Here’s the completed scene from Cerebus 3D movie – lit, rendered, color corrected and composited by yours truly. The raw file has been delivered so I decided to have some fun with the soundtrack, suits this scene I think 🙂
Things I did right
- Relit the scene with mostly volume lights and one giant spotlight for main shadows
- Animated key lights and used a camera mapped rim light
- Rendered only needed passes ( beauty, AO, matte pass for the two leads, depth )
- Used cheap 2D motionblur with mentalray legacy shader
- Optimised the scene for rendering ( each was was about 2 minutes @ 720p )
- Color corrected BG and the two leads separately
- Used a very simple particle system for fog
Things I did wrong
- Messed around with complicated fog setup, when KISS was the key
- Didn’t check the reflection on the swords prior to committing render
- Should have rendered another matte for forground objects
- Use mental ray Zdepth pass, instead of the default maya one. Which is not remapped.
- Checked the skeleton shader after tweaking lights etc ( was a bit washed out, translucent )
