3D Animation School: Creating Convincing Images
March 20th, 2009 Posted in 3D Animation School
We can only get so far by creating viable images in our animation program by using shaders and lighting. At some point we will need to take our files into a compositing package in order to finalize the look of our scene.
By employing “render passes” we can output various aspects of a scene such as the reflections, lights, and colors into separate layers and then import them into a compositor such as After Effects, Shake or Nuke to name but a few.
Once in the compositing program we are able to combine the passes in “layers” and modify each one in order to get the best result image wise. For instance the image with the bright colors is an index pass and allows the compositor to mask out specific areas of the scene in order to apply an effect to the unmasked areas.
The white image at the bottom is an occlusion pass which allows us to bring soft shadows into the scene. This is a great technique for softening and neutralizing that harsh cg look that were all familiar with.
Understanding render passes is an important and essential technique for image creation and one that we encourage our students to master.
By Robert Appleton, 3D Animation School Instructor
