sh0110_DVL_duckHalo

[Michael Cawood - Director]

If this is your first shot please refer to the Lighting and Rendering Handbook for a step by step guide.

I've already done steps 1 and 2 so you can start from step 3.

Please place all the file versions in this folder along with the prepared Animation file:

C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\030_Lighting\sh0110_DVL_duckHalo

Save your file as:

sh0110_DVL_duckHalo_v15_Lighting_Initials.ma

Post any questions you have in this thread.

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Haseeb is currently assigned to work on this shot.

[Haseeb Ahmed]

Hi Mike, i have managed to setup things to finally start work. below are problems / issues.
basic problem
1- i m not much aware of how things are setup and what means what, so basically is there a place where general dictionary is defined??
suggested solution: one time, u have to go with me and explain me things in more detail.

precise problem: i am following lighting and rendering guideline mentioned here(http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/forum/topics/lighting-and-ren...)

comments:
thanks for doing step 1 & 2 for me. great
step 3 done and file saved / updated in dropbox

step 4a: Add and remove layers as needed for the shot.
HOW CAN I KNOW, WHICH LAYERS I NEED??
more importantly, whats is in each layer
for example: lets talk master file (initially opened). to setup
it has few things in it in each layer and relevant render layers setup nice.(Gates2 / GodRays / PixieDist / Cloud Overlay)
seems like simple backgrounds setup, but not sure...which one should i use, all of them, or my choice or what looks good. or a background list per shot somewhere which i m missing..

step 4b: Add lights, chairs, characters and props to the foreground layer.
when i referenced my anim scene, i have following gropus came in (sphereRN1gropu,DevilChairRNgroup,DevilRNLocator,Camera1,Halo_grp)
i have added all groups (from outliner) to ForeGround Layer. currently... (done)
need:: is there a place, where i can read about each asset and its purpose.
why:: from anim scene, i got (SphereRN1group) a big sphere in front of devil with six pipes groing down, whats its purpose, should i put only that in Foreground Layer and rest of devil and chair etc in mid ground layer... (a thought)

4d: Ensure only the lights that are needed per layer are in each layer.
currently looks OK, but question
Foreground Layer should have "Master_Light_Rig:Lights" included or not??
currently it is showing included / linked by default... should i unlink/exclude that group??

i can proceed, but your answers to (what i m missing) will help to get pace
oops two more general questions
gQ1- when u shared assets with me, my Dropbox named that folder "assets(2)" automatically, may be due to someone in history has shared a folder "assets", so when i opened file it was looking in "assets" folder , so i simple renamed folder to "assets" again in dropbox, it fix things for me and hopefully doesn't affect anyone by any means...right??
gQ2- whats difference in "assets" and "render_Assets" folder?? should i use these one?? or automatically linked / referenced??
thanks again for your time..

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Step 4a
The Guide can't predict the contents of every shot so it's not possible for me to make it completely foolproof. each lighter will have to figure out most of this themselves. But the guide is also new and as we figure out the most common methods I'll start to include them in the guide. If you look at the Maya files for the previous renders though I hope it should give you some ideas. This is the newest setup I've done (you can look at the other two as well but they were further away from the best practices described in the guide):
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\030_Lighting\sh0340_DTH_undecidedflirt

Step 4b:
Since your shot moves the camera it's likely the contents of your layers will be different depending on what contacts what. E.g. you may want to render the chair and Sphere in the same layer as the clouds since they touch each other and would be difficult to composite separately.

Please note that the Sphere should actually be a new asset, the Hologram of the Earth, which is not complete yet. If you'd like to help us get it made that would be great. Otherwise you may simply have to render it separately and add it later.
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\assets\Sphere\Earth_Hologram.ma

Step 4d:
The lights are labeled, so a Devil light should be linked to the Devil etc... but the easiest way is to link the Devils group of lights to the Devil and his chair and any props on him or the chair.

