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Part 1:
Making Movies
Part 2:
From Idea to "Birth of the Film"
Part 3:
Planning the Project
Part 4:
The Shot Pipeline
Part 5:
Putting the Pieces Together |
Moving back to safer waters,
describe the shot pipeline for Arrest Assured?
Rob: As we proceeded through shot development, we
textured and shaded all of our characters, props, and environments ─ and
filled in the scene details. The look of the environments was very
important to us. We wanted them to look like miniature painted sets,
similar to Aardman Studios’ work. But we didn’t want the environments to
steal the visual focus from our lead character. Their function is to
complement and lend believability to him.
We put a lot of effort into lighting. For us
lighting is a significant storytelling element and is critical in
directing the viewer’s attention to where we want it to go. We also used
a backlighting technique for the character, so that he really “pops out”
of every shot.
Mike: Of course animating our hero is one of the
most important parts of the shot pipeline. Once we had his movements
fine-tuned we were able to go back and tweak textures and lighting
before rendering begins. While we’d like to say everything is done
precisely when scheduled, the desire to go back and refine often wins!
How does FrameCycler fit
into your workflow here?
Rob: We use FrameCycler on our PC’s (our primary 3D
production platform) to review animation “dailies”. It allows us to
review shots with exact timing and even do quick composites without
having to move prematurely into our compositing or editing pipelines. It's also an
excellent tool for finding mistakes and corrupted frames. And it’s ideal
for client presentations where we want them to be able to review shots
with the correct color, size and playback speed. FrameCycler makes that
easy, whether we're on our PC-based 3D workstations, or our Mac-based
compositing systems.
And then you’re ready to
render out all this hard work?
Mike: Yes. Next, we move into the rendering phases,
which include the output of many layers of elements which will all eventually make
it into the compositing systems. In a perfect world everything would
render out exactly as we wanted it, but I’ve never seen that happen! So
we render out the elements individually which allows us more creative
flexibility later during compositing.
For example we wanted our hero’s sweater to look
thick, bulky and even ... somewhat like wool! Of course we had done the first level of texturing in
the asset pipeline, but only when we did the rendering could we
fine-tune the shaders to make sure that the texture of the sweater
reacted to the lighting the way we wanted it to. And then we decided to
create a backlit glow layer on the edges of the sweater, as a separate
element which was later added in compositing.
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Hidden Tributes
Mike and Rob are big fans of Aardman Studio's Wallace and
Gromit films. Arrested Development includes several subtle tributes to the
famous ‘clay-mation’ series and its founders, Nick Park and Peter Lord.
Note the sign above the gem shop that our hapless thief breaks into:
“Lord Parks Jewelry Store.” Then, if you pay close attention, in the
background of the jewelry store, you may just be able to make out a
framed photo of Wallace and Gromit on the desk to the right of the door.
More about FrameCycler
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