studioGPU

Shot-based vs Scene-based pipelines for the lighter/compositor

If you are a lighter/compositor working with desktop rendering software, then you are used to working in a shot-based pipeline. Shots are set up, animated, lit, and rendered on a single camera move/shot basis. For example, you might light and render a long camera pan of a Cylon Raider traveling through space (I admit I was/am a BSG fan).

For a a typical animation scene (e.g. Cylon Raiders attacking Colonial Vipers against a star backdrop), the standard approach is to break the scene out into multiple shots, then distribute the shots to your lighters for setup and rendering or setup and transfer to a render farm.

A lot can go wrong

A lot can go wrong with a shot-based pipeline - from continuity problems where two different lighters work on shots that cut against each (each having their own "artistic" eye), to different lighters not understanding your shot breakout. In either case, you end up wasting render time twice over (once for the mistake and once to fix it) as well as wasting the time and goodwill of your lighting team.

Even if nothing goes wrong, a significant amount of time and energy gets absorbed when lighters have to go through the pains of recreating light rigs across shots or go through an import/export procedure to get those rigs into several independent scene files.

But because rendering is typically an action discreet from lighting/materials setup, this type of shot-based pipeline with multiple lighters/compositors is necessary.

The scene-based pipeline alternative

But what happens if the technology changes so that you can work in a scene-based pipeline? In other words, what happens when you can use MachStudio Pro, where the animation and lighting you see in the viewport is the same as the final render passes?

In that case the entire workflow changes. The same lighter can work on all of the shots in the scene using a common set of light rigs and render passes. This not only means increased consistency and reduced logistical errors, but it also means significantly reduced production time and production costs. No recreation of light rigs, no import/export of setups, no setup-preview-render, no render farms. Crunch time becomes a little less crunched.

For many scenes, you could even bypass compositing because the render pass could potentially include everything you might need including animated depth of field, HDR cameras, multiple light sources, AO, blooms etc. - everything that might go into making a final composite. Or when you need additional compositing work for special FX or live action compositing, export out the independent channels - but as an entire scene, not as single shots. This is a significant shift in the workflow and the artistic flow.

So next time you are doing a render, imagine what it would be like to work in scenes vs shots.