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Rendering an Interior Environment Using Maya, EXR and Compositing in Nuke

The goal of this project is to render a 2 shots short film showing the interior of a modern style house. Here you can see a post‑produced version of the short film:

The solution I'm developing consists of:

Modeling the interior, including furniture
Rigging and animating the cameras
Lighting and texturing
Simulating groom and particles, before
Rendering and compositing.

I'm adding value to this project by showing a cinematic version of the apartment, using expensive furniture and interior decoration. I'm achieving all that by using pre‑production, including research and references gathering. If you want to find out more about pre‑production, click on the following links:

Level Layout for Video Game

Drawing a Level layout for a video game as part of the pre production process, using CAD floor plans and elevations and blocking out the level in 3D.

Character Sheet for Video Game

Character sheet example from a video game project, including silhouettes, poses, expressions, clothes and gear, variations, turnaround and 3D block out.

The specific tasks for rendering these 2 shots consist of:

Pre-production Lighting Texturing Visual Effects Compositing

Pre-production

Storyboards and animatics:

And concept art for references on visual development and textures:

I'm rendering the scenes using Mental Ray. That means:

I'm measuring my set in centimeters
Exporting color buffers in EXR format, to
Composite later in Nuke.

If you want to know more about rendering as workflow, click on these case study links:

Compositing Short Film

Compositing short film using Nuke by rendering EXR and grouping background, character, volumetric lights, simulations and optical effects.

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.

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.

Lighting

I'm lighting using a High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) and adding 2 spotlights to get sharper shadows and more contrast:

Note that I'm filling in dark areas with the smaller spotlight. This is what the lighted meshes look like without textures:

Lighting without textures — Testing lighting without textures.

Texturing

I'm using the standard architecture materials from Mental Ray (MIA), and opening UVW only where I'm adding hand painted textures. There are a couple of other texture details worth to notice, like: