The Crew of Spring 2011 (photo at bottom)

In the photo at bottom:

Standing (l to r): Ting Chieh Wen, Charles Trippe, Garrett Ilardi, Prof. Virginia Wissler, Ross Cantrell, Jack J Huang, Steven Dinozzi, ....

Kneeling (l to r): Travis Harkleroad, Yuri Takimoto

Compsositing (part 2)

Shot 53: Final Compositing
(partial render)

Above is the shot we managed to get to the post-production stage this quarter.
We were all exited to see the final look of the film.
Compositing is by Garrett.
Lighting is by Ross.


See below for how much post-production adds to the shot!!
Shot 53: ABOVE - lighting only, BELOW - final composit

Breakdown
Here's the breakdown with comment from Garrett.

Shot 53: NO Effect

This was a first pass at compositing the final shots after they have been light and rendered.

Shot 53: Z-Depth pass

Shot 53: With Z-Depth, NO VolRays

Shot 53: Matte channels

Shot 53: With Z-Depth + DoF + VolRays, NO Z-Blur

Shot 53: FINAL comp

The goal was to add some depth cueing by adding atmosphere and DoF blur to the shot and then to add in some Volume lights.

All of the above is pretty straight forward, but it took a little bit of work to get all the matte channels into the right spots to be used effectively.

One last part of the puzzle that will be added (not seen in this shot) is motion blur to the water effects.

Lighting - in progress & Final

Shot 2 by: Ross

Shot 3 by: Ross

Comment from Ross:

These mov files are the first lighting designs for the more dense swamp environment shots within the short. Some are dialed in more so than others, rendering errors and settings need to be tweaked on the final versions.

Shot 12 by: Ting

Shot 12: FINAL

Shot 21 by: Jack

Shot 21: 1st pass

Shot 21: FINAL

Comment from Jack:

Success!
After much tuning and delays, the shot 21 is looking better than I have anticipated, after introducing the tree shader, the Spanish moss shader, and the water-sim, the shot is looking bright, beautiful and very smooth.

It was a harrowing near miss for me, and a very lucky one. I started to render the file on Monday night and it took a whooping 16 hours to render all of the frames correctly, aside from some very minor issues, for the first time the shot looked…polished.

It was a very fortunate result since I when I was tasked to discard my previous scene and use another friend’s backdrop, I was expecting every problem possible, mid render errors, post render discrepancies, unseen water-sims/ tree shaders, incorrect lighting…everything. I feel very lucky and proud that I got the shot ready.

Shot 26 by: Steven

Shot 26: FINAL 01

Shot 26: FINAL 02

Shot 26: Matte Pass

Comment from Steven:

Shot 26 is final for this quarter. I was able to make the tweaks addressed Monday in class. A few notes on some changes include color tweaks and value changes to the water and grass. The direct lighting was warmed up and more purple/blue hues were added to the fill/shadow regions.

I was also able to get the latest tree textures on the trees and replace the foreground trees with the more appropriate higher resolution models. The water still has issues to me, but this may be because there hasn't been motion blur added to yet. I'm sure a lot will come together during the compositing stage. The render time right now is on average 30 min per frame.

Shot 35 lighting is still not there. I may redo this from scratch. The ambient light seems to not be working even though it is. I like the light angle but the shot definitely needs some extra TLC. I had to manually build the environment back up because the previous RIB files we used for this were not working. This subtracted time from the lighting as well.