The Director’s Vision
Maybe it’s Spielberg or maybe it’s you, but someone has the vision for the shot, and it’s up to you to understand it and produce it with computer graphics imagery. This is the goal, and without an understanding of that, the most beautifully lit scene may not achieve the result requested. Developing new techniques and coming up with amazing new looks is great, but creating an image showing off brightly lit, perfect reflection maps, brings few plaudits if the director asks for a dull, unobtrusive CG element.

So how do you know what the director’s vision is and how to obtain it? Many of the answers lie in the meetings that take place at the beginning of a project. With a large film project, these meetings occur long before the TD ever sees a shot, as the director, scriptwriters and studios work to get a project into production. With ISF, however, the process was quite different. Due to the collaborative nature of the project, we each had input at the beginning and all through the production on how the scenes would look and for the ultimate vision for the project. Each of us played, in part, the role of director and shaped the vision for the project. This process offers the opportunity for each person involved in the production pipeline to offer input on not only creative concepts, but also optimization. As the specific portions of the story were discussed, each member of the team was able to offer ideas and suggestions on what was possible, what might help make things move more smoothly and what would be unlikely given the time and the resources. In terms of lighting and compositing, it was important for me to point out when elements would be required and in what format they would need to be created. Directing by committee takes a tremendous amount of communication and willingness to compromise, but, in the end, the result has been a rewarding experience.

Setting Up the Lights
Armed with a clear visual understanding of the shots intent, it’s time to add the lights and make it look beautiful. The shot begins with analysis of both the background plate and the online reference to determine where the initial lights are placed. If the scene is completely digital, as the shots in this chapter are, then all elements necessary to render the scene may be in one 3D scene. Depending on the complexity of the elements, scenes are split up for easier management, and either combined during the rendering process or afterward in the compositing stage.

[Figure 3] Top view (left) and side view (right) of the scene for shot SF-02.

To understand the scene, it is helpful to view it from several different angles, in addition to the scene’s camera. A top view and a side view offer a feel for the scale of the scene, how far away to place the lights, and how the character relates in 3D space to the set (see Figure 3). The shot here is SF-02, which is a close-up of the character yawning. The camera for this scene is the highlighted green camera. The other cameras represent views from other scenes. The view from the camera shows exactly how the character fits within the picture plane (see Figure 4). At this point, it is helpful to look at several different frames throughout the shot’s length. Creating a quick, hardware-rendered flipbook (see Maya’s manual entries for playblast) provides reference showing the character movement as the shot plays through its frame count. Take note of which character parts stay in frame, which parts may enter or leave frame, and where the eye is drawn by the motion throughout the scene. The character’s animation and framing work together with the lighting to create the visual impact agreed upon when establishing the vision for the project.