Dino Diner Compositing + Lighting R&D

Now  that dissertation is finally handed in I have been able to put more time into working on compositing for Dino Diner. After the many tests I did for the original previs model here I wanted to take what I thought was the best technique and apply it to the new previs model.

 From Arnold

From Nuke

I opted for rendering no volumetric lighting in Arnold and added them using Nuke and the TX_Rays node as with my last previs. I also made use of Normal and Point world passes to add additional lighting to the table and counter behind. I also added floating particles which interact with the light shaft, and a range of camera lens effects, including chromatic aberration, depth of field, blurring and more.

This time I kept the additional lighting to a minimum, as in my last test I found it caused issues with matte lines and aliasing around edges with additional lighting. I think this issue could be somewhat resolved by making use of several matte IDs for areas we knew were going to be re-lit, but that that point we may as well light the shaft lighting in camera, and add the volumetric shaft for it in comp, less flexible but it is higher quality and less likely to cause issues in Nuke.

 One Thing I am keen to get working is interaction between the 3D character and the lighting, making sure they are placed properly behind or in front of it. I think this can be achieved nicely using alphas of the characters to act as a holdout when they are in front of the shaft, which is similar to work I did at BFX for the Painter.

 I'm currently working on the same test in Renderman, the lighting for this shot is quite flat so I'm trying to improve that, as well as heading towards creating a lighting setup that will work as a base, with good depth and focus and has the right mood, for all the shots in the film, which can be added to via shot specific lighting.

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