This week, I focused on rendering my shots, cleaning them up in Nuke, and finishing the final edits in Premiere Pro.
Rendering the Shots
I started rendering my shots and had to figure out how to avoid noise while getting high-quality results. Setting up the rendering process had its challenges:
- Render Farm Issues: LCC only has two computers that support GPU rendering, and since Redshift only works with GPUs, I had to constantly monitor the render farm. I used remote access to keep an eye on the renders, but sometimes they would fail, so I’m glad I gave myself extra time to fix these issues.
- Using Multiple Systems: To save time, I split the rendering work between the school’s render farm, my laptop, and other school computers. Some shots had problems in the final renders, so I had to go back, adjust things, and re-render them.
Compositing in Nuke
Once the renders were ready, I imported the EXRs into Nuke for compositing. I created a template to make the process consistent for all the shots:
- Noise Cleanup: Some AOVs had noise in areas like reflections. It wasn’t subsurface scattering or diffuse lighting, but another pass I can’t recall right now. Using Nuke, I cleaned up the noise by roto-mapping and painting over the affected areas.
- Adding Depth with Z-Depth: I used the Z-depth pass to add more depth to several shots. For example, I adjusted the focus on specific elements to make them stand out while blurring the background slightly. This helped make the scenes look more realistic.
- Adding the Sky: For the establishing shot, I added a sky to complete the environment and tie everything together.
- Motion Blur: I applied motion blur to make the movements in the shots look smoother and more realistic.
After cleaning and compositing everything, I exported the shots in TIFF format.
Final Edits in Premiere Pro
In Premiere Pro, I brought everything together:
- Soundtrack Selection: Finding the right soundtrack took a lot of time. I needed something royalty-free and free to use that matched the epic sci-fi feel I was going for. It also had to build tension and anticipation. After a long search, I finally found one that worked perfectly.
- Transitions: I kept the transitions simple, using fades to black to maintain a clean and smooth flow between shots.
- Sound Effects: I added key sound effects, like the sound of an explosion toward the end, to make the scenes more dramatic.