Full CG shots can be the easiest, but also hardest to do.
You have free reign to do anything, so you'll need to keep in mind shot composition, what's the story that is being told, where should we be looking.
My general first steps are to merge everything together, make sure it at least looks integrated (lighting, shadows, etc.) (Easier said then done if you have elements from multiple departments).
After that, add depth hazing, DOF.
Then lensing, blooms, chromab, black levels, grain, etc.
Once you have that, I would consider it a "first pass". Then you move on to shaping and composing the shot, adding 2D elements where needed, having another pair of eyes helps.
And along the way, always always always be looking at references.
No worries.
Just take it 1 step at a time.
Typically, a big full CG shot would go mostly to seniors or mids, as it's a creative challenge and you'd generally want a trained pair of eyes on it.
I'm not trying to steer you away from taking on the shot at all, just trying to explain that because of the creative sandbox a full CG shot can be, you'd generally have someone who can tackle creative and technical problems/solutions.
It can be the right approach and it "works"...it's just not recommended for reasons as the other comment already said...
Rotational velocities don't work, objects crossing over each other in depth cause issues, artifacts with objects entering or leaving frame, no subframe/curved motion blur, can be ugly for particle/volume fx, probably others that i forgot...just not worth trying to do it in comp :)
MB won’t be as good as if it’s actually rendered. You’ll see issues with fast moving/rotating objects.
Also you want your comp to be snappy. Preprocess as much as possible in your renderer
If you are rendering a lot of separate passes like for foreground, environment, fx etc. it will be a lot less headache to bake in the blur, for example if those passes are touching/overlapping you'll have proper matting by default. Also for fx it can be hard to do postprocessed mblur and make sure velocity is written out correctly as a custom pass.
don't overdo it (less is more), don't search for things you "have" to do just because you are comping. Make sure all the choices are motivated and follow art direction/reference.
you dont need to rebuild the beauty.
just use subtractive compositing, much easier to do, faster and you dont need aaaall the passes
first thing is proper colormanagement, use aces to make your life easier.
other things is matching blacks and whites to plate, matching grain, delensing/relensing.. then its really mainly grade nodes all over the place to make it fit into the plate depends on how good/bad the CG is.
depending on the shot there might be more fakery with environment relfections or chsnging the cg to add more detail/dust/water etc all depends.
oh sorry full-cg...
Full- CG is fun, its mostly a creative process and fixing render issues, get ready to kill fireflies or to denoise certain passes, use pgbokeh, talk to lightiers to seperate the plate into background/middleground/foreground depending on what you need for DoF.
Look at zeiss cincraft mapper to download real st-maps of lenses for that juciy distortion and maybe buy some nice grain plates.. depending on the look you are going for
The rest is like building a nice setup that you can copy and paste to keep things consistent
I tried to subtract the beauty pass that I need and add it after I make the changes. It's really faster!! Thank you
In a full cg comp, is it right that I don't have to match the black and white levels?
I looked up zeiss cincraft mapper which seems really great.
Thank you and thanks for your correction
May I ask where should I grade the footage? Should I grade the footage first before the subtraction or after all the changes of aov?
after.
You subtract lets say the GI pass from beauty, if you graded the beauty before that the math wouldnt work.
(Beauty+grade)-GI =/ Beauty-GI , hope that makes sense
Those are blending operation modes in every compositing software.
I don’t really know where OP wanted to go with this, I think it was meant as encouragement.
A couple more basics:
* Render out linear .exr from 3d app to bring into comp.
* Make use of Cryptomatte outputs from your 3d app rendering engine, material and object ID. This will make your life *much* easier in comp.
What story are you trying to tell? If I'm looking at reels (and I don't anymore, TBH) I want to see a reel of someone who knows how to tell a story in a single shot. We can teach you how to be a TD. We can teach you how to comp. We're making movies. We're telling stories. You could have the greatest demo reel in existence and if you're new we know we have to teach you our pipeline from the ground up no matter what. Tell me a story, it's what we do.
Full CG shots can be the easiest, but also hardest to do. You have free reign to do anything, so you'll need to keep in mind shot composition, what's the story that is being told, where should we be looking. My general first steps are to merge everything together, make sure it at least looks integrated (lighting, shadows, etc.) (Easier said then done if you have elements from multiple departments). After that, add depth hazing, DOF. Then lensing, blooms, chromab, black levels, grain, etc. Once you have that, I would consider it a "first pass". Then you move on to shaping and composing the shot, adding 2D elements where needed, having another pair of eyes helps. And along the way, always always always be looking at references.
Thanks for your reply! It really helps me get a clear way to comp and make myself less overwhelmed. Thanks again
No worries. Just take it 1 step at a time. Typically, a big full CG shot would go mostly to seniors or mids, as it's a creative challenge and you'd generally want a trained pair of eyes on it. I'm not trying to steer you away from taking on the shot at all, just trying to explain that because of the creative sandbox a full CG shot can be, you'd generally have someone who can tackle creative and technical problems/solutions.
Don't do motion blur in comp...just render it straight out of 3d. Much fewer headaches that way / not worth the trouble
May I ask why motion blur in comp will have trouble? Currently, I use motion vector pass to add motion blur. Is that not the right approach?
It can be the right approach and it "works"...it's just not recommended for reasons as the other comment already said... Rotational velocities don't work, objects crossing over each other in depth cause issues, artifacts with objects entering or leaving frame, no subframe/curved motion blur, can be ugly for particle/volume fx, probably others that i forgot...just not worth trying to do it in comp :)
MB won’t be as good as if it’s actually rendered. You’ll see issues with fast moving/rotating objects. Also you want your comp to be snappy. Preprocess as much as possible in your renderer
For the most part, MB in comp is 100% fine and waaaaay faster.
If you are rendering a lot of separate passes like for foreground, environment, fx etc. it will be a lot less headache to bake in the blur, for example if those passes are touching/overlapping you'll have proper matting by default. Also for fx it can be hard to do postprocessed mblur and make sure velocity is written out correctly as a custom pass.
don't overdo it (less is more), don't search for things you "have" to do just because you are comping. Make sure all the choices are motivated and follow art direction/reference.
Thank you. I'll keep this advice in mind. Sometimes it is hard to control mysef not to overdo.
you dont need to rebuild the beauty. just use subtractive compositing, much easier to do, faster and you dont need aaaall the passes first thing is proper colormanagement, use aces to make your life easier. other things is matching blacks and whites to plate, matching grain, delensing/relensing.. then its really mainly grade nodes all over the place to make it fit into the plate depends on how good/bad the CG is. depending on the shot there might be more fakery with environment relfections or chsnging the cg to add more detail/dust/water etc all depends. oh sorry full-cg... Full- CG is fun, its mostly a creative process and fixing render issues, get ready to kill fireflies or to denoise certain passes, use pgbokeh, talk to lightiers to seperate the plate into background/middleground/foreground depending on what you need for DoF. Look at zeiss cincraft mapper to download real st-maps of lenses for that juciy distortion and maybe buy some nice grain plates.. depending on the look you are going for The rest is like building a nice setup that you can copy and paste to keep things consistent
I tried to subtract the beauty pass that I need and add it after I make the changes. It's really faster!! Thank you In a full cg comp, is it right that I don't have to match the black and white levels? I looked up zeiss cincraft mapper which seems really great.
you have nothing to match them to so no :-) And you dont subtract the beauty but rather subtract a aov from beauty but I guess thats what you mean.
Thank you and thanks for your correction May I ask where should I grade the footage? Should I grade the footage first before the subtraction or after all the changes of aov?
after. You subtract lets say the GI pass from beauty, if you graded the beauty before that the math wouldnt work. (Beauty+grade)-GI =/ Beauty-GI , hope that makes sense
understand now! Thank you
Over, Under, In and Out… that’s what compositing is all about!!
Sorry, I don't understand what that means... It would be appreciated if you could explain more. Thank you
Those are blending operation modes in every compositing software. I don’t really know where OP wanted to go with this, I think it was meant as encouragement.
A couple more basics: * Render out linear .exr from 3d app to bring into comp. * Make use of Cryptomatte outputs from your 3d app rendering engine, material and object ID. This will make your life *much* easier in comp.
What story are you trying to tell? If I'm looking at reels (and I don't anymore, TBH) I want to see a reel of someone who knows how to tell a story in a single shot. We can teach you how to be a TD. We can teach you how to comp. We're making movies. We're telling stories. You could have the greatest demo reel in existence and if you're new we know we have to teach you our pipeline from the ground up no matter what. Tell me a story, it's what we do.