I finished Project 1 today. I added and changed up some of the Render Layers, added in some AOVs, and made a second object, mainly to see if Templates I made in Maya and Nuke would work for other shapes and objects.
Render Layers
I split the Occlusion layer in two, making a separate layer for the ground occlusion and occlusion on the sphere. I then needed to create two layers in order to make the complex environment shadow that the ball rolls through the scene.
The two layers are the Prep Shadow and the Environment Shadow. For the Prep layer, all that is needed is the ground plane with the clean plate projected on it from the Render cam. By looking through the key light, create a camera from that view, that will become the KeyLightCamera and where the environment shadow will be projected. Render a single frame from this layer and bring it into PhotoShop.
Here you’ll make a selection using Color Range. Smooth and Feather as needed. Create a new layer, color the selection a pure red. Create another layer underneath and color black. Save as a .tif. Back in Maya, create a new SurfaceShader for the ground plane and object in the Environment Shadow layer. Create a projection from the KeyLightCamera on in the out color with what you painted in PhotoShop. Now you’vr got the environment shadow!
NOTE: When rendering out Layers, turn off Prep Shadow layer, it’s done its job when you have the Environment Shadow layer.
Nuke Template
Below is my final Nuke Script for this project and the result of the Grey Ball and an additional object, a spool of thread. I made the spool to make sure I could use the same render layers in Maya and the same Nuke script to put different objects in the same environment.
