Compositing: fatter pipe makes it quicker, 20/30 integration makes it tighter, and less expensive software makes it cheaper

Post, Feb, 2004 by Ann Fisher

On a short animation for Tekko, Toronto curators, that is playing in art galleries in Canada and Italy, Future Beautiful is an abstract piece about anxiety and regret. It follows a fencer, who has just lost a match, back to his home. His competitor's vascular system, or blood vessels, stalks him and ultimately attaches to him, causing his whole body to decompose.

A Sony VX2000 digital camera was used for capture, Discreet 3DS Max for models and 3D set re-creation, After Effects 5.5 for compositing after the 3D elements were rendered out with alpha channels. Hardware was Dell workstations.

HDRI was used on set, again to match the set lighting in the 3D composites. AE Scene Genie, which allowed manual adjustment, was used for motion tracking, a better alternative than Boujou's automatic estimates, he says.

The main challenge was layering. Tronic rendered things in passes and the shadow passes were a little dirty because real light scatters around a room, not leaving clean edges. "We use Splutterfish's Brazil, that's our rendering engine. It's a plug-in for 3DS Max. It does a great job with Global Illumination and simulating lighting and materials. We masked it where these shadows were coming in front of the object it should be shadow casting. We had a lot of layering," says Seppi.

TRACKING

At The Post owner and lead compositor Wayne Shepherd used Inferno to composite 80 shots on Looney Toons: Back in Action, the Warner Bros. fall release. This Santa Monica-based visual effects and finishing boutique (www.atthepost.net) specializes in features, commercials and music videos. Inevitably, it solves its share of challenges.

On the 18 to 22 shots in the opening sequence, which takes place in the Warner Bros. boardroom, At The Post had to composite the exterior of the studio into a big bluescreen wall as well as create a stained glass Warner Bros. logo window. Several of the shots were moving, so elements had to be tracked in.

"Tracking with the Inferno is quite incredible these days. That was a big advantage of using Inferno. Against the window there were a lot of plants and greenery, and that caused some issues because they went across the window and made it difficult with keying, so we ended up compositing them with all CG plants. I replaced them and put my own in," he says.

This was the first feature Shepherd had worked on, and it was the first project he'd used the Inferno for.

"I had looked at getting a couple of Shake or Combustion workstations, but I still think you need that horsepower of an Inferno. We'll use Shake or Combustion as support for the Inferno, whether it's doing our rotoscoping or pulling our keys. However, once you get a couple layers going you really need that Inferno," he says. "With the speed of computers getting faster and faster, a lot of it seems to be wanting to go to desktop platforms but it still seems it hasn't quite broken through yet in terms of speed. Most of my commercials and music video work, my clients are there right over you shoulder."