ENDA Episode 170→ The time when ENDA tells a little secret called: Fractal Blur (Part 1)

Have you ever struggled to make the blurred edges of your element feel properly integrated into the plate?

Do you ever wish you had more control over how the blur pattern behaves?

I have. More times than I’d like to admit.

It wasn’t until I started training with the Dark King of VFX that I discovered a node that has been a game-changer in my integration and prep work: Fractal Blur.

The basic principle is the same: it generates a blur on your alpha.

But this time, you gain far more control over how the edge behaves.

To put it simply, it’s like having a noise pattern along the border of your matte, and you can control how far it spreads, the grain size, and even the gamma and contrast of that noise.

So what’s the difference between having or not having a fractal noise edge?

Everything.

Standard blur edges are soft, but they don’t always sit naturally in the plate.

A fractal noise edge, on the other hand, gives you a far more organic transition between the element and the plate, and much finer control over how they blend.

In the video below, you can see how the checkerboards integrate far better in the colour bars with a more organic edge than with the standard blur lines. 

And, I know…, this is a checkerboard and colour bars background, there isn’t much challenge there. 

But what about a paint-out plate where we can see how much of a difference this node can make?

But that will be for a future episode.

The journey continues...

For obtaining Fractal Blur, you can go to Richard Frazer's page: https://richardfrazer.com/tools-tutorials/fractal-blur-for-nuke/