This week we focused on CGI compositing, specifically the titular machine this project has been named after. The machine was already set up in its EXR to match the movements of the scene it was placed in perfectly so matching it was not our concern. Instead our concern was compositing via grading, color matching and lighting. The lesson went over using the multiple passes, tips and techniques on color grading and a focus on understanding that where you take your grades from is important. A single shot has multiple lighting conditions.
As an example in our project the front room is brighter than the back. So if you graded the machine based on the front room then the machine would look out of place as it doesn’t match the lighting conditions of its actual setting in the scene.
To encorporate my work into the scene provided with us I exported my own clean plate and in addition to my clean plate I exported my rotowork as its own layer. By layering these I was able to make it that the machine appeared behind the wall.
That being said it taught me something quite valuable that I was missing. Breaking up my work into small chunks. I had issues previously in my roto because of the fact that as I struggled to do it all in one scene and so the roto would take the uncleaned plate and that would mean to achieve the final look I had to shift elements around in 3D space when I shouldn’t have needed to. Instead I should focus on completing scenes step by step. I should have, after cleaning the plate, exported a version to then serve as the roto plate. In future I will do my best to keep things simple and layered.
In addition to what had already been done for the scene we were tasked to add to it. As I thought it would be useful to know what the machine does to create a story around it to influence the scene I had asked about it. There was no such purpose to it so rather than come up with one I decided to create a scene around keeping it vague. So far I have added a bloodstained graffiti begging no one to turn it off and created a poster in the scene. I still need to add more but I am thinking on what further additions I can make.