2. Save this image as beautypass.tif. We are using Tif files because of their ability to contain alpha channels and their lack of compression. Now lets render out a Global Illumination Pass so that we can compostie in the brightening effects of bounced light.
2. Save this image as beautypass.tif. We are using Tif files because of their ability to contain alpha channels and their lack of compression. Now lets render out a Global Illumination Pass so that we can compostie in the brightening effects of bounced light.
3. open up the channel box/layer editor and in the layer editor section, switch from display layers to render layers.
4. Select all of the objects in the scene (except the lights) and click the "create new layer and assign selected objects" button in the render layers menu (see the image below). This establishes a master layer which has everything in the scene, and a new layer called "layer 1" which has just our selected objects. We are not including the lights because we jsut want to sample the effects of bounced light, not direct light.

Global Illumination Pass:

5. right click on the layer 1 to rename it and set it's layer attributes. Rename this layer GI and at the bottom of the window, uncheck all render passs options excepet Global Illumination in the mental ray rollout as seen below.

5b. Open the Render Settings window and go to the mental ray tab. Right click on the words "Global Illumination" and choose "Create Layer Override" from the marking menu. Now click the checkbox next to Global Illumination once the word is shown in a red colored font. Do the same thing for "Final Gather".

6. Now perform a render in the render view of the same frame from camera 1 and save this as an image called GI.tif. It should look like the image below:

7. Now lets create an ambient occlusion pass. To do this, again select all of the objects that were included i nthe GI pass:

Ambient Occlusion Pass:

8. make a new render layer as before and rename it AO. In the attributes, turn off all the check boxes, and then at the atop of the attribute editor, under the Presets button, select Occlusion (as seen below left). This will create a new surface shader texture as a material overide, assigning it to all objects in the scene that are in that layer only (see below right).

9. The out color that shader has been mapped to an ambient occlusion mental ray texture node automatically. Alter its settins so that the quality is bosted as (as seen in the image below left). Re-render from camera 1 (see below right). We have a problem here. The glass and flames would not occlude light, they are transparent. To stencil these out of the scene, we must make some alterations.

10. First, lets return to the the AO layer attributes and remove the shader overide by breaking the connection as seen in this image:

The Use Background Material:

11. Next, we will open the hypershade, chose that surface shader, and manually apply it to all objects visible in the AO layer.
12. To stencil out the glass and flames, we will create and apply a "use background." Create one now and trn off it's reflectivity attributes as seen below. Apply this to the vase and the two flames.

13. re-render. We now have a perfect AO pass. Save this as AO.tiff.

14. we now just need2 more layers. First, lets create a layer that we can use to manually add a bit of glow to the flames. Select only the two flames and again create new render layer, name it flames, and set its as a Beauty pass.

Additional Passes-Glow :

15. render, and save the file as flames.tif.

Additional Passes not used for this demo

Fill Light Pass:

 

Key Light Pass:

Accent Light Pass:

Diffuse Pass:

Shadow Pass:

16. Lastly in maya, lets create a specular layer which will allow us to comp subtle surface glow. Select ALL OBJECTS AND LIGHTS and make a new render layer called Specular. Set it's pass options to specular only.

Specular Pass:

17. Render again, save this image as specular.tif. Save your .ma file and quit maya.

Compositing your Render In Photoshop and After Effects-

18. We are now going to composite these layers in after effects. make a new 640x480 composition under Composition/New Composition.
19. Import your images each with the alpha setting set to "straight-unmatted", except for the flames layer which should use ignore.

20. Drag the beauty image onto the source name column in the comp1.timeline first placeing the other layers on top of it from bottom up in the order you see in this image (below left).
21. Under the Layers/Transfer Mode window, set: GI to ADD, AO to Multiply, Specular to ADD, and Flames to ADD. Your comp should now look like this:

 

Tweaking your render in post, "Light-Bloom"-
22. Next, lets blur the flame layer to add the look of an outer glow. Select the flame layer and go to Effect/blur+shadow/Gaussian Blur and set the blurriness to 5-15.

23. Now lets add some light bloom to the image courtesy of that specular layer. First lets blow out the highlights. I am going to go hog-crazy on this one, but you can make your's more subtle. Effects/adjust/levels

24. Then lets blur the results with another gaussian blur, for that warm, romantic look. This is Fabio's coffee table apparently.

25. After tweaking the levels of my image as a whole, I will next export a still image by: Composition/save frame as/file, set the "output mode" to jpg, tif or psd, and the "output to" as wherever you want to save the image with whatever name. And we are done!

 

Project 2.5: Rendering a Still Life in Passes

You will be provded with fully textured version of this scene. It will be your job to break it up into render passes as seen in the demonstration above, and composite them in after effects. You will modify the render to your liking (see examples below) and turn in images for each of the passes, plus the final composite for week 8.

Image by Ravi Giraputra Image by Diane Hyppolite
Image by Jason MacHardy Image by Christopher Lewis

Image by Jon Bolster Image by Anthony Aguilar

Image by Chris StewartImage by Matt McGee

Image by Dris Danillo Image by Brian Trowbridge

Image by Alan Vincenzi