5 Days to Go: Composites and Corrections

The end is definitely in sight...

All first and second round compositing is now COMPLETE and is ready to go over to Sushma and Kaitlin for editing. This is also the first time the 2 of them have looked through all the composited shots which is VERY good for one main reason - we get a fresh pair of eyes on the animation as a whole.

As the rest of us have had a hand in compositing we've seen what effects and changes have been made etc, but this was the first time the both of them would be seeing this, and therefore could give some initial first feedback!

As a result we've tweaked a few shots to make sure they stay in line with the rest of them - but also to avoid them looking too after-effecty. Kaitlin made a good point about not hiding behind the compositing. We should be showing of the animations and the work that has gone into the models and textures.

There has been some initial hiccups in getting all shots from After Effects (as they are) into Premier Pro for editing - we're wanting to import the shots this way so Amit has more control in the final round of compositing (which will include grains, vignette and all that snazzy stuff) - but after hunting down Malcolm and stealing his After Effects / Premier Pro knowledge all is once again right with the world.

Sushma stealing Malcolm's mind

One key thing we've all probably learnt from this project is that it is important to find a clever (quick) work around (/cheat) for any visual issues that may arise. Our favourite case study is one again the Troll. Reverting back to a much older model to quickly render off the final couple of shots meant that a re-test of that rig wasn't done, and with textures turned off (due to lagging) a couple of deformations were missed in his lower half.

BEFORE!! We see booty

Luckily this was only really obvious in one shot. Firstly Yannis attempted to block out the issue with some of the surrounding plants on the bridge (which is something we've done in a previous shot for a different issue), but this didn't look right. So we turned to Photoshop!

Bimpe took the effected rendered TIFFs and painted over the problem areas (100 frames.... fun times), and thanks to the magic of copy and paste this shots we're cleaned up in 30 minutes.

After - Booty Free!

Success!

Now all that's left is for Yannis to finish up the credits sequence which is still looking awesome - Cristina has also added a great personal touch #nospoilers

Week 15: 7 Days to Go: Banter and Bold Declarations

Yep, that's right. we have a week to go until the final deadline and things are still ticking along.

The last couple of weeks we've really been bogged down with rendering - renders taking much longer than expected, renders coming out incorrect or renders not coming out at all (being held captive by a hungry render farm).

                                Where are the rest of our indirects sob sob

But our spirits have remained high! This is a really important stage and one of the key things to making sure we complete this with some sanity is to stay calm and full of humour (which we definitely are - there was also a game of chess to stretch our creative muscles and assess our next plan of attack).

All the scenes are almost rendered - although due to time constraints we've had to drop the AO passes - and for some scenes where we haven't had time to re-render the diffuse/indirect passes we've had to just use a beauty pass - which sadly gives us a bit less control during the compositing stage - but we're still trying to ensure that it all looks good.

In terms of compositing, we've got a little pipeline going on, so were we're going through 3 key stages:

1. The initial file set up where all layers are applied
2. The more snazzy effects like heat haze are then added
3. Finally after editing, the whole thing will go to Amit for one last round of colour corrections and a couple more snazzy things

Upon reflection there are definitely a few things we would have done differently had we had the time - such as making firm decisions on what would be rendered out (for example where there is no camera movement we only need 1 still shot, not up to 100 extra frames of the same thing :( ). But these are definitely good lessons to take with us for future works.

But on the great plus side, we're still coming up with new and simple ideas to create short cuts for ourselves. For example Ritchie had the great idea of creating 1 generic After Effects file with the heat haze effect to be imported into whatever scenes need it. This definitely saves us a lot of time, especially for those who don't yet know the technique for creating it!

Thank you muchly Ritchie!