Compositing in DaVinci Resolve 12 – First Look

The DaVinci Resolve Compositing Toolset

A First Look at the new and improved compositing in DaVinci Resolve 12

Resolve 12 offers us new features and improvements in almost every area and after reading some member comments I thought we’d take a look at the compositing toolset improvements in Resolve 12.

If you ever tried compositing in DaVinci Resolve 11 with green screen footage, the number one problem was controlling the spill from the background onto the foreground. Resolve 12 makes dealing with spill as easy as clicking ‘despill’ and goodbye green edges!

In this Insight, we’ll approach a typical composite that someone might ask you to do on a normal job. Obviously we wouldn’t be expected to comp 42 layers and rotoscope difficult shapes. But clients frequently expect colorists to be able to do basic compositing work, during the grade. And if you’re editor working in Resolve, we know you’re always pressed into doing temporary composites—so this Insight will benefit you as well.

In the video Insight below, we’ll try to take this shot from an unfinished green screen (shot on a canon 5d) to a completely finished comp.

Personally, I was majorly surprised with the results. I feel like I could actually deliver a fully finished composite from Resolve now. You may need a few helping hands like some Sapphire plugins for flares and other elements—but rather than the huge struggle it was in prior versions, Resolve 12 feels like it’s starting to branch out from Editing / Coloring and laying the groundwork for more serious compositing work in future versions.