed and ease of use, the lightness of the application, its stability, the management of scenes that describe how massive it is, are the strengths of one of the best solutions on the market. It has received numerous awards and is used in many companies such as ILM, DNeg, Iloura, Important Looking Pirates, Tippet Studio, BaseFX, Mikros, Trixter and others.

In this course we want to learn how to exploit the skills of Clarisse to fully understand the “look development” process, that is the set of techniques and art that exploiting the various stages of texturing, lighting, shading, up to final rendering and compositing , give the ability to shape the image, its mood, the emotions it wants to transmit, all expressed through color and light, but also all its potential to be exploited both as set dressing software and massive environment creation and as “very normal “rendering software and assembly scenes, going to deepen its advanced procedural features of scene management, shading and scattering.

If all this stimulates you, you are passionate about it, if you want to learn from scratch, or improve your knowledge in this field, this is the perfect course for you. An intense journey made of techniques, art and emotions, to give you the opportunity to establish yourself as lighting TD, lookdev artist, Environment TD or add a very powerful tool to your arsenal in case you are a Matte painter or a Generalist artist.

To know more about Clarisse please check the “What is Clarisse ?” and “Clarisse explained by our customers” videos released by Isotropix.

DETAILS

Duration : more than 70 hours (Fundamentals module)

Course price : Eur 499,00 for all modules (30% discount for students)

Mode : recorded lessons with Q&A sessions on the Slack platform, final projects

Support : live support on Slack, e-mail support, assignments

CURRICULUM OUTLINE

With this course our study path will be divided between the understanding of lighting techniques and rendering of environments and materials, the study of colors, elements of photography, compositing, color grading, tricks and functionalities useful for photorealistic and non-photorealistic rendering, optimization of delivery times and quality, with deep attention to how we work in real productions.

Mastering Clarisse in split in 3 modules, “Fundamentals“, “New Features” and “Advanced Workshops“.

“Fundamentals” is completely available with more than 70 hours of lessons covering entire feature set. “New Features” will be released during 2021 adding new features for upcoming new releases as 5.0 and Angie Rendering engine, “Advanced Workshops” will starts during 2021 too and it will cover advanced topics like photoreal automotive, Clarisse in commercials, heavy VFX shots, underwater environments, complex city creation, creatures, etc. etc.

In “Fundamentals” we will use Clarisse to fully understand the techniques of look development, management and planning of the shot / scene, assembly scenes, set dressing, creation of environments of various types, from minimal to environments with billions and billions of polygons and objects. For compositing we will use Fusion, but the techniques used will also be applicable to other software such as Nuke, particular attention will be given to the concept of procedurality and integration with other software such as Houdini, 3DS max, Terragen, Gaea, etc. etc.

Here you can see more details about “Fundamentals” module, we’ll update this page with upcoming modules soon.

FUNDAMENTALS

History of the “Clarisse” project: from the presentation of v.1.0 to today
What is look development / What is software like Clarisse actually
Advanced scene techniques and image evaluation: the power of Clarisse
Understand the linear workflow / LUT and other standards such as OpenColorIO and ACEScg
Clarisse User Interface: how to take the first steps in software and become productive quickly, customization and analysis of the various modules available
Manipulation and modification of the main objects, constraints, parenting, subdivision surfaces, smoothing, shading groups, displacement
Complete analysis of the attribute editor
Particles, Advanced scattering and scattering nesting, Particle Baking, Particle Painting, Properties and Painting properties
Groups, Contexts, Geometries, Combiners
Integration and communication with Gaea, Houdini, 3ds max, Terragen, etc. etc.
Scene management, assets, layers, resource management, lighting setup, path manager
Animation management, playblast, expressions, variables, etc. etc.
Clone stamp tool, 3D View and Image multiple view, Context and Scene browser

LIGHTING & RENDERING

Analysis of Clarisse’s lighting systems
Different types of light rigs for different lighting situations (internal, external, studio lighting, etc. etc.), analysis of the most used systems, analysis of reference plates
How to make a lighting rig interesting and how to use it for a cinematic look
HDRI, dome light, IBL, lighting balance, IES lighting, advanced light properties in Clarisse, Portals
Sampling, complete analysis of how to manage it to optimize quality and yield times, (analysis of the various AOVs)
Advanced sampling techniques, adaptive sampling and diagnostic AOVs
Light linking, scene layering and interaction
Massive instancing, ownership control of instances within the material editor
Volume rendering and VDB data management for the rendering of smoke, fire, clouds, etc. etc.
Motion blur and depth of field
OSL
Shading layers and shading variables
Light Pass Expression
Hair shading, irridescent materials
Integration and shadow catching
Management of displacement and bump
Export formats, LUT management
Megascans, what it is and how it can be managed with Clarisse iFX

TEXTURES & MATERIALS

How the Clarisse materials are made, analysis of the various shaders available
Standard AlShader and Disney Principled Shader
Bitmap and procedural texturing, pros and cons
Management of very high resolution textures in cinema, (UDIM, MipMapping)
Blending of materials, 2-sided materials, Layered material, nesting of materials: how to create complex and realistic surfaces
Simulation of natural procedural surfaces (sea, rock, snow, ice, vegetation, etc. etc.)
Subsurface scattering, Skin shading, translucency and volume rendering for the simulation of fog, volumetric lights, clouds, smoke, etc.etc.
Analysis of the main available nodes, (Math, Procedurals, Color, Utilities, etc. etc.)
Scope textures, Slope control, Ramp management, etc. etc.

COMPOSITING / POST

Introduction to using Fusion, UI and nodes
Pre-comp, when to make it and what it is for
Analysis of the various render passes (beauty, reflection, refraction, specular, ambient occlusion, depth, light selects, cryptomatte)
LUT, Color correction, Color grading, Chromatic aberration, DOF, dust, MBlur, everything you can do in comp to manipulate the image and its look

FINAL PROJECT

As the various themes and functionalities are deepened, we will face practical exercises together, others will be assigned and supervised by the instructor, so that we can start building a first version of your portfolio or enrich the existing one with the new skills acquired. The difficulties of the exercises will be aligned with the issues addressed up to that point, management, planning and review will be simulated as in production. Some of the proposed exercises will deal with: interior rendering, complex massive scattering and manipulation, car / vehicles rendering, lighting / shading for VFX shots, etc. etc.

Even more interesting, at the end of all the lessons, a series of bonus videos will be released that will show how to manage a complete final scene of everything starting from the assembly, through lighting, shading, animation, FXs and final compositing.

Below you can see some images from “No More Time” final project done for actual course session.