Today myself and Adam composited shot 4 in after effects.
So in total we have 6 render layers
2 for the character and 4 for the environment.
Character layers include beauty and ambient occlusion.
Environment layers include beauty, ambient occlusion, shadow and Z depth. This is not including our adjustment layers etc in After Effects.
Z depth is now my favorite...goodbye ambient occlusion and the wonders you used to bring to my eyes everytime i saw you...its Z depth all the way. Amazing how it transported the file and gave it filmic quality. Played around with the focal distance for a while until we were satisfied and the results are fantastic!
Since the character occlusion takes the longest to render, Adam suggested getting all finished shots having this layer rendered. The background (unless camera is moving) requires one frame and the other layers take no time at all to do. Matt is now organising the eyes for the finished animations and then I will be sorting out the camera framing so that adam can render sat eve. Looks like its down to me to try and replicate Grigsby's amazing lighting he achieved here so fingers crossed.
We then took the uncompressed After Effects file and began experimenting with different compression formats in Final Cut. Its a strange thing how different colour displays and setups make the world of difference to the look of the final piece, however with a few tries (thanks Adrian for his help on compression/formats) we're looking at mpeg2 which maintained most of the colour and quality of the final film. Hopefully (and I need to speak to Dalli about this Monday) this format will work fine for making the final DVD for the degree show and we shouldn't lose too much quality from further compression.
I gotta say...its looking bloooooomin marvelous guys :)
uncompressed file from After Effects...
mpeg2 compressed file from final cut...
Looking real purty!
ReplyDeleteNot too keen on the pasteiness on Macho's face and skin, but i could probably suffer in silence over it.
Is this graded?
yeah its had all its colourings done to it. A bit of yellow adjustment to the beauty and red adjustment to the occlusion for added warmth to the scene.
ReplyDeletewell grigs did point out the skin thing with his test one but dont think you've has time to change it really....gotta focus on getting the rest out.