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Hello there,

Thought I would make a post! It has been a while since the last one, but I have been working on the film recently, getting back into the swing of it mainly on unseen stuff though - so nothing exciting to show unfortunately, though I might just post some stills of pre-vis sets etc.

Also there was a problem with the gallery/image dump, so that has been fixed now hopefully as I’ve updated the wordpress version and whatnot.

Cheers! Hope some people still see this.

For the junction environment I’m just going to share a bit the lighting set up, the passes I’ve used and the way they composite together.
If you want some more information about the passes I use, why and how they are composited togther, check out my compositing guides on my site here: Part 01, Part 02.

As a start, here is the compositing tree in XSI’s FxTree.

In the top left you can see the beauty pass, then following down from it the different ID passes and the colour corrections using those mattes. Then on the right there is mostly the depth, the background and the ambient occlusion with varies grading.
In the (bottom) left area there is some extras like glows from the street lights and the sky.

On the next series of images the node which is shown in the image is highlighted on the tree. Click on any of them to view a larger version.

The first image is the beauty pass straight from the render. The dodgy pixels around the edge of the sky/buildings, is the alpha channel that has been un-premultiplied and gets that sorted back again in the ‘over’ node when the background is added.
There is no GI or final gather etc. in the renders. The beauty pass is made up of infinite fill lights, and additional rim or specular-only lights which only affect specific objects too add some highlight and shape to some of the objects.
For instance the barriers on the islands in the middle, the church at the back, the traffic lights, and the bits on the near right side - they all have some additional lights, some just spec, some diffuse as well.

The following are the ID passes (at the moment) that are used to grade certain areas of the image, mostly just on the beauty render, but they can potentially be used at any point in the tree.

And the depth pass, this one is aliased as it is used in the comp, but also I render a version with no AA, which may also be a different range of distance from black to white, and at a very high resolution for the depth of field if there is some.

Ambient Occlusion which is then tinted and graded slightly (changing of the levels)

Using a multiply node, the AO and the beauty pass come together.

This is the same depth path, with a change of levels, and graded/tinted to be used as haze/fog type stuff.

The haze added!

The background, which is from a photo I have taken, but also painted up a bit, the building on the left is only still there as you cannot see it

The passes is merged over the background, notice that the dodgy alpha edges have gone now and we don’t get any artefacts, dark alpha edges around the buildings because of this process.

Grading, grain, and some nice glowy bits brought in from other passes are added and we end up with the final image.

Not too in-depth but I hope it is interesting to see some of the passes and a few techniques.

Cheers!

Busy working and a little bit ill so not getting much done at the weekends too at the moment, so here’s some other info.

For those of you who frequent 3d forums we have a couple of threads which I keep up to date on the big forums, specifically here they are on:

CGTalk

and

3d Total (Threedee)

So feel free to reply to those threads rather than commenting on the blog if thats your thing

For anyone new to the process of making a short film, hopefully here is some info on the way it happens, or can happen at least.
These are the ways we are making our film, based on a little experience we have as well as what suits our strengths and weaknesses and what we feel we need, or do not need.

This is based really for people who aren’t very knowledgeable on the process. But not having made a short film doesn’t occlude so many people as it does not vary a great deal from other productions which are prevalent through the industry, commercials for instance.
The technical process is likely to be rather similar, and if its a narrative based piece (the commercial) then of course that can relate too.

So here is a basic run-through of the stages.

There are various stages that link together, often where one has to finish before the next can start, this is especially important with a keeping a big team organised on one project. This whole process is generally referred to as the pipeline (the magic word).

As you can see in the wonderful diagram below, there are several strands that work in parallel to make up the pipeline. And this in theory can all start from one place (the idea or story) and should find itself ending up at one place (the final film).

In the diagram above, the stages in orange are for Pre-production, red is production and green is post post-produciton.

Many stages can be discounted or added when needed, depending on people and projects. For instance, on our short film we have not made storyboards, very strange perhaps!…but maybe I’ll talk about that more another time.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the important things about the pipeline is that some stages can only start once others have finished (or perhaps just started) and that this needs to be as efficient as possible.

For example for a character, first we would gather together reference of stuff we like. 3d characters, 2d, actors, real people, anything that is suitable for the part.
Without that we cannot draw up a design concept, and without a concept we cannot begin the modeling process, without the model we cannot rig it etc.

Above is a moodboard made up from reference gathered for the bank lobby environment.

After collecting reference material, a really good way to share ideas with other people working on the short is by using things like moodboards. Laying out lots of images in one go and briefly note whats good and whats bad from the reference.
Using this as a base, we can then start modelling the environments. And although this is a long process, the environments become useful very quickly as we can use new models straight into the previs knowing that they will still be accurate later on (any dramatic layout changes can be reworked in previs, or catered for when it comes to animating certain shots).

This can be very beneficial and efficient.
Another very helpful thing that this method provides is that if we get the previs (more specificly the cameras) nailed down for all the shots that will use one of the environments we then know what is going to be seen of the environment and what is not.
We can concentrate on specific areas inside the environment and discard other areas that will not be seen - thus saving us potentially a lot of time and effort going to waste.

Simple models and simple animation is all can be needed for previs.

Before you know it you have a pipeline going, with the gentle stream of 3d fun trickling through it.

I think thats it for now though there is a lot to be covered, hopefully at a later time, particularly lighting, compositing, general organisation of scenes/textures/render outputs and that kind of thing.

Please ask any question via email or add a comment.
Cheers!

As we are making a short film between several people who are working full-time, very often it is tricky to organising meeting up to discuss things like the script. We have been using Google Docs to write our script and share it between the staff online. That is handy enough on its own, not to mention the ‘comments’ you can add to see who suggests what.
If you are making a short film like we are, you can also use the Google calendar to share dates, and we have also found a use for the spreadsheets that are avaliable to make the shot list so we can keep track of the number of Sequences and Shots, and the length of them etc etc.

Its handy.

Recently we have come across ‘Without a box’ which provides a great system for short film creaters to primarily submit their films to tons of festivals you easily could miss out on. There some fee’s and many festivals charge for submission but its well worth a look: http://www.withoutabox.com/

We haven’t quite got the full synopsis online yet, and you might not want to read it anyway in case it spoils some magic bits - but for now here is a wee summary/blurb of the story.. (more…)

I’ve been working on one of the environments for the film, after we all discuss how the layout is working and a few things hopefully we can get some 3d work in progress images posted up.
Anyway I wrote a script to fill shelves with randomly folder (from a group of about 10 here).

Currently we’re finishing off the script for the film, its pretty locked down now and we’re very aware that from previous films that we expect there to be additions and alterations to the script as production progresses. In a production which could last for quite some time, this is quite inevitable and I think also can often crop up some of the best ideas.

We will hopefully post a synopsis of the film up pretty soon.

We have started to divide up different environments where the film takes place between the staff, so we all know that we have work to do whenever we can.
As we create the environments we can use a basic scene of these to use in 3d Pre-vis of the film.
By making a 3d pre-vis we can see what shots we need for each sequence, and what we will need to create in the environment, rather than dressing the whole environment and then realising later that something we’ve spent a lot of time over will never be seen.