Shot Workflow

Well, I've been racking up alot of shots with test animation, just to make sure it looks right, and in the process I found myself in the deep and mosquito ridden jungles of disorganisation. As such I've been getting some housework in order - after things came to be in a bit of a tangle, i began untangling with my unoffical favorite part of doing projects: automation.

The first thing is having a file referencing plan in the shot folder. When I had about 10 shots I realised that I was running around between files chasing settings like light attributes and render passes - it had the potential to get very confusing very quickly. So I made things a little more strict by having the animation, effect and environment elements all funnel into the lighting file. I made a rule that this lighting file is the only place where light linking happens, and where the beauty is developed. This lighting file is then referenced into the render file, which by another rule is the only place where render layers/passes and other render options live. After I did this, life became a little simpler, and I realised I could reuse environment, lighting and render files between shots - so all I really had to do was work on the animation.

After I did this I was able to work on new shots more freely, but that led to another problem - reorganising shots. Each shot is stored in a numbered folder, and inserting shots means renumbering others, which is a pain the next time you go to open your comping file. Since I knew I'd want to be constantly reorganising things, I automated my comping workflow as well, so it is the least intrusive to my work.

Of course, to minimise the amount of re-wiring in comping files the solution is in the use of relative paths, and having a different Blender comp file for each shot. The awesome part is I can reuse my comp files if my maya render layers follow a naming convention. Blender stays quiet if a image sequence input doesn't actually find any files, so the same comp file can be used for a variety of comping situations. When I've finished animating a new shot and rendered it, I just throw in a Blender comp file, open it, adjust the duration and hit render. All of the layering is done for me as per my render layer names, and the image sequence nodes can be set to 999 frames long - they just become blank when they run out of frames (most of my shots are only sub 200 frames).

All this means less time stuffing around, and more time animating :D

Production Pipeline

My production pipeline is now in full swing for my short film, meaning I can press a few buttons and it spits out the composited video of the shot I'm currently working on. Its pretty important to have everything set up correctly to really streamline the rendering process, saving time to allow for focus on the final production frames. It's also much better for reviewing the animation, seeing one shot blend into the other, and seeing where the animation is needed most.

For each shot, I have the animation, environment, effects, camera, and lighting split into separate files, some of these files usually referencing other model and rig files elsewhere in the project. When working with multiple shots, it's pretty important to have some kind of pipeline for each element, so that when updates occur they update throughout the project automatically. I'll try and explain the setup here for what goes into each shot:

Character: SHOT <-- Lighting <-- [Animation, Camera] <-- Character <-- Rig <-- Model 
Environment: SHOT <-- Lighting <-- [Environment, Camera] <-- Model 
Effects: SHOT <-- Effects <-- Camera

To render each element, I have batch files in the shot folder to generate the renders on my render drive.

"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2010\bin\Render.exe" -r mr -cam _CAM:camera1 -pad 3 -rd R:\KittyString\03_MURKY_DRAIN\02_UNDERWATER_SHOT\_LIT_ANIM _LIT_ANIM.mb  
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2010\bin\Render.exe" -r mr -cam _CAM:camera1 -pad 3 -rd R:\KittyString\03_MURKY_DRAIN\02_UNDERWATER_SHOT\_ENV _ENV.mb
"C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya2010\bin\Render.exe" -r mr -cam _CAM:camera1 -pad 3 -rd R:\KittyString\03_MURKY_DRAIN\02_UNDERWATER_SHOT\_EFFECTS _EFFECTS.mb 
:: shutdown -s

shutdown -s is nice too! Command line rendering with Maya is pretty common - I only use it when I'm working with the shots in this project, as it tends to minimise any mistakes in render settings. You might notice the camera specified is _CAM:camera1; this lets me be lazy with my camera referencing, as the rendered maya file will probably have 3 or 4 referenced cameras in it, but only the one we want is used for rendering.

So the rendered passes for each element is split into folders, and then assembled in the compositor. I'm using Blender and so far its very handy. The great thing is its so lightweight and simple, so after a render from Maya, I can just fire up Blender and set it to work. I have different comp files for each shot, and one for each section, allowing me to easily turn a sequence of 'just rendered' shots into a quicktime file for previewing.

So far so good! I'll be sure to post some image updates soon.

WIP Murky Drain colour concept

This is a WIP colour concept I'm working on for the Murky Drain environment my short film project.

Short Film

I've been working on a 3d animated short film during the break. The goal is to tell as simple story, be a pleasure to watch, and complete it in a timely manner. I'm slowly digging my way out of preproduction - Not running too far behind schedule but it sure is keeping me busy! I'll be sure to post updates as they come.