Finishing a Car Animation Render in Maya and Composite
In this tutorial, we'll learn how to take a basic render scene and add textures, render it, and composite it into a finished shot.
What you'll learn
In this tutorial, we'll learn how to take a basic render scene and add textures, render it, and composite it into a finished shot. We'll be covering all the steps needed to take a plain render and make it better. We'll begin this project by creating a procedural dirt shader for our ground cover. Then we'll hop into Photoshop to create a photographic texture for our road. We'll then add some detail using more procedural textures to break up the edges of the road and create a broken-concrete feel. From there, we will set up a particle system for our tires and create render layers and passes. Finally, we will composite our shot using the Maya Precomp feature and Maya Composite. We'll learn how to color correct our passes, add various blurs, and composite everything together into an integrated shot.
Table of contents
- Creating the Dirt Shader with Brownian and Fractal Textures 8m
- Adding a Displacement to Break up the Sharp Edges 4m
- Building the Road Color by Editing Photos Together 8m
- Cropping the Photograph to Change Perspective 10m
- Adding Procedural Noise by Multiplying a Rock Texture 11m
- Cracking the Road with a Procedural Granite Transparency 6m
- Limiting the Crack Effect to Only the Edges with a Ramp 4m
- Adding Displacements and Finishing Our Road and Tar Layer 4m
- Adding Particles to Our Scene to Create Burning Tire Smoke 7m
- Shading Our Particles and Attaching Them to the Car 9m
- Setting up Render Layers and Passes and Rendering Our Scene 6m
- Plugging the Particle Opacity into Our Shader and Last-minute Tweaks 9m
- Using Maya Precomps to Speed up Our Compositing Workflow 7m
- Cleaning up Our Composite and Adding in Our Background 6m
- Color-correcting and Blurring Our Particles for a More Cloudy Look 5m
- Color-correcting Our Entire Composition and Background to Match 8m
- Using Our FG Matte and a Garbage Mask to Reduce the Diffuse Contribution 8m
- Creating Geometry and Setting up the Tessellation for the Tire Streaks 8m
- Compositing the Tire Streaks Back into Our Geometry 14m
- Adding Motion Blur and a Depth-of-field Blur to Our Scene 13m
- Adding Effects like Glow and Making Small Tweaks Around the Composition 10m
- Rendering Our Final Sequence 3m
About the author
Along with creating and recording training, he also used to manage the support team and work closely with the production development team at Digital-Tutors, now a Pluralsight company. He began his career working freelance and quickly realized that he wanted to find a company where he could use his talents to help people succeed in the CG industry. Chris has likely watched more Pluralsight creative training than anyone on the planet, and its evidenced by his Einstein-sized brain and encyclopedic... more