ANIMATION
- Crash Animation
- 2nd Pass Animation from Rich
- Learnt how to clean up the graph editor
- *Crash Playblasts*
BLENDSHAPES
- Blendshaping the required Cars
- Mclaren/Williams
- Easier than developing a soft/rigid body solution
- Sculpted using the soft modification tool
- Using the In-between technique to blend the nose
CONTRIBUTION TO POST
- Plan Post Production
- Set up around 8 shots for rendering with the corresponding render passes and layers
- Went straight into Compositing after samples of work were rendered
- Composited 33 shots of 34
POST PRODUCTION SCHEDULE
ATTEMPTING TO SPEED UP BATCH RENDER TIMES
- Rob Jones taught me and Richard how to set up a batch render out of maya using note pad scripts and command dos prompt
- We also rendered out some of the scenes but we also batch rendered in maya on numerous computers to also speed it up as problems occurred.
SELECTING PASSES AND LAYERS
- Building the beauty pass
- Diffuse/Depth/Specular/Ambient/normalized2dmv/Ambient Occlusion/Shadow/Reflection
- Using a motion vector pass as maya motion blur didn't come out to well.
- Setting up a naming convention to make sure compositing is an easier process for myself
MULTI-PASS COMPOSITING IN NUKE
- Developing a process of splitting up the passes
- Shuffling out passes using the Shuffle copy node
- Consulting Rob and deciding to use merge nodes to shuffle out the passes
- Shuffling out the motion vector pass
USING 3D NUKE'S ENGINE TO APPLY SKY
Setting up a 3D scene and apply the sky to a sphere
Animating the sky using the render cam
Merging it through the scanline renderer with the environment
DEALING WITH SHADOWS
- Developing a script tree in nuke to dealing with shadows
- Using the multipy node to change the opacity of the beauty pass and alpha channel.
- Merging the channels of the red from the beauty and alpha to target just the shadow of the render
COLOUR CORRECTION & GRADING
- These are the main nodes use for manipulation
- Main passes affected were diffuse/specular/reflection
- Individually grading and correcting 33 shots.
VECTOR BLUR/DEFOCUS/LIGHTWRAP
- Vector blur node was used to attached to the 2d motion vector pass to give the animation motion blur
- Defocus was used and keyed in and out of shot. e.g when cars/characters come in and out of the shot.
- Lightwrap - Easily the best node in nuke I've discovered. It blends objects in with the background.
COPING WITH RENDERING MISTAKES AND SIMPLE TRACKING
- What I learnt, If I doesn't work. Roto It!
- Black hole mistakes and texturing mistakes, using the roto paint node to paint and erase objects and fix damaged footage
- Tracking the Camera for Shot 3 and simply insert a water image and colour correct it to fit into the shot
APPLYING FINAL TOUCHES AND RENDERING
- Framecycling before rendered to see problems after nuke produced checkboard images due to missing renders
- Adding a final colour correction and grain
- Rendering out as an image sequence in nuke instead of video sequence to save compression
A LOOK AT THE TREE
PROBLEMS THAT LIMITED COMPOSITING
- The character often had different shaders on different shots which limited colour correction and grading
- Shadows are were often broken, e.g shot 32,33 and 27. They really lacked shadows and the correct shader which limited creativity
- Simple mistakes like rendering out footage without framecycling final shots
- Though these problems occured simply due to uneffiecent time.
WHAT I WOULD CHANGE
- Looking into more nodes in nuke's database to aid colour corrections such as the hue nodes
- Using the VFX elements made in pre-production
- Looking into the 3D engine for multi-plane compositing to aid the crash
- Problems occurred such as scaling stock footage, so the idea was ditched.
WHAT I ACHIEVED
- A Good knowledge of Nuke and I am more comfortable in the program than others such as After Effects
- A understanding of Multi-pass compositing
- Tips and tricks to save damaged renders
- Discovering how important naming conventions of layers, cameras and shot numbers can be so important to the compositor
