FilmGrain

FilmGrain is a Resolve FX Film Emulation Studio plug-in that procedurally creates film-like grains with falloff matched to project resolution and composites this grain layer with the input image. It is not an imported overlay, LUT or denoising effect.

Do not confuse this effect with the separate Fusion Grain node found under Film Nodes. That node documents Power, RGB Difference, Grain Softness/Size/Spacing, Alpha-Multiply and Spread. FilmGrain instead has Film Grain Presets, Composite Type, Grain Params and Advanced Controls.

The screenshot of Presets contains 8mm variants (50D/100D/250D/200T/500T), 16mm variants (50D/250D/500T, Archival/Archival Print/Reversal) and 35mm/35mm 200T. They are creative starting points; the labels do not guarantee a measured match to real emulsion/ISO.

Composite Type is a blend selector, with Overlay, Multiply, Darken, Lighten, Screen, Subtract, Hard Light, Soft Light, Linear Light, Vivid Light, Pin Light and Custom captured. Blend modes change the contribution to brightness and contrast; they do not switch working color space.

Opacity is the blend amount of the finished grain layer, whereas Grain Strength changes the contrast of generated grain. Texture is the spacing of particles: larger values separate them, smaller ones pack them together. Grain Size is the zoom/scale of each grain. These controls are distinct.

Offset biases the brightness of the generated grain. The manual states lower Offset emphasizes light grains, higher Offset emphasizes dark grains. Symmetry is asymmetrical contrast: lower values darken lighter grains while higher values brighten darker grains. Inspect them individually using Grain Only.

Grain Only isolates the procedural layer; switch it off for regular compositing. Freeze stops the grain animation. Animate On Every Refresh refreshes the pattern during Inspector tuning and does not control grains-per-second or timeline frame rate.

Red/Green/Blue sliders weight the color of generated grain; Shadows/Midtones/Highlights scale the grain contribution in those regions of the picture. They do not grade input RGB. Saturation 0 gives monochrome grain; Softness blurs only the generated grain map.

Resolve 21 manual mentions Optimized Mode, but it is absent from all three archived Inspector captures. This manual-versus-UI discrepancy is documented as unverified in the target build, not invented as an exposed control.

A reliable workflow normalizes the shot, finishes the composite, adds one consistent grain pass, uses Grain Only to adjust texture, then tunes Opacity and judges motion plus a test delivery encode. A still frame does not validate temporal behaviour or compression.

For a selective grain area, branch the clean source to Merge.Background and the FilmGrain result to Merge.Foreground; connect Rectangle.Mask to Merge.EffectMask. The screenshots do not prove a separate physical FilmGrain.EffectMask port, so the diagrams do not invent one.

All four exercises use statically validated image/mask graph types and documented controls. Actual Studio availability, OFX alpha handling, temporal reproduction and codec outcomes require native Resolve testing and remain pending.