Chapter 14: Rendering and Compositing Your Scene Maya 2014 Essentials Chapter 14: Rendering and Compositing Your Scene

Maya topics covered in this chapter include the following: Making 2D Images Out of 3D Scenes Performing Compositing 2

Creating Final Images 2D scenes created from 3D environment Even stereoscopic movies use two 2D renders Although you’ve been working in a 3D environment, eventually you have to output your work as 2D images. Even 3D stereoscopic movies use two sets of 2D images per frame to achieve the 3D effect. This section takes you through preparing for and rendering your final frames. 3 3

Smoothing Your Model Last step before rendering Mesh>Smooth>Option box Division levels: 2 Throughout producing your shot, you’ve been working with a low-polygon model. Before you do your final render, you want to smooth out the character so it looks nice and rounded: 4 4

Setting Render Preferences Maya Software render Common tab, Maya Software tab Before you render your scene, you need to check your render settings to make sure the frames you get are usable, the right size, and the right format. The name#.ext choice uses the name you selected, the frame number, and the extension of the filename. Frame padding is the number of digits in the frame number and should always be the same as the number of digits in the last frame of your scene. 5 5

Running a Batch Render Render individual frames Rendered frames in Images subdirectory When rendering, you always want to render individual frames, not a movie file. If problems occur during a render, and you’re rendering individual frames, you will only have to re-render a few frames. If you render to a movie file and run into a problem, you have to re-render the entire scene. 6 6

Compositing Process of creating movie file from rendered frames Many different tools can be used to composite: Quick Time Pro 7 MPEG Streamclip Fcheck (Mac version); comes w/Maya Composite; comes w/Maya After Effects Final Cut Pro Premiere Generally speaking, compositing refers to taking individually rendered scene elements and combining them into a finished image. For our purposes, compositing means taking individual rendered frames and turning them into a movie file. 7 7

Compositing Basic process: Load image sequence (frames) Test playback, check for errors Render final movie file H.264 compression best for file size, quality 8 8