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Compositing a Short Film Using Nuke and EXR Files

The goal of this project is to deliver a post‑produced short film, 1 scene and 1 shot, 1 character in 1 environment, and 1 camera animation. Here you can see the finished post‑production:

The steps I'm following to composite these short film are:

Rendering Compositing background Compositing character Compositing Volumetric lights and optical effects

Rendering

All prior phases are approved, pre‑production is now production (CGI), all files are rendered as EXR and sorted in folders with recognizable, sensible labels, distributed by categories:

Maya is solving all camera animations and render layers, including visual effects (VFX). There are no integrations or match‑moving into any live action plates. The general strategy for this compositing consists of:

Working out elements in 2D
Retouch them from background to foreground, and
Leaving the character for the last phase.

Compositing background

This is the list of RGBA buffers from the MIA (I'm rendering with Mental Ray) in the EXR files. I'm adding and grading after multiplying them in Nuke:

Diffuse Level × Diffuse Raw +
Refraction Level × Refraction Raw +
Reflection Level × Reflection Raw +
Specular Level × Specular Raw +
Translucency Level × Translucency Raw

This is what my background looks like in Node Graph:

Nodegraph background — Background in Nodegraph, including earth, trees and water.

And this is the result in viewer:

Here you can see some of the render passes on water and trees. First, water with and without reflections:

Water reflections — Water with and without reflections.

And trees with and without subsurface scattering (translucency pass in MIA):

This is what the particles on air look like in Node Graph:

Nodegraph particles on air — Particles on air and to protagonist body in Nodegraph.

Nodegraph particles to body — Particles on air and to protagonist body in Nodegraph.

And this is how they look before and after motion blur (Vector Blur) and Depth of Field (ZDefocus):

Particles blur — Particles before and after depth of field and motion blur nodes.

Compositing character

This is Node graph for character:

Nodegraph girl — Nodegraph for Character EXR queues, including body, dress and wings.

Nodegraph dress — Nodegraph for Character EXR queues, including body, dress and wings.

And this is what she looks like in viewer before and after applying subsurface scattering (SSS) in dress, body, hair, and wings:

I'm using 3 SSS MIA buffers on her body (epidermal, subdermal, and backscatter) and a samplerInfo node from Maya for masking:

Nodegraph girl SSS — Nodegraph showing 3 SSS passes and 1 mask from samplerInfo.

Compositing volumetric lights and optical effects

The last step in this composite are the volumes and volumetric lights, glows, flares and lens distortion. This is what they look like in Node Graph:

Nodegraph volumetric lights — Volumetric lights and optical effects in Nodegraph.

Nodegraph optical effects — Volumetric lights and optical effects in Nodegraph.

And these are some samples from viewer:

Here you can see the whole compositing process at a glance:

If you want to know more about rendering assets, visit the following case studies:

Texturing Character

Texturing a character for render time by opening UVW in Maya, hand painting and extracting PBR textures in Substance Designer/Painter, rendering EXR.

Rendering Interior Env.

Rendering an interior environment through animatics and concept, HDRI lighting, texturing, simulating VFX with Maya Nucleus, rendering EXR, Nuke comp.

Texturing Buildings

Texturing buildings for real time environment, modeling and UVW in 3DS Max, hand painting textures, applying to materials.

Rendering Prop

Rendering and Compositing a Prop Asset Skateboard Bag, Using Maya, ZBrush, Mental Ray, EXR, and Nuke.

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