Things Are Not Always As They Seem
OK, I want to talk about layers for a bit. I remember in the good old days of animating in Lightwave 3D, it was customary to have everything happen
in camera. This means that what you saw on the screen in the final shot, all existed in a single Lightwave project and was rendered as is. I knew that the big movies were doing shots in multiple layers, but I never saw the benefit of working that way for myself.
About that time, I saw the movie
Contact on DVD and it contained some of the best extra features I have ever seen. (Here I will try to avoid a long rant about how DVD extras back then were so much better than the pop entertainment foolishness they put out today.) On that DVD I saw exactly how and why to use layers for the benefit of the work. I saw a better way.
Around that same time I started getting into a program called
Adobe After Effects. While working on a game at Westwood Studios, I did my first project which was rendered in layers. I still didn't quite see the benefit.
About the time of my second project, just weeks later, I came across a new software called Aura, which would later become my current tool of choice,
Mirage. As I learned this software, with its realtime feedback, the true benefits to working layers became clear to me. I saw that not only did I not have to render everything in the scene for every frame, things like backgrounds could be rendered only once, but that things like shadows and reflections could be rendered separately and adjusted, blurred, colored, changed over time, you name it! I realized limitless possibilities. On
Understanding Chaos, I employed these tools like this:
In this scene I had Han walking up to a screen which displayed information about the unknown soldiers attacking the base, and I wanted to see his reflection in the screen. Thinking in layers, I rendered a single frame of the background, which I then painted over to get the proper look. The empty screen, however, is actually just a hole. There is nothing there, so I can later put anything I choose behind it.
The screen itself was created in another project file, using a "type on" script for the text to write in. It also had a 3D element of a spinning soldier. That animation was simply placed on a polygon in Lightwave and rendered in the area where the screen should appear. Today this could simply be properly placed in the right position and at the right angle all in Mirage.
I saw no need to render an actual reflection. What I did was simply place a copy of the hallway with Han walking in it behind the hole where the screen was. The original image of the background with a hole for the screen could be used as a "matte" to cut out all the parts that you wouldn't see.
Finally, in a project by himself, I rendered Han walking up the screen. This was only a few frames as he appears only at the end. If I did this in camera, I would have to calculate all those reflections in 3D for each frame of Han approaching. Just too much time wasted.
Finally, when all the elements go together I have complete control over how bright the screen is, how much of the reflection we see, and I can have Han appear at whatever moment looks best on screen, even if it's not perfectly accurate. I could also blur, lighten, darken or in any manner process the reflection or screen however I see fit. I am not stuck with any particular look. If I did it in camera, and decided the reflection should be brighter, I would have to rerender the whole thing!
So that is only the beginning on my work with layers and 2D elements in what I do. There are some things I do differently today because Mirage is far more powerful and I have a graphics tablet to draw with. I will get more into that in future posts.
Comments?
