Compositing

Following completion of the model and then animating, the asset was given a physical sun and sky, ambient lighting using Mental Ray and then rendered out in PNG form ready for compositing within Nuke.

Therefore footage was gathered,similar to that of the scene in the concept art previously created in the preproduction stages and then imported into Nuke, and the motion of the table within the shot was tracked using the right hand corner and highlight on edge of the table- this meant the tentacle would stay laying against the table and mirror the movement.

The footage was then joined by the PNG render sequence of the tentacle and its shadow from Maya and merged using the merge node – the model was accompanied by an alpha channel which enabled easier implementing in Nuke as no masking was needed and the merge node combined all the footage into one.

Following this, nodes such as the ‘color grade’, ‘premult’ and ‘transform’ nodes were added to make the images work fluidly together along for example: matching the color of the tentacle with the reflection of the computers lighting.

Once the scene itself had been composited, the ‘blur’ node was added to the background of the image, thus making the tentacle on the table the main focal point. This was then exported however, after review of the final scene the tentacle moved too fast which didn’t illustrate the realism that was intended and therefore the scene was then taken into AfterEffects and the shot was slowed down to a more suitable speed.