multipass and compositing..

[Aneks]

Hi,

I teach the Shake course and some other stuff at FXPHD. I think you'll find a lot of useful stuff in the particular compositing courses, although probably not much on the Syntheyes course. What other ones are you taking ?

There is a lot of free tutorials about multipass compositing out there. I wrote a couple a while back. They are on fxshare at the moment. A quick google search on multipass compositing will turn up quite a few links.

Do you have any specific questions on the topic that you wnat addressed ?

[bujin9]

Hi Aneks,

I'm also taking the fusion (beginner) and matte painting. My question rose because I see a large amount of CG film where the CG character is interacting with live film screen actors. One basic shot I saw (simplistic compared to things like Jurassic Park or Lord of the Rings) was a person walking down an isle with his CG model actor walking down with him. Then I realized that although I may be able to incorporate a model into a still photo, I have never done compositing in moving camera footage.
So....that's where my question came about.
Thanks,
Joe

[Aneks]

There is really two things that you need to think about.

The track, ie matching the moving camera using a matchmoving application.

Lighting. seriously. the secret to making CG look integrated is lighting. I keep saying this but it's true, a grey box lit right will look integrated.

Basically, you have to get the 3d lit right. The composiitor then needs to take a look at the plate and decide what are the characteristics of the image they are trying to match to.

Black levels. Overall tone and luminance. Focus, grain/noise and interactive lighting are the final touches.

To be honest 3d integration is not really that hard compared to many other compositing tasks. For me it is always about making the integrations as seemless as possible. A lot of this is taking the time to get the feel for the actual plate. Too many compositors try and show too much of the 3d because of all the hard work that goes into it. Don't be afraid to hide CG in shadows, grade it down to match, especially saturation.... badly comped 3d renders always seem so saturated and contrasty.

[MisterS]

3d Palace has an excellent tutorial showing the whole workflow (and also one that's pretty pants).

[hiphopcr]

I understand where you're coming from. For beginning compositors it's somewhat of a mystery because you don't get a chance to practice it unless you have a 3D artist who can pump out the element/layers for you.

It would be great if you could take a class or find an element with multiple passes that you could practice on. That's the best way to really discover what each of the passes do.

[earlyworm]

Might pay to check out Ron Brinkmann's Art and Science of Digital Compositing (2nd Edition), the user studies at the end are quite improved, espicially the bit on SW:EpIII where it's quite through about how exactly the shot was put together - it even includes all the passes and the Shake script used to comp the shot.

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