Home » 2011»November»19 » FXPHD MYA214 – Maya Lighting and Rendering in Production
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FXPHD MYA214 – Maya Lighting and Rendering in Production
FXPHD MYA214 – Maya Lighting and Rendering in Production | 5.56 GB
This course, taught by Matt Leonard, is going to be slightly different from our other Maya offerings because we’re going to be working alongside a new and very exciting project called ‘Moving Day’. This short film is being directed by award wining director Jason Wingrove. ‘Moving Day’ tells the story of a young girl and her fight against the fairies who inhabit the garden of her new home. Our short film is literally being produced throughout the term and we’ll have first hand experience of working in post during a live project.
From the outset we will be discussing the post workflow, file and image formats, storyboards, and how we’ll be taking the shots through to completion. Very quickly we’ll be in the full flow of production covering the modeling of fairy wings, rigging and photo-real shader and lighting setups. Once background plates start to be fed through we will be tracking the live action fairies with a view to attaching our CG wings to them, getting the animation underway and the shots rendered in multipass ready to move on to compositing. Once we have shot approval from the Visual Effects Supervisor, our own Mike Seymour, we’ll move into compositing the CG elements seamlessly into the live action backgrounds and getting the finished shots delivered.
Our main 3D software will be Maya 2010 which gives us access now to both Matchmover and Maya Composite (Toxik). We’ll also be using Photoshop, PFTrack and Nuke 5.2, our main compositing system.
Leonard is especially looking forward to this term because of the unique nature of this course. As a member you will have the opportunity to work on a live project and be involved not only in producing real elements and shots but also having your say in how we progress though the production. There is not a week to week outline specifically because we will be working in a more fluid non-linear fashion but by the end of the term we will have produced some amazing shots for this new and exciting project.
Leonard has been in the 3D and visual effects industry for 17 years and has produced work for feature films, commercials and large corporate projects. He has been involved in setting up post production departments, overseeing small teams of animators and compositors, along with acting as CG Supervisor on a number of projects. He has spoken at various events and shows on behalf of Autodesk and eyeon, had various articles published in magazine and journals and has beta tested Maya, Nuke and Fusion. He currently runs his own company, Sphere VFX, which is based in the UK
Class 1: In our first class we look at the Moving Day storyboards, Script and Animatic. We then go on to look at our Maya multipass render setup and how we'll be compositing that inside of Nuke. We also cover render time predictions and other pre-production issues.
Class 2: In our second class we begin by looking at reference material gathered over the week. We then go on to look at some basic fairy wings built in Maya with the aim of producing some reference animation. The second half of the class is centered on building a UV pass in Maya and using it in conjunction with the STMap tool in Nuke.
Class 3: In our third class we look at some shots from on-set and begin modeling the wings.
Class 4: Class 4 begins a two week test for Moving Day. This week we will be modeling, rigging and animation our fairy wings using the green screen plate as a reference guide along with PFTrack data.
Class 5: Class 5 continues on in our Moving Day test. This week we add textures to our wings, light the scene based on the background plate, setup the render passes and finally the other render settings. We then move into Nuke for the second half of the class to composite the CG into the background plate, pull a key on the green screen fairy element and add reflections.
Class 6: In this class we look at creating a dynamically driven ragdoll which can be animated via dynamics instead of keyframing.
Class 7: Guest prof Yannick Meillier covers matchmoving the farie shots.
Class 8: In this class we look at Maya custom project settings, new wing setup, animation, shaders and render layers, Nuke compositing, particle Instancing and particle Sprites.
Class 10: This class is Part 2 of a 2 part series looking at compositing for Moving Day. In this class we look at multipass compositing and making a custom edge blur tool.
