BEYOND-MSP PROJECT

B E Y O N D

THE UNKNOWN

B E Y O N D

^{THE UNKNOWN}

Divya Shree | MSP | K1704253

divzenith.blogspot.com

Kingston University

Overview

To create a Media Specialist Practice project based on a short story and this project is based and specialized in Lighting and compositions in both MAYA and Aftereffects or Nuke Software’s. Using 3D characters and 2D environment matte painting and 3D basic character animations.

Motivation

I choose this project based on a game called Limbo, AvacadoMan, Via and developed a short story around that concept unto concentrate more on my specialization in Lighting concept.

Aims & Objectives

-The main concept of this project is Lighting in Autodesk Maya and compositing on 2D environment or matte painting.

-To create Lighting based scene with minimal animation and various compositions method both lighting and post productions.

METHOD

PRE-PRODUCTION

STORY

No more pain!

That was the first thought that zipped through my muddled thoughts. but seemed like I was still under the influence of lord Morpheus.

Once I broke through the veil of unconsciousness , I heard an eerie sorrow filled howl which almost bought me to my knees ,heart filled with loss and pain I went in search for the reason that I am in this darkness , why am I feeling such an emptiness, did I forget something important? did I lose something precious ? and then there it was again that sorrow filled howl, on instinct when I looked up , moon was glowing brighter than ever, in a faraway distance colorful glow orbs where drifting leisurely in the sky which intrigued me more and more by the seconds, In the corner of my eyes I saw a movement like something was watching me behind the trees, just then I saw a paper lantern zoom past me, I just didn’t want to stay in this darkness anymore I wanted to follow the light hence I started running towards it, it was so close to reach that’s when I remembered!

That person I forgot! Who slipped away from my hands, after which my life didn’t seem so important anymore, which didn’t make sense anymore, and I knew I would find her if I just keep following the lights cause she was my light ,My Home!

My path was lit up by moon beams and twinkling stars, but they were swallowed by smoky clouds of the hills, I felt lost again there was just emptiness again but soon I saw the path was lit up fluttering fireflies. May be someone was watching over me, I stared to follow the path again just then another memory hit me, which bought me to my knees, that she was no more of this world, I saw as my hands grasping the just air instead of that hand, I lost then but never again.

PRODUCTION

Modeling

Most of the environment objects are used from Maya Assets and Characters are low-poly models which are used for basic animation scenes

Shading /Texturing

Basic shading materials are used on the objects in order to maintain flat shading effect on the objects or the characters.

Animation

Auto-Rigged character is used to generate the basic animations of human actions to explain the story further the concept of minimal animation is used so that entire story will be proceeded using mood lighting, Look & Feel of the color compositions.

Since the concentration is more on the story and lighting the animations are generated using Adobe Mixamo plugin

Like run, walk, expressions etc.

Lighting

Renderer-ARNOLD

Mental-Ray was the Previous Lighting system which was expensive on the system and to attain the desired lighting effect and had to use a lot of lights.

Whereas Arnold renderer A single Arnold Light like Area light or Sky dome light can achieve the both direct light and indirect light also gives a Sub surface scattering effect on the shaded objects. and Physical sky light Gives the light affect according to The angle of the light which is directly proportional to Time if the 90 degree angle is 12 o clock noon 180 degree orientation gives that of evening effect. Which is very useful when animating a time lapse animation which gives the effect of sunrise and sunset environments.

In this particular scenario three point light method was used to give the character more depth and matching the environment.

Rendering

Rendering use Arnold render for Maya saves the time and effort Unlike Mental-ray which mostly cost Time, and is expensive on the system. Arbitrary Output Variables or Aov’s helps by rendering different arbitrary’ s like Occlusion ,ambient, direct light and indirect light in different images at the same time this could be merged into one single .Exr image . which could be shuffled and edited in Nuke software if required.

In this project mostly Aov’s are basic since it gives the output to flat image . also main AOV’s are Shadow matte to record the shadows and Beauty pass of the scene which could be easily manipulated in After Effects as well.

The Render settings are standard resolution of HD 1080p with standard Arnold settings and no overrides were required. And the .exr files are saved to Image folder in project folder.

POST-PRODUCTION

Compositions.

For the final composition most of the 2D matte painting are created and manipulated in Adobe Illustrator software which gives a high quality rendered images with its vector property. Which are exported in.PNG format and saved in individual shape and objects. The Separated layers of the 2d matte painting is composited layer by layer to form a whole picture in Adobe after-effects to complete the scene and obtain required designs. To animate this Illustrated layers we use Some readily available effects which are simulated by the software for example Fractal noise can be manipulated in to forming cloud motions and glow is added to Moon and the glow radius is animated to attain moon’s glow quality also CC snowfall and color correction options are readily available for the environment animation.

Once the Entire scene is obtained after compositing the illustrated layers its time to composite 3D rendered .exr file which will be having a alpha channel and holds transparency channel as well. Then be composed into the After Effects layers which is color corrected to match the environment.

Finally all the composited scenes are exported into .MOV file with best lossless settings with QuickTime Player settings of HD 1080p ,H.264 for compressor. For the finally composition of the scene all the .Mov files are composited according to Sound Files which are provided by Royalty free websites for non-commercial uses. This final composition is Exported into .MOV file .