1. Pre Production I.Concept II.Story Development III.Visual Development IV.Technical Direction V.Production Management

2. Concept Art Character Design Environment & Vehicle Design Key Art & Color Script Pipeline Development Visual Development Concept & Treatment Script Story Boards Character Development Animatic Story Development

3. Production Pipeline The Production Pipeline is the way of organizing the CG workflow so that at each stage during production proceeds smoothly and passes data down the pipeline efficiently. Technical directors design the pipeline so that all of the departments can work together without “bottlenecking” at any one stage.

4. Departments Modeling – sculpture, anatomy, figure drawing Layout – cinematography, language of film, photography, videography Character Setup / Rigging – Sculpture, anatomy, animation, figure drawing UV Mapping & Materials / Texturing – drawing, painting, physics, computer science Animation – acting, drama, anatomy, physics, figure drawing Effects – physics, engineering, computer science, math Lighting & Rendering – computer science, photography, physics, math Matte Painting – traditional art, painting, drawing, photography Compositing – painting, photography, color science, math, drawing

5. Pipeline

6. The production pipeline is different from studio to studio and in most cases different between shows. During Pre Production, adjustments are made to the pipeline to specifically handle the workflow of that project more efficiently. There can be extensive modifications if the project requires the implementation of new technology which is usually the case with an effects heavy production or a production making use of new tool sets.

7. Modeling Modeling artists create all the digital assets that will be used throughout the production. This includes all geometry such as characters, vehicles, props, and environments. Modeling artist must create any object that is going to appear on screen.

8. Modeling While building detailed accurate models is essential, modeling artists must also be aware of how the model is going to be used further down the pipeline. If an object is never going to get close to the screen, it doesn’t need to be as detailed as an model that is going to be right next to the camera. When an model is sent to character setup, many it will get sent back to modeling to add detail to certain areas that are going to be deforming a lot during animation. The opposite is also true, if an extremely heavy model is difficult to deform it can be sent back to modeling to remove some detail and make the object lighter.

9. Matte Painting Matte paintings are useful when rendering extreme wide shots of elaborate environments. Once common method of creating matte paintings involves taking rough renders of 3D scene geometry and drawing directly on top of the rendered geometry. This is also a common method of producing concept art. Matte Paintings by Matthieu Raynault.

10. Layout Layout involves placing low resolution proxy geometry in rough scenes to block camera movement and rough character motion. Layout can begin as soon as proxy geometry is created, which usually means that layout can begin right after modeling has started. Layout artist use story boards and animatