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Creation
of a shot. Texturing
Spending
time in a story saves up work.
Letīs do it step by step. First
of all, weīll do balance of
which elements will appear on
the shot. I think a good way
to begin is to define the position
of the camera, the elements
that go in and out of its field
of vision and the distance from
them to the camera. When the
project gets more complicated
with the construction of several
shots, a good method to be organized
is to draw a story board. The
storyboard gives us the advantage
of having a sketch of all the
work that is going to be done.
In this case itīs not necessary
as we are dealing with only
a shot, but it would be convenient
to draw a sketch of it, even
if itīs just mental. One of
the main reasons of having a
sketch before doing anything
is to know what exactly we are
facing, I mean which things
have to be created and which
not. This is very important
at work as that way we avoid
creating elements or textures
that are too detailed that afterwards
are not going to be appreciated
because of the motion blur,
depth of field or simply because
of directing reasons (it even
gives the chance to reach an
agreement when the result depends
on several people). Because
of all that, is good to take
a pencil and a sheet and spend
a few minutes to decide roughly
which is going to be the initial
point to develop.
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Composition
or photography of the shot. Once
we have the sketch of the shot,
even if itīs only in our mind,
itīs time to bring it to the screen.
Itīs at this moment when weīll
determine the composition or photography
of our shot, by the placing, in
our case, of the character in
first term and the orb and columns
of the background. There are some
rules that make a composition
effective and one that I often
take in account is that normally
we begin to examine an image from
left to right. Another important
rule is not to place the main
element of the shot in the center
of the composition.
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In
my opinion, this composition,
even without being too complicated,
is effective. Our sight goes from
the left and come across the vertical
and impacting figure of our character,
to go on towards the right and
relax with the orb and the blocks
that form the background, that
contain more horizontal lines
on its shape. It is very useful
to allow the software show us
the resolution gate and the safe
action frame of the camera, so
we can decide in a precise way
which are the margins of our shot.
(In maya we find it in Panel ->
View -> Camera Settings) |
Lighting
is very important Once we are
more or less satisfied with the
composition of the elements, it
would be good to do a study of
the light . This is a fundamental
step, because by it we define
which is going to be the motif
of our shot. Personally, I have
always taken into account that
lights have the quality of modeling
our environment, that's why I
think that not paying attention
to this step could decrease the
aesthetic quality of the result.
For example, in this case, the
model was done in a very limited
time, and was mission of light
in that moment, and textures after
that, to give it more consistence.
With the lightning study is decided,
among other things, the points
of the composition from where
light will flow and hit the objects
giving dramatism and volume, hardness
of the shadows of my scene or
which objects will shine themselves
taking protagonism or weight on
the composition. As the process
goes on the result can de depured.
The color is defined partially
throw this step and it's a very
important factor at the time of,
for example, giving depth to the
scene. There is a rule that works
visually well when we establish
the color theme; it consists on
using hot colors at closer distances
and cold ones further; it's just
a rule but its orientative when
we're producing our shot .
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I
chose, at that moment, a more
or less classical lighting, using
three points of light: a main
one (at right), a fill one and
a backlight. As I had my character
clearly separated of the background,
I decided to use advantage of
that situation by establishing
by hierarchies, lighting for the
background with its own set of
lights, and another for the character.
A technical advice : Facing the
light study in first place makes
it less complicated later. The
fact of having all the elements
of the scene under a neutral color,
such as gray, make light and its
color take protagonism they demand
at this point. Also, lightning
the scene with coherent intensities
from the beginning allow to avoid
problems later; I mean, with a
so open software as Maya, the
range of different results that
can be obtained is very wide,
that's why constraining the values
of some determining attributes
such as light, makes the elements
depending on light be under more
control
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Working
with layers : Separating our scene
in different layers and joining
them together with a digital composition
software has huge advantages,
such as fine tune in separated
parts the elements of the scene
to get them integrated and look
for the desired look. Or having
everything modulated so we can
change anything if the client
requires (in my case the glow
of the orb), so we have not to
render the other layers again.
Organizing a work in layers is
fundamental if the look is complicated,
as the 3d softwares don't allow
many types of actions with objects
; for example, layer transfer
modes.
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