Scene Mockup – Pipeline Test

This is a relatively rough version of a final rendered frame. It has been modelled, textured, lit, rendered, comped and graded to a level that is comparable to what I expect to achieve for the final frames. It’s not normally that important to go through this process if you have a pretty good idea how it all needs to be rendered and what you need to do in the comp. Every project is different, and every project I seem to work on has some special dietary requirements that aren’t always obvious until you have tested the rendering pipeline from beginning to end. For the amount of lens effects I hope to use, if perhaps only to experiment with, require a 16bit z-depth and only by going through the full process was I aware of this. Therefore, I have had to implement this into my pipeline. I have tested using TIFF’s, RPF’s, ond OpenEXR’s and due to file size and flexibility I’ve chosen to add OpenEXR into the pipeline. It doesn’t really require any additional setup as, 3ds Max and After Effects now come with OpenEXR support but Photoshop does however require a plugin, which is available to buy from fnord along with some additional plugins for After Effects.

Anyway, this is the kind of look I was aiming for. The challenge was trying to achieve something close to the developed concept artwork I created just after the new year. This particular composition required a different overall colour but it’s definitely in the right direction. Oh, some objects are actually floating, that’s not a bad lighting solution and there’s another iteration of detail to go into the environment yet.