VFX Week 2: Maya Render Passes

One of the first things that we did for this new brief was to have a quick refresher on Maya as many of us had not touched it over summer. This was very informative as we got used to the general layout of it again and then made sure we all knew what we were doing.

We then started to learn a new skill in Maya which involved creating render passes on Maya. We got a pre-laid out scene to play with and we followed an online tutorial to be able to add 4 different render passes onto the scene so that when it was rendered out we can control the colour, especially of the cube at the front, in which we created our own texture for to be unique, which will be the object that is being animated. Below is what we selected for the colour pass and then also a render of what it looks like, as you can see only the animated object is selected.

The next pass we created was shadow, which obvious creates the shadow in the scene and how it is being cast. Below I took a screen shot to show that we have selected certain objects, everything apart from the lamp was selected, as the lamp has its own light source that casts shadows, and then made sure that the place mat in the middle didn't cast any shadows of its own either, as this is a stationary object it doesn't need any more.

The next pass that we did was reflection, this is for the place mat in the scene that the cube jumps onto. During this part the cube will need to be reflected onto the mat as it has a shiny surface. We created a render pass for this, instead of just making it that kind of surface as once rendered out it could then be altered in After Effects to ensure that the reflection is perfect for the animation.

The last pass that I added in was the occlusion pass is about self shadowing, and creates dark areas where objects are close together. Even though it only creates a small effect, it is still worth putting in as when all put together it does create a nice effect. The area where we added occlusion onto was the table, cube and place mat, and when rendering we must also make them.

When we had finished this we rendered it out and took it into After Effects to enable it too all be added together along with a pre-made backdrop that would enable the rest of the scene to be in colour. At this stage we had a quick play around with the settings before rendering out the final thing as a H264 QuickTime file.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdnp0q2BXPc