Hello, Hello, This is my final post regarding the production pipeline. What I'll be talking about in this post will be; Lighting, Rendering, and Compositing: First up is lighting. Lighting Lighting in animation is the same as lighting in all movies. It gives depth to a scene and can also set the tone or the mood. Most lighting in movies comes from the sun or from an actual light source but in animation everything is done on a computer using software so it's up to you to decide where the light source is coming from and how powerful the light is. For example, if your scene is outside you will have to work out what time of day you want and where you want to position the light source. This will determine how the shadows of the scene are cast. It is in this context that shaders are important. This is where what kind of shader you choose to have on an object comes into play, it determines how the light will project off it. When it comes to using light to set the tone or mood of your scene there are many ways this can come into use. For example, if you had someone sitting in a chair in a dark room with their head out of the light source, It would give a sense of mystery to your scene and you would need to use bright lights in a room if you wanted to have a bright and happy feel to the scene. If you look at (figure 1) in the gallery below you will see a scene from Puss in Boots. Lights in this shot are used to help with his dramatic entrance as well as showing us what time of day it is. It also shows us that he is in a low lit pub where you expect criminals to go to rather than an elegant pub for a family. Again, this sets the tone of the scene. Rendering. “Rendering refers to the process of building output files from computer animations. When an animation renders, the animation program takes the various components, variables, and actions in an animated scene and builds the final viewable result. A render can be an individual image or a series of images (frames) saved individually or sequenced into video format.” (Sanders, no date) Because rendering is taking all the information of a frame and outputting it into a final image suitable for your television the process can take days to render a single frame. “According to supervising technical director Sanjay Bakshi it took 29 hours to render a single frame from the film monsters university.” (Takahashi, no date). Before a render can be done everything in the scene must be created on a computer using the 3D software such as Maya or 3Ds Max. Everything in a scene is made completely on computers this means that everything in the scene will processed when rendered, this includes the landscapes, characters, props, lighting etcetera, and everything involved can be very detailed and complex. For example Sully, a monster from Monsters University “had 5.5 million individually hairs.” (Takahashi, no date) These all would have been processed in a single render as well as everything else in the frame. That’s why major animation studios such as Pixar, DreamWorks and Blue Sky Studios would all have “Rendering Farms”. A rendering farm is a facility with thousands of powerful high end computers built just for the purpose of rendering, but even with all of the powerful computers it can still take months or years to render a feature length animation. It takes so long to render a frame because rendering is essentially “Photographing each pixel of the image and the calculation of the colour of the pixel can involve a great deal of calculation, tracing rays of light as they would bounce around the 3D scene” (Birn, 2002) Compositing: This is the final stage of the production pipeline. A compositor will take the final rendered images and put them all together in a sequence to create the animation. The compositor will also work with the FX artist and lighting directors to create special affects for the animation. Together they will use layers to add affects to a scene. A compositor will blend different elements on the layers together so that they look like they were shot with the one camera and that they were present in the scene at the time. This is the stage where you will achieve the overall look of your animation. I have read in a few articles and analogy that helped me to understand what compositing was, “The compositor is the equivalent to a sound mixer or recording engineer of a recording studio. As a recording engineer is technically responsible for weaving all of the different pieces of music together, so that they make sense to the ear, the compositor is responsible for weaving all the pieces of visuals together so that they make sense to the eye.” (Lafauce Jr, 2005). You can see in the gallery below the difference between a frame of an animation that has been composited and one that hasn’t been composited (figure 1) the difference is considerably noticeable and the composited film looks a lot better and professional. Thanks for reading, Steve References: Boudon.G(2014) Understanding a 3D Production Pipeline- Learning The Basics. Retrieved from. http://blog.digitaltutors.com/understanding-a-3d-production-pipeline-learning-the-basics/ What is Animation? (with pictures). (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-animation.htm Brim.J (2002) 3D Rendering. Retrieved from: http://www.3drender.com/glossary/3drendering.htm Burton.M (2015) Compositing Artist – Career Profile. Retrieved from http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/compositing-artist-career-profile Lafauce Jr, J. (2005). Retrieved 12 March 2015, from https://www.creativecow.net/interstitial.php?url=https%3A%2F%2Flibrary.creativecow.net%2Farticles%2Flafauce_john%2Ffilm_compositor.php&id=0 Takahashi, D. (n.d.). How Pixar made Monsters University, its latest technological marvel | VentureBeat | Media | by Dean Takahashi. Retrieved 12 March 2015, from http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/24/the-making-of-pixars-latest-technological-marvel-monsters-university/ The Importance of Compositing: A Layer By Layer Breakdown in After Effects - Greyscalegorilla Blog. (2010, October 25). Retrieved 12 March 2015, from http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/tutorials/the-importance-of-compositing-a-layer-by-layer-breakdown-in-after-effects/ Images: Beforeaftercompositing(2010, October 25) Retrieved from http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/tutorials/the-importance-of-compositing-a-layer-by-layer-breakdown-in-after-effects/ slide 15 (n/d) retrieved from http://mtsang.ulidiacollege.com/?page_id=95 Monsters_inc(n.d) Retrieved from https://thefilmist.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/anonymous-on-pixar-part-the-second-on-monsters-inc-and-finding-nemo/ |