How I rendered this shot using Maya Software and no lights (Part 2): Making an Animated Movie (#10) Video Lecture | A Guide to Making an Animated Movie - Professional Skills

hey guys in this second part of our
lighting and rendering tutorial I'm
gonna show you how I take the render
layers that we created in the previous
video in Maya and combine them and
composite them in Nuuk and turn them
into this alright so I'm gonna go over
the nuke file that I've created I'm not
gonna explain how to use new so I will
expect that you have some basic
understanding of how the program works
but I am gonna go over every node and
show you exactly what I did so in front
of us here we have the ten render layers
that we got out of Maya in the previous
tutorial we have the cube we have the
rim of the cube we have our world
position layer of the cube we have the
eye of the the white of the eye of the
cube we can see it's a very small over
here we have the ball the rim of the
ball the world position the depth layer
our shadow pass and the floor so now I'm
going to show you how I took all of that
you can turn it into this nice little
sunset shot over here so we're not going
to touch in any of those layers I have
them all spread out throughout the
script this is my nuke file so it might
seem a little daunting to those of you
who don't know nuke but to those who do
it probably seems reasonable all these
nodes kind of work together and
eventually we'll combine this shot that
we're seeing here let's start let's go
over it on the right part over here we
have everything I did with the
background it's good to have
organization in your nuke file because
it's really easy to get confused with
all these nodes on the left side they
have everything that I did with the
characters and then here in the middle I
combined them both and did a bunch of
other stuff on both of them together so
let's start with the background now I
had a I had a 2d background made for me
by a guy named Sean Hopkins
he's a very talented graphic artist that
works in the game industry in Canada he
did the 2d backgrounds for them for the
film so let's start with that this is
the the 2d background that he painted I
asked to have like a painterly style
texture on the backgrounds so this is
just one image i reformat it to to the
HD format I transferred it a little bit
so it's in the right position added a
little bit of blur and that's it for the
for the city skyline in here I have my
floor render my floor pass the reason
you see these edges these bad edges in
all of the render layers you can see
them in all the layers it's because it's
unmultiplied you need to to add the pre
multiply node to each of those layers to
make it look good so right now you see
it's a little jagged over there and we
add the pre mult
it fixes it so that's why you're gonna
see a pre mult node after every render
layer some color correction a little bit
of blur and a light wrap node that takes
this image and creates a light wrap
around around the edges so let's see
what it looks like this is just the
light wrap itself and it adds it to the
layer kind of blends both of them
together but before I show you how both
of them blend together I also added some
darkness too to the floor by creating
just out just a piece of dotted like a
dark layer and multiplied it on the
background so this is before this is
after and I did that because this whole
part was will kind of stood out way too
much so I had to darken a little bit and
then I take this piece and that piece
and I add them together and we have the
full background now this is something
cool that I added that I called a canvas
overlay it's basically this texture is a
texture of like like a canvas we form it
into HD and I just overlaid it on top of
everything on the background so it gives
it a canvas texture and I also added
this as an overlay which is kind of a
paper paper ish texture so this is both
of them now I have some color correction
nodes here and a little bit of blur
extra blur on everything and this is how
I got the final color now for the
shadows the characters shadows is what I
did was I took this pass the shadow pass
we had pre mult added on top of a red
background so I get a full read back on
on everything and I used that as a mask
to add this texture hold on I'll show
you this is the texture that I added
this is the texture of the shadow that I
wanted so basically I added that texture
but it was masked by the shadow so
basically it's adding all of this only
where the shadows are so the shadows are
not just black they have like a paint a
painting texture to them you can barely
see it but it's you know it's the little
things so that's it for the background
that's how I created the background with
the shadows now let's move on to the
characters you see I have them separated
here this is the cube this is the ball
let's start with a cube the first thing
I added on the cube was the rim light
now what I did with the rim is I changed
the create a little bit and blurred it
and I took this layer
and I multiplied it on the regular cube
so this is before and this is after and
it gives it kind of a three three
dimensional feeling to it it darkens
some part of it and the other one keeps
it bright so it gives it some kind of
depth but before it was very flat like
everything was the same color and this
is how I got the 3d feeling then I added
these cross hatches and how did I do
that the cross hatches is is this huge
crosshatch texture and I added a
transform node which which you can which
is used to transform or rotate or scale
whatever it is you're doing so I added
an expression to the rotation then each
frame you rotated by 90 degrees so if we
just watch this layer you see that it
