Smoke To Davinci Resolve Workflow

[aribrown]

Hello all,
I am first time poster - so please be gentle 🙂
I have done a number of searches, but I haven't been able to find the answer to my workflow question yet.

I am trying to figure out the best workflow for doing a conform with Autodesk Smoke (2012), and then going out to Davinci Resolve for final color grading.
Am I wrong to assume that the publish feature would be my best bet to output the individual clips from a timeline, along with an EDL that Davinci would be then able to read and relink to?

Our workflow is normally based around short-form projects such as commercials & tv spots where the editors may be doing effects like timewarping or split screens, and other effects we would use smoke for the conform.
However, going out to Davinci for the final grading seems like the best option for the power and ease of the secondary features.
The final spot could then either be fed out from the Davinci, or sometimes might need to go back to the smoke.

Any insight you could lend would be greatly appreciated.

[snopkovgv]

Did you tried do Flatten publication with edl and link mode tuned on for example and use this edl to get timeline in resolve? or, if you don't have any FX just publish or export edl only?

[hansvons]

We are using Resolve as our digital telecine, a workflow that is very common, especially in TVC-land. We edit off R3Ds in PP, send the XML to Resolve, perform the grading. Reconnect the graded short with handles in PP and export the AAF into Smoke. Form then on we use Smoke for everything else, including cut-downs and other versions.

Using Resolve as the last tool before mastering leads to tedious re-conformings when versions have to be edited. Here, Smoke has an obvious edge.

Hans

[aribrown]

Thanks for the responses!
I have been experimenting with using both the complex and flatten publish methods to export to resolve for color grading.
I am able to get the footage an re-assemble using the edl into resolve from smoke using those methods, where we could then do the grading. However, if we would want to then round-trip back to smoke, that could be a little more tricky.
Smoke seems to have some issues relinking to the new media from resolve. I believe in most cases we wouldn't need to go back to smoke once we have graded in resolve, however I could see a few reasons why you might want to before the final output.

We would be using resolve as either the intermediate step or end step. We find that in our pipeline most clients want to sit in on the color session, which would mean they want to grade the final spot, not just raw footage before it has been conformed. So in our workflow, we would want to be able to conform all the footage into the final spot using Smoke, that way any timewarps, split screens, fx, etc. would be handled using Smoke. Then smoke outputs the flattened/complex footage using the publish feature. We would then theoretically reassemble using an edl in resolve and do our grading.
The reason for this being that the conforming features seem to be pretty limited in resolve which is why we would take advantage of smoke's tools for this part.