Test lighting effect for final title sequence

I've been researching ideas for the final title sequence of Thaw...

Rather than have a 'black' backplate, or something scenic or too recognisable, I have chosen an abstract theme, that plays on light.

Below is a very quick simple test shot, using an abstract image of dark and light, with After Effects CC Light Rays animated across it.

The wording for the titles will be incorporated into this....

After Effects CC Light Rays

Light ray tests in After Effects, using a jpeg still of shot_18 and applying After Effects CC Light Rays Effects

Maya water blobs - Thaw penultimate shot

Final set up and adjustments to the water shader for the penultimate shot...

Panels below show the perspective space, water droplets and rendered images...

Maya water shader, exr render and melting ice men

   Shot 13:
A quick render in Nuke - just the exr multi-pass images, with no adjustment to passes. This gives a good indication of how the CG textures, animation and melting ice are looking

                       

shot 11. Maya icemen and tree

 
This is a simple comp, with no adjustments to any render passes...I've created a quick comp, for now, and regularly update my Previs, so I can see where I may need a couple of extra shots, or edits
Maya 3D model tree and icemen, plus timelapse footage

                  

Soft select vertices - Maya

Perspective view showing soft select mode and keyframes for vertices...

Shot_14

Maya render tests, tree texture and melting ice by animating vertices

Shot_13 showing the melted ice men. I created a simple polygon plane and applied a mia_material_x_passes water shader to it, and animated the vertices on the soft select option, and the ice men move through a combination of a rig, plus lattice deformers and again, moving the vertices in soft select mode....

Below left: Perspective view

Below Right and main image: Render showing tree geometry with a 2K texture map and lighting....this render took approx 30 mins, so I will double check all the settings before it gets sent to the render farm....

Ice Man - exr files, output of the Render Farm

Test render of the final shot of the iceman in a water droplet....I've animated him today and will create a close up of his face, possibly using some of the blend shapes that I created a few months ago, to create a final closing shot...

Of my 18 shots, I have four left to put through the render farm...

Below are some screen shots of the actual rendered frames (multi pass) exr files, which have been tested in Nuke....

Test render and new framing for shot_13, ready for tilt shift and blur in Nuke

Shot set up for shot_13

Having played with the tilt shift effect in Nuke yesterday, I've adjusted the camera angle for the final shot of the icemen.

The preceeding shot is an extreme close up of Kerry's eyes, which leads nicely into this closeup. I am going to use the tilt-shift on the ice man to the far left and a blur on the background; so that Kerry's eyes and the man ice man on the right are in focus....

Test render at 25% (6.06 mins per frame to render).

Next step to do the final animation on these melting guys...

Render check list and Nuke

One to one tutorial session with Sean, using Nuke to start compositing.

Below (top): Nuke UI, with render passes (Camera Depth, Diffuse, Indirect, Refraction, Reflection, Specular) and merge nodes.

The green rectangle, is a 'background' node, which allows for the node graph (equivalent of the layer system in After Effects) to be organised clearly. In this case, all nodes relating to the passes are on a green background; orange = CG elements; pink = green screen footage. . 

We omitted the Ambient Occlusion pass, as the tree geometry has only a bump map, rather than a normal map, and the ice men material shader doesn't require accentuation of shadows.

 My check list for render, which includes all settings for render, render layers, render passes; and to make sure I've got all texture and sourced images in the correct folder, prior to sending to the render farm over the weekend....
So far, shot 07 is out of the render farm and the quality looks great
In for render this weekend
Shot 05, 11, 11a, 11b