It depends what you have in each layer, "the Foreground group" could be different in every shot. It depends what's in the foreground. :P

Q1 - you are fine to rename the assets folder.
Q2 - the Assets are the leanest number of assets I can give an animator (character rigs, props etc..) so that they can animate, but the Render_Assets contains all the other files needed to render a scene (textures etc...) It avoids us sending a very large number of files to every team mate that doesn't need them all.

Thanks for persevering, I appreciate we're still in the early stages of setting up the pipeline for lighting and rendering with an online team so the feedback you give us is invaluable and I'll keep updating the guide as we go along and it becomes clear what's missing.

[Haseeb Ahmed]

k, lets wrap earth asset as well, as its clearly visible in my shot. questions as always and i wasn't able to find its relevant thread in assets forum, so i m going ask them here
also, i think, its not that complex, we should be able to wrap that quickly, as there is some work already done (assets traker)

1- there are two folders in assets "Earth" and "sphere"
i can see (as u have mentioned ) what i needed or referenced file is in "sphere" folder has "Sphere_Rig_v09_MC" file already have a sphere (with purple earch texture) applied and six pipes going down from it.
any reference images / shots in mood board and or animatic, where it is going to be shown, or reference for look.
2- precisely:: it has two spheres, shader is really nice / detailed, but current look is more like organic fluid . plasma, less like earth hologram,
3- same folder (asset\sphere) has a file named "Earth_Hologram" which has purple earth texture. i think, if i blend this texture with #1 file, with 'incandesense' node, it will be easy to acheive, earth hologram look
4- currently, if no reference / mood board for look, let me know i have option for creative margin. i'll render two options. what is goal, have realistic or stylized (purple toned) earth hologram.
5- just wanted to confirm that when camera starts in my shot, i can see earth hologram assets almost complete in frame. (which shows it is small)
at this point, i found animatic and just watched it
a- in shot 110, its not much noticeable even in storyboard
b- in shot 285, its shown huge bigger, in which all coins / humans are shown..,
so question: is current scale or proportion is right??

question: now i have seen complete animatic and first time and i know complete story...
how this earth texture is going to get transparent , transition, should it be part of rig>> current asset has that feature??

[Michael Cawood - Director]

I'm not sure I understand all your questions but I'll try to give you all the info I think you're after.

This is the current Earth Hologram asset:
C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\assets\Sphere\Earth_Hologram.ma

It's the correct size and shape. The idea is to have some form of representation of the Earth on it. Possibly as a texture or modeled in... your choice. The visual style to aim for is something that will fit in with the hologram pop up you you rigged before. It's open to interpretation and can be done in a huge number of ways. So feel free to experiment. It will be rotating on the spot but constrained to the Sphere asset and in one of the shots we'll wipe from the Earth Hologram to the Sphere asset in compositing.

I've started a thread for the asset here.
http://devilsangelsanddating.ning.com/forum/topics/earth-hologram

[Haseeb Ahmed]

sorry for late reply, but again, this time, i finished almost all of extra headaches and now dedicated to just this task in november / december :D
current issues / updates

1- look at this image (foreground_masterBeauty.jpg) _ not motion blurred>> yellow and red halos / glows behind are really disturbing..>> not sure, why these are getting rendered at first place... but qeustions
a- is it because of mental ray rendering?? result is different than maya default renderer,
b- should i go and adjust halo / glow settings directly in my scene??
c- should i adjust these settings in actual asset??

2 - i render my foreground layer. with full motion blur, it took almost 5 mintues plus on my pc , 1280 * 720 frame on mental ray. If i turned OFF motion blur it took almost 1 minute. Huge difference. this is rough measurement, (soon i'll pose accurate result) , i saved both results. then render 2d and 3d motion vector passes and attempt to produce same look via post(nuke) , it seems with little more work, similar look can be produced accurately. ( which means, huge time saving)... need to know your thoughts, if u think, its right thing, i can work little more and post exact results and comparisons

[Michael Cawood - Director]

Reposting image (using the black photo button):

What you see in that render is the glows, when you comp it that would look correct. Please adjust the glows. If you can list here anywhere you find a glow that would be great. We need to remove them in the source assets as we're planning to do them all in the comp. I thought it was done already but obviously not. If you would like to adjust the original asset please make sure you do it in Maya 2009 and make a copy of the original in the same folder.

