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And everything still in stereo
Once all the shots had been finalised in terms of look and approved by the client, it was time for the stereo processing. A script was used for this, which gave the lighting/shading artists the CG versions used for each shot in a text file. It often happened, for example, that the rendered background had a different version than the main characters, which in turn often had a different version than other characters. This meant that nobody had to laboriously look through all the nuke setups. Afterwards, every shot of the film had to be run through a stereo check again and the left and right images had to be shifted and cropped slightly in the compositing. Stereographer Tim Mendler supplied the corresponding nuke scripts with the correction nodes. With a script created by our compositing intern Oliver Kurrle, the correct correction script could be loaded for each shot and the artists only had to insert it in the right place in the node tree and render the final images.
Communication with each other
Many different companies mean many different ways of communicating with each other. In the case of “Richard the Stork”, it was decided to use Shotgun for general project communication. This gave the directors the opportunity to view the progress of editing and to comment directly on previews. The companies were also able to see the current processing status at all times and thus find out, for example, when new animations would be delivered so that the lighting/shading could begin. Production Coordinator Andrej Löbel had a lot to do with data exchange. This is because the workstation network at Rise is physically separated from the Internet. This meant that it was not possible to simply upload a few previews quickly. A separate Shotgun workstation was available for this purpose, to which the data had to be copied each time via USB hard drive and uploaded to Shotgun. An effort that could not be avoided due to the security requirements that had to be met for other projects. Nevertheless, regular Skype conferences with the art director and directors as well as meetings on location were necessary to discuss all the details.
In the end
This film was Rise’s first real animated film. Accordingly, many adjustments had to be made to the pipeline and the daily workflows during the project. The co-operation between the companies involved was also constantly developed during the production period. In retrospect, some things will be solved differently for future projects in order to process the tasks even more efficiently. Others have already grown as a result of the experience gained.
More about Rise at: www.risefx.com
