Evaluation: Roles - 3D Camera Man/Renderer

3D Camera Man/Renderer:

Originally I had only planned to be a helping hand in the 3D camera job. As time went on in the project Me and Ian became the main two 3D Camera people as two of the original 3D team members tasked to that Job dropped off. Ian had Scene 1 and 2 and I had Scene 3 and 4.

To be successful in the 3D camera field I had to makes sure that I labeled my shots correctly, Referenced the Storyboard PDF at all times and if a shot had movement, I had to make sure that I rendered the right amount of keyframes.

Originally I had intended to use The Render Farm (Deadline Monitor) to render Blender shots, which for a time did work. I could use the power of multiple computers to render one shot. However during the renders of multiple frames for one shot I noticed a little problem with weird lighting artifacts. I'm not sure if it was a graphics card error or a render farm error but I decided because Eevee renders are not very resource intensive that I would render shot on one computer straight from Blender. The problem didn't show up again so I wonder if the Deadline Monitor isn't Optimized with Blender correctly.

I think that it was quite useful for me to be in the 3D Camera job as it made me understand the importance of Camera rules and how shots are set out. it also gave me incite on how I will work on my personal project next semester as I would like to do another 2D/3D animation.

So how we did 2D/3D in this project was slightly messy at times. Mainly because of how we time managed. Sometimes a 2d animation would be complete before a 3D shot was even set up. Other times, although this happened not too much a 3D shot would be completed, then that animation would be completed, and then somehow when we transferred it all into After Effects the 3D and 2d would not line up correctly.

If I were to do it again I would make sure a grey box animatic with certain props that are important to the shot are made ASAP, all screenshots with camera angles are exported before 2D animation. Moving 3D set pieces would have to also be made during this time. Then while the 2D animators are working the 3D artist would then work on adding details to the set and hopefully both 2D and 3D would be finished at the same time.

OR I would do all of the 3d first then finalise all of the Animation to the final set, but i think this was is only doable when its a small group or by yourself.