After Effects is a powerful program that has a multitude of uses. Our main focus with After Effects will be for the purpose of color correcting and compositing our Maya rendered shots. While there are many tools at our disposal, we will be focusing on the following:
Blend Modes: This layer blending feature works exactly like it does in Photoshop. Depending on the blend mode you use, it will create many different effects between the layers that are being blended. This is a very important tool because almost all our layers will be put together with some sort of blend mode.
Effects: Like Photoshop, there are many effects that can be applied to all your layers. The ones to pay attention to are the ones for color correction such as Levels, Colors, Hue Satuation, etc.. A lot of times, it might be easier and more cost effective to fix color issues in After Effects than it is to do so within Maya.
For this assignment, you will be importing in 5 seperate layers and creating 2 compositions. When importing in your renders, make sure the Premultiplied option is selected and then rename the sequence in After Effects accordingly. To rename a render sequence, click on it in After Effects with your mouse, and then press Enter.
To create a new composition go to Composition > New Composition. Give it a name, set the width to 854 and the height to 480. Pixel Aspect Ratio should be Square Pixels. Framerate should be 30 Frames per Second. Duration should be set to 4 seconds. You will need two compositions, one for putting all the layers together and the other for creating a bloom effect for the final shot.
One of the best features of After Effects is it's similarities to Photoshop. All the layering options you have in photoshop is also available in After Effects and they work pretty much the same way.
The first layer we'll throw into our composition is the Diffuse Layer. Depending on your needs, you can put special effects to this layer like Level Adjustments, Color Adjustments, Etc. All these options can be accessed through the Effect menu. A Blending Mode or Transparency change shouldn't be needed for this layer since it will be the bottom most layer.
The second layer can be the Occlusion Layer. The Blending Mode on this layer has to be set to Multiply. You can change the blending mode by going to Layer > Blending Mode > Multiply. Any other type of changes such as color and transparency is dependent on your needs for the final look of the shot.
The third layer can be the Cast Shadow Layer. This one can be set up exactly the same way as the Occlusion Layer. Try playing with the transparency to get darker or lighter shadows than you originally set up in maya. You can change the color of your shadow layers by adding a color adjustment effect to the layer. If you want to change the color of your shadows, but they were originally rendered in black and white only (due to lack of colors in the shadow settings in Maya) you'll have to hook it up to a seperate color layer. First, turn your shadow layer's blend mode back to normal. Then create a new solid color by going to Layer > New > Solid. Choose the color that you will want to be your new shadow color. Bring this layer underneath your shadow layer and then set the TrkMat to Alpha Matte.
The fourth layer should be the Specular Layer. The Blending Mode should be Screen. Throwing in a level adjustment to this layer would give you finer control over how much of a specular your objects have or don't have.
The final and top layer needs to be your Luminance Depth Layer. This layer can be used to create a fake fog effect, giving you post control on blurring things out if needed. To set up this layer, you will first have to create a new adjustment layer. Go to Layer > New > Adjustment Layer. Make sure to move this new adjustment layer right beneath the Luminance Depth Layer. Then under TrkMat, set the option for the adjustment layer to Luma Inverted Matt. Now, whatever effect you apply to this adjustment layer will affect the rest of your layers while using the Luminance Depth layer as a guide. Use a Gaussian Blur effect on it to help create a illusion of fog and depth in the background. Also try to experiment with other effects on this layer to see different and cool results.
That should do it for the layering composition. Now we can move on to the next composition where we will be doing a simple bloom effect. The reason we use two compositions is because we want to be able to apply some effects to all the layers at once. If we did that with only one composition, we would have had to apply the bloom effect (or any other effect) to every single layer, rather than all the layers at once. With the second composition open, drag in the first composition twice. With the top layer selected, hook up a Gaussian Blur. Then under modes, set this top layers Blend Mode to Screen. That should do it for an overall bloom effect. Try adjusting the transparency to see what would work best for your shot.
Try some other effects like multiplying a solid color on top of both your layers in the second composition. This is a quick and dirty way of setting up a nice mood for your shot with a simply color.
When you are ready to render the composited scene, you can add the composition to the render cue by going to Composition > Add to Render Queue. You can then set all the properties you need before rendering like format, codec, and resolution. The coolest thing about the render queue is the ability to have multiple shots lined up for rendering, like you would on the Maya render farm. This capability will come into play during the film when there are tons of shots that needs to be composited and rendered.
The final movie render should be in quicktime movie format using the Sorenson 3 codec at the highest possible quality. Stick with the default composition resolution.