Digital effects and rendering for feature film

• Main Author: Chua, Boon Eng
• Other Authors: Seah Hock Soon
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/66513
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Since the early 1880s, the use of visual effect has been apparent. It is to create something that is normally impossible or too expensive to recreate and film. This project objective is to leverage on an actual film to allow the better understanding of the visual effect workflow by working on the looks development of the visual effect and to better understand and optimize the rendering pipeline using the render farm. All work done will also be used in the actual film “Heavens: The Boy and His Robot”. Some of the key findings from this project include the better understanding and improving efficiency of the render farm by innovatively schedule the jobs sent. Through this, more reviews can be made thus generating more tasks for the render farm to continue operating. Optimizing render can also be done through the understanding of the engine itself. By reducing the overall quality of the scene and improving the quality of the objects being rendered using parameters like stochastic transparency and pixel samples, optimization can be achieved. In addition, this project also touches on the method to render different passes like the zdepth through the use of DEEP map and compositing or world position normal passes as well as the way to better render them. Lastly, by utilizing tools like time shift and understanding the setup and digital assets created by another student, looks development on volume and particles was done in this project. Effects were controlled using certain algorithm devised and adding a time and decaying factor to smooth the effect. In conclusion, a total of 10 shots with different passes were done. Some of the future recommendation includes the experimentation of distributed rendering as well as scripts to further automate tasks that are reparative in rendering and reviews.