OriginalSONARLight, Standard and Heavy set the intensity. Best, Balanced and Fast adjust the rendering workload so you can choose the balance that suits your clip and your Mac.
Build a soft point cloud, connect its dots, trace contour lines or give the image a wireframe, voxel or chrome surface. 13 styles let you change the structure itself. Start with one of 16 looks, each in Light, Standard and Heavy, then set the size and detail.
Orbit a face, push into the scene, drift past it or use a dolly zoom. Set the move’s centre, amount and duration, or adjust yaw, pitch and distance yourself. Reveal carries the picture from the original framing into the 3D treatment; Mix With Original blends the images.
Keep the source colours, choose one solid colour or map brightness, nearness or heat to a palette of two to seven colours. Saturation and Lift Blacks bring dark points forward. Colour Levels reduces the palette further for hard, graphic tones; Highlight Tint and Depth Fade finish the separation.
Send a ping out from the subject or sweep a band of light through the scene. Set the front, tail, colours and timing. Blow Away and Assemble scatter or gather the image with wind, swirl and gravity; time echoes leave earlier moments suspended behind it.
Apply the treatment to the whole image, the subject or the background. Keep the original footage behind it, choose a background colour or output transparency for compositing. Grid Floor sits behind the foreground; depth labels and a depth scale add graphic reference points.
Analyse / Resume Clip prepares AI depth with a progress bar and frame count. Pause when needed, then continue from the prepared frames. The maps work across Fast, Balanced and Best and are saved with the Resolve project. Changing SONAR’s colour, camera or look keeps that preparation.
Choose a look, prepare the depth, then shape the image inside Resolve.
Add SONAR to a node and choose a Look and Intensity. A portrait gives you a clear subject to start with; a wider shot gives the depth more room to show.
In Analysis, the first section, press Analyse / Resume Clip, with Depth From on AI Depth (the default). Watch the frame count, pause or resume as needed, then save the project. Show Depth Map, in Advanced · Depth, lets you inspect the map before returning to the look.
Choose a Camera Move and adjust its amount and timing. Keyframe Reveal to move between the original shot and the transformed scene, or keep the camera static and let a scan pass through it.
Set colour, point size and density while watching the subject. Use Quality to balance detail and rendering workload, then check the result at your final output size: small points and thin lines change when scaled down.
Depth, point clouds & 3D motion
| Host | DaVinci Resolve 20+ |
|---|---|
| AI depth | macOS 13+ · Apple Silicon |
| Rendering | Metal |
| Depth processing | On your Mac, with Core ML |
SONAR uses estimated depth to place the visible image into a scene of points, lines or surfaces. It lets you move around and reshape that scene. A single view does not contain the hidden sides of a subject, so larger camera moves can reveal gaps around depth edges.
Add SONAR to a Color node. In Analysis, the first section, press Analyse / Resume Clip, with Depth From on AI Depth (the default). The window reports progress; a paused analysis can resume. Save the project when it finishes. After replacing or retiming the source, or changing an upstream effect, use Clear Analysis and analyse again.
No. The bundled Depth Anything V2 Small models run locally through Core ML on Apple Silicon with macOS 13 or later. SONAR also offers luminance-based depth and an external depth input in hosts that expose it.
Yes, where the host exposes SONAR’s separate Depth input. Connect a greyscale depth pass and select Depth From → Depth Input: white is near and black is far, with Invert Depth available if needed. This requires a connected input; selecting it alone does not run Resolve’s Depth Map effect.
Prepared depth is reused at every Quality setting. Fast reduces the rendering workload, Balanced keeps full output resolution, and Best allows more detail. Points, surfaces, compositing and subject isolation still need to render, so playback depends on the look, resolution and Mac.
Yes. SONAR is €59 excl. VAT on its own, and is included in the Full Suite and its yearly and monthly subscriptions. It is not part of the Analog, Glitch or Camera packs.
SONAR / PAPERWOLF STUDIO