Guides

Everything Blackbody does, and how to use it

Start with the install guide and the tutorial. Every other guide stands on its own: read the one for the effect you need.

Start here

Install and first steps

Requirements, installing, the window, building anything on the stage, putting an effect in your shot, words on fire, layers and animation.

Tutorial: your first shot

A whole shot in 30 minutes: footage, placing, matching, tracking, keyframes and rendering.

Fire

Fire, smoke and sparks

Fire presets, puffing and swirl, sparks, colour, steam, spreading fire, rooms, flame fronts and meshes.

Fabric and burning cloth

Curtains, flags and towels from real fabrics: blowing, burning through, soaking and steaming.

Things

Things that fall

Objects that fall, tumble, stack, break and hang on ropes and hinges, explosions and lightning, in real materials, pushed by the smoke and the water, drawn in CG on a stage or in your footage.

Sand, snow and mud

Sand, wet sand, snow, mud, jelly and clay as particles that pile, pour, pack, slump and wobble, with things that fall landing on them.

Grass and plants

Lawns, long grass, wheat and reeds, every blade bending in the wind and the fire's draught, parting round what moves through it, and burning, so fire runs through a dry field by itself.

Bullets

Wood

Water

Liquids

Sources, floating objects, viscosity, dye, whitewater, the refractive look, rain and underwater.

The sea, surf and rivers

Open water to the horizon, an FFT ocean, whitecaps, beaches and surf, tsunamis, bores and rivers.

Lava, and fire with water

Molten lava that glows and crusts, and fire, water and lava together in one box.

Ice, boiling and steam

Freezing, melting, boiling and evaporating, with water's real heat capacities and latent heats.

Sky

Weather and clouds

Snow, sleet, freezing rain and hail decided by the air above, and clouds that build into storms.

Your shot

Lume lighting

The path-traced lighting engine for the whole frame, the set drawn in CG, the smoke, the cloth and the grass: light that bounces from surface to surface, shadows as soft as each light is big, an HDRI's own sun, glass, ice and jelly that bend light, and the denoiser.

Fitting it into your footage

Lining up the ground, camera tracking, surfaces, holdouts and roto, fire light on the footage, lens, haze, noise matching, lights in the set and OCIO.