Keying and CG Character Comp Test

Keying

I have begun keying the character in some shots.

I began with Keylight and isolated separate areas, such as hair and body, and then merged them back together.

It was getting a little messy, and so I began again with IBK. Despite not having shot the blank green screen I was able to create a very smooth and consistent background using the IBK Colour node.

After tinkering with this process, I found it much more comfortable to work with. I tweaked the darks and lights for some time. Then using background luminance and chroma it gives the colours of the rendered background (or Constant in the meantime).

I also had to switch on 'autolevels' to pinch the whites in more and the 'luminance match' which needed the 'screen range' pulled down.

There were artefacts in the key, so it appeared that the red weight was too low, so this was pulled up to a value higher than 1.

For a better outline, I have premultiplied the key, then unpremultiplied it to get rid of the black outline, eroded the line, then blurred the edge (with a brightening effect.)

Lighting

When I rendered out the roughly keyed footage, I took it into Maya to match up the lighting. It was all very dark, so I created an area light with a warm colour to match the footage as much as possible.

Here is a test render:

After the test composite, this is what I have:

I have used light wrap, a glow and a glint (rotated 90 degrees) which really helps to tie the character into the scene using the lighting here. Of course along with a series of colour corrections and composited elements.

I have chosen to move the camera slightly to the right as the character leans forward.

Shader Development

I have been working on the textures, shaders (mental ray mia material x presets and values) and the UVs.

Here is a comp test:

The next step, after completion of this, is the lighting and render setup (using passes and layers to aid lighting in the comp to create the best depth and light fog effects) and the final camera positions and animations...

Different lighting idea:

Doorway Lighting Test

I have tested some of the lighting for the doorway of the factory. This needs good spill light.

I wasn't sure how I was going to go about this. I am still not totally 100%, however after speaking to Julian Laing it was suggested to use an ambient light in the doorframe and a spotlight shining in. The spotlight didn't work. But, I opted for using the bounce light with a directional light off of a plane (for now.)

Here is how it looks at the moment: