Hey guys! I know it’s been a real long time since I’ve posted something new and exciting, but I assure you I’ve been super busy. I’m in APR this month, so I’m obviously behind on a few posts, and my 1am-5am lab schedule doesn’t necessarily help. Anyway…
CSF, Compositing and Scene Finishing. Guys if you know me, you would’a known I’ve been waiting for this class since I first started Full Sail. Granted I already passed the Compositing Art Test while in STE, I knew there was so much more to learn!
The curriculum base was amazing, each lecture had a new feature or way that makes the industry shine like a new toy still in the packaging! Each lecture started with a 20-minute quick painting. Our instructor showed an image, whether of a landscape, mountain range, or a detail B&W picture of a glossy motorcycle, we had to sit there and recreate the image with one layer in photoshop with our Wacom Tablets. What a great invention!
Some of the more important lectures involved differenced between Render Layers, and Render Passes, and a little more tricky, contribution maps.
A Render Layer is like this:
In Maya, Render Layers work just like visibility layers, where you are in control of the material that is applied to your objects, depending on which layer you are in. These render layers render at different intervals, rather than passes, meaning after one layer is completed, the next layer starts.
A Render Pass is a sub-part of a Render Layer, so within a layer you can have other types of passes that make up the final image. A few examples of a render pass are as follows:
2d/3d Motion Vectors
Reflections
Refractions
Specularity
Diffuse
Indirect
These passes can all be their own separate file type, depending on what is set. However, as this is a quickly progressing field, the need for a single image file that contains multiple pass information was necessary. So, we utilized OpenEXR (.EXR) image format, which kept a high quality image with little to no compression, that contained an alpha channel and all necessary passes to achieve the final Beauty result.
So our first project for this class, which used to be the final project for CSF, is called The Fabricator. This assignment was quite tough, as we learned how to use new tracking software called Syntheyes, which started out tricky then became quite easy to use. The lectures were very helpful in explaining how to get the appropriate passes needed for the final look. I, however, wasn’t happy with the final result because I felt like I spent too much time playing with passes and not enough time getting the right light to work. I also chose a clip that was quite hard, as it had a lot of parallax, with very limited places to put trackers for a clean track. I hope to revisit this project in the future, or test myself with a similar side project when I have some free time.
The second and final project was a collaboration with the Film Students in their first class they use a digital camera. I was lucky enough to be in a group where the students kept to a simple nodal pan, however I would have liked the challenge of a trickier piece. But because of its simplicity I was able to add more effort to the final result.
I also found that I had enough free time to find a little back-bone to our compositing software, Nuke. While sitting waiting for a critique I managed to create a few scripts, as follows:
Automatically Shuffles out passes from EXR
Automatically Shuffles RBG/RGBCYM
I got my render2Cell script to be implemented into a Write node, so I can just use a ‘CellWrite’ node that it’ll send me a text when the render completes.
As well as a few color correcting/freebies on The Area
Bleach Bypass
Vignette
Film Look
Lens Flare
All of these are implemented into the .nuke directory, which I can transfer to any computer with a .nuke directory and use all of my scripts while I’m on that computer. Amazing right? It’s actually really simple if you google how to do it! I know I’ve been kind with giving you guys a script or two, but I’m pretty sure you can figure this one out. ^.^
So, check out the final for this class, let me know what you think. I’d love to get an email or two, and check back later! I’ve been driving around Orlando taking some footage, so I’ll probably post some on Vimeo or do some test composites, who knows.
-endy