We've already gone down the 2D vector pass route and it was lots of work and didn't look quite right. If render times was the problem I'd agree that it would be worth working on it, but render times really aren't our bottleneck, it's man hours we're short of right now. So it may simply be better to use standard 3D motion blur. At the end of the day we don't have to use the same technique for every shot but it must be easy for me to reproduce what you've done if you decide to use 2D motion blur and I already know it's not that easy.

[Haseeb Ahmed]

K, thanks for precise feedback.
i have been reading other ppl lighting WIP threads and it helped a lot, specially 6 to 10 pages thread...
here is my crrent half ref version... (without motion blur)

Q1- there are three lights >> affecting chair and devil, which i am suppose to tweak / adjust ??? to make it look better or improve what i think should be improved. ??
Master_Light_Rig:CUPID_edgeLight_spot2
Master_Light_Rig:DEATH_edgeLight_spot3
Master_Light_Rig:DEVIL_edgeLight_spot4

Q2- second image, i have render "master layer" , it auto matically composed (add) all layers on top of each other
is this correct way, or should i adjust those layers separately in AE or some other app??
it seems (few ppl are composing layers in AE) are they doing any tweaks / color correction etc in AE or not to make it look better..??

hope to hear soon, thanks

[Michael Cawood - Director]

You can hide the lights for the other characters. You're only focused on the Devil lights and the environment.

It's assumed that we'll be compositing in After Effects. Either I can do that at my end with you giving precise instructions about what your layers should do (Eduardo is making Photoshop stills I can open to see how he's doing it). Or you can composite it yourself and provide the AE file for me to work from (that's the ideal situation).

You can get some idea of what things will look like rendering the master layer but somethings simply won't look right (like the pixie dust for example).

If you would like do compositing let me know how far you want to take things so that I can get you access to tall the right folders.

Can you turn on smoothing (press "3" on the keyboard) on any geometry that looks jagged like the Halo?

Post your images to the image gallery for the rest of the team to see, and you'll get much more feedback.

[Haseeb Ahmed]

what is easiest way of rendering all layers in batch render

basically, what i need, is to render my shot (0 to 115 by 5) which means, by end i 'll have 23 frame or so.

now my shot has 5 layers ( foreground / background / cloudOverlay / pixieDust / GOD Rays2 / GODRays)

 

do i have to batch render each layer separately by selecting this and then render settings showing layer name on top, then hitting batch render.??

or

is there a way, that i render masterLayer, it automatically extract each layer obejcts and store them as separte image (layer)

 

is it just me?? if i have to render shot 5 times. this is not good ?? right?

[Michael Cawood - Director]

You don't want to render the master layer, just make sure it has the red cross beside that layer. Do the same for the PixieDust because that is rendered with the Hardware Renderer, not Mental Ray. But aside from those, if you're using Maya 2011 and you have the other layers ticked (green tick) then one batch render should render all the layers in one session. Make sure to be selective about which layers have motion blur to keep your render times down. You probably don't need it on the clouds and the god rays layers as those are all soften smooth shapes (unless something else is in the same layer, like the Hologram Sphere).

 

By the way, I may not have mentioned this before, do you have the Sphere replaced with this?

C:\Devils_Angels_Dating\My Dropbox\assets\Sphere\Sphere_Earth.ma

[Haseeb Ahmed]

thanks for prompt response.

i have sphere updated automatically, i just opened my file and checking. will make sure.. that..

btw:; someone really using dropbox with his / her super powers ;).. too much happening msgs...