just every frame it just rotates 90
degrees so it seems like it's moving and
if I added that on the cube it looks
like the cross hatches are like being
drawn every frame as I wanted to give it
a 2d animation feel to it so now it
seems like someone is actually cross
hatching them every time instead of
being just static and the way I added
them only on this side of the cube and
not on the entire cube is with our world
position render layer though before you
probably didn't know what I was gonna do
with it and now I can show you basically
I can use that to tell the the merge
node here which adds the the cross
hatches I can tell him I can tell it
what where I want to put it so I mask it
by the blue color so it took this layer
and he only had only added these cross
hatches on the blue part of the cube so
you can see this is green on the top is
probably red and this is blue that's why
we get the cross hatches only over here
so this render pass gives me a lot of
control on adding stuff I could have
added it only on the front on the on top
it gives me a lot of control and let me
play around with stuff and that's how I
got I got this texture of the cube from
this this is like very flat very boring
and over here it's it feels more 3d and
it has an interesting texture on it
after that there is some color
correction just a bunch of gamma and
contrast contrast changes and that's it
for the cube now the ball is just the
same the same layers the same things I
added the rim light look how the rim
when I added it to the ball how it gives
it a 3d feeling before it was just
completely flat and now with that it
seems like it's actually like a ball and
when I add these little cross hatches
over here it's even even nicer then we
bring both of them together with this
merge node we put the ball on top of the
cube and we're getting this some color
correction nodes and grade nodes to make
the color a little nicer and a little
bit of an edge blur to blur the edges of
everything alright we're almost going to
combine the two of them together we have
the nice background and the nice
characters already but before we bring
them together I added a light wrap on
the characters using the colors from the
background after I did that I can merge
both of them together and we have the
characters and on top of the background
now let's let's finish finish it up this
is our depth layer our depth render pass
and I use that for adding depth of field
I do that by copying copying the red
channel from the
into the depth Z Channel now this is
kind of advanced and people will
probably understand it a little better
but basically I'm telling that I'm
telling you to use the color from this
as the depth Z channel and we're going
to use it later to create depth of field
so hold on we have two nodes here that
add a little bit of a crosshatch on top
of everything this is the same thing I
did here the same thing I did with the
cross hatching on everything but I added
that on top of everything but I did it
very very subtly so there's barely
anything here you can barely see it if I
increase it to the maximum you can see
what I mean but I put it on very low so
you don't really see it but it you feel
it a little bit and also that paper
texture also moving edit that on top of
everything so you see it's a lot of very
very small subtle things that give the
nice feeling some more color correction
nodes 1 2 3 4 5 and we're almost there
now we can add the Z blur node now that
that node is using the data from from
this depth pass so let's see how it how
it does it you can turn on focal plane
setup to just see kind of see where you
are everything that is in green is gonna
be completely in focus and then the red
and blues are it's gonna get blurry ER
as we go far so you can kind of change
your focal point and that's really a
really easy way to set up your depth of
field so you see if I turn it off well
it's it's a very subtle depth of field
so you don't really see anybody if I
increase it you can see a little yeah
now this is much stronger so you can see
my cuban my ball are super and super
focus and all the rest is very very
blurry and if i change that now this is
gonna be in focus and this is gonna be a
little more blurry but i'm gonna go back
okay now remember our a little i render
pass you can see them very subtly here
the eye of the the white of the eye i
added a little bit of glow so you can
see them a little better and i added it
on top of everything and that is because
the eye is kind of faded with all the
color correction know that i had you
couldn't really see how wide they were
this is before you see it kind of it's
old like yellowish and now when i when i
add that layer on top of it it's much
more prominent one more thing was the
canvas overlay that the same canvas
adds on the background i added that on
everything so these these things might
seem redundant to you but it's it's so
that i can bring everything together and
the layers won't seem so separate
because before i had it on the
background only this way i add on top of
everything and it makes it makes it seem
like it's all in the same world and then
sometimes i do this i feel like it helps
you add just a general blur on
everything but very very small blurbs or
blur if one you can barely tell it's
there but it makes everything a little
less perfect a little less sharp and
then i use a right node to render it i
under the tiff file 32-bit float that's
a pretty high res and that's it that's
how we got from here or this thing that
doesn't seem very attractive into our
final result which is a lot nicer
all of that with using Maya software and
without using any lights and the scene I
think that's that's pretty cool alright
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