As of today, our project is now complete.

We comped in the explosions and rendered out the final images. The explosion itself proved to be a little tricky in getting it to comp in well with our scene. It was more of an experiment trying to get it to work, and I believe that we got it fairly close. There are a few issues that came up, but nothing that really gave us serious pause in our work.

We look forward to presenting the project.

2012

This was the second part of my studio 2 'work'. I am writing this as I am rendering out shot 1, and I would say that we are about 95% done with this project. We still have until wed to present and are still finishing the last little details.

The last few weeks on this project have been quite busy. Because we were further along in terms of lighting on my Captain project than we were on this, my aim was to bust my ass on that and get most of my work done and out of the way by the time we were ready to light 2012. This goal was achieved. While I still spent half of each day working on the captain with Neil, it was mostly supervisor type work - a lot of looking at what the lighters were doing, what needed to be done, and lots of coordination with neil. But at least my shots were finished and so I could work more on here.

I first started with shot 4. This shot was fairly simple and thus we could get it out of the way first. This was a good run. I figured out a decent lighting rig using the HDR as the main global light source, with a CG directional light to augment the sunlight. I additionally use several spotlights as fill.

After shot 4, I moved on and lit shot 2. This was much more complicated in terms of layers, as I had 3 characters  an ivy layer, and a vehicle layer (with 4 lights, a shadow and a reflection pass each). The good news with this shot was that its locked off, so I only needed one frame each. This I rendered locally.

My 3rd shot was the monster of them all, shot 1. This shot had EVERY asset and on top of that, it was 410 frames long. However, due to what I leanred in lighting shot 2, I was able to setup my layers in no time and comp together the shot with one frame. This idea proved to be very valuable as we approached the time when the render farm and the network was at its worst. By having the shot comped, all we had to do was simply render the images at our leasure. Thanks to Paul, we got this knocked out all in one night. He wrangled the renderfarm and got all frames rendered out ahead of schedule. The shot has been put together, 2 layers fixed, and they are now rendering out.

As brendan said, he took over and helped do shot 5. This was very helpful.

We also decided to cut shot 3 due to time constraints. As he said, we wanted to keep 4 shots of high quality rather that cut that and make the work look less in order to get the last shot in. All in all, it still works very well and we are quite pleased.

What was good about this project was that I was doing lighting and compositing at the same time I was doing this for the captain project. By doing a stylized animation/all CG scene and a match to live, I was able to gain valuable comp experience and even used some of that to apply itself to the other project. I also got faster and faster.

Goals - The goals we setout for this project were mostly achieved. We did have to cut one shot and some debris elements from our final film. We didnt meet the goal of having everything rendered before the finals week, however due to past experiences we managed to cope with it and work our way through it better than we expected. Early planning of course helped us greatly - in terms of shot 2 and 5 that were locked off and didnt require a vast amount of frames.

The work overall is great. Everyone on this project did a lot of work and it shows. We had zero problems and zero drama. The team here, like in the other project, worked well together. Having a team that works is always key to success, and we achieved that.

Brendan has some stills of our shots WIP so far.

Its been a little while since my last update. Since then, I have finished all 5 of my shots. I had such a variety of shots, that most of what I did could be used as style frames for the others to use.

With the addition of a few new lighters, we were able to continue to get more work done at a good speed. Some other lighters however posed a few problems. As expected, some had other obligations and couldnt spend as much time helping out. Others simply didnt know how to do lighting well.

All in all, there was a vast range of talent in this project that I had to manage, ranging from really damn good, to really poor. For the most part, I gave those with less skill all the time they needed to help get their work done. I offered ideas, availability, and anything else I could think of to help them. At the same time though, when things needed to get done, they got done. I could be flexible, but only to a point.

Neil and I worked a lot during these last two weeks. We ensured that progress was being made and that consistancy between shots was maintained. One way to help with this, was to have myself get the lighters as far as they could, and when they needed time for their other work, I would take over and complete/fix their shots. I did this on 6 additional shots.

The more we progressed through this project, the more I became better at identifng the ways in which a shot needed to be composited in order to look like the rest. Each needed a certain amount of light bloom and color correction, each had motion blur that had to be applied a specific way, etc..

When it came time for some people to leave and work on their own projects, I could easily and quickly touch up their work and get it looking exactly how we needed it. In one or two cases, I was on the verge of simply taking over completely and doing it myself. I could have had their shot done in a day, when it took them WEEKS. So I had to fight that urge as best as I can, allowing the individual to do their work. I opted to give them as much time as we could afford, and when that was up, I would take over and finish. By allowing them that opportunity, they were more than willing to render out the elements and let me comp their shot together.

All in all I would say that it was successfull this way. In the real world it would not be. Here at school, these are volunteers on a project and they are all swamped with other work. Anything they could offer is helpful. It does put a strain on myself, as I then incur much more work on myself. However, by this time, I already know how to comp a script together for one of these shots and it only takes me half an hour or an hour to do a shot. By having myself do the work, I could ensure that the total look of the film is the way I wanted it to be.

As VFX supervisor for these last 8 weeks, its my job to get this film done and to get it done right. It is my responsibility and I will not turn in a project that isnt up to my own satisfaction. With that being said, Im more than willing to put in the extra hours and make sure that it looks perfect.

I achieved that goal. I am quite happy with this project and while there are still a few minor tweaks to be made, we made our goal of having the animation 99.9% done and ready to turn in for the animation show on the monday deadline.

The first goal we set out, was that we wanted to have the vast majority of the rendering finished before finals week. We achieved this too. We only had 2 shots left to render during this nasty weekend, and those were already halfway done. The renders needed were renders that needed to be fixed and re-done, not the entire thing.

So all in all, this project was a huge success. As a bonus, I myself have learned a vast amount of information about compositing in these last few weaks. Every other day it seems that someone in this team of ours offers a way to solve a problem that was better than how we were doing it before. The team we put together was fantastic and we had zero drama. The worst thing we had to deal with was one or two people who werent up to speed or as skilled as some of the others - but those were obstacles easily overcome.

The team worked and the project is finished - but above all, it looks great. We cant wait to show it off.

This last week has been quite fruitful.

After weeks and weeks of work getting the pipeline setup, we reached the point in our project where every single thing was done and ready to go. Instead of taking a week or two to do a shot, I was now able to load all my amterial, load my light rigs, light my shots and get a new shot done within a DAY.

This is the point we had been striving to reach.

Because of that, I finished shot 9, 10 and 6. I also began work on shot 12 because no one had picked that up yet, and am about 90% done with that one. I should be done today or tomorow. Every other shot has been assigned and is being worked on. Our renderparty on saturday was highly successful. We were all able to get more work done in that day than we did in a week. So much so that by this weekend, we are making all shots due. Which means, the entire film will be done (lighting wise) this weekend.

Great work by everyone on this. We are finished on schedule and on time before the renderfarm dies. Now its time to focus back on the 2012 project, as they are ready for lighting work to be done.

Finaled shots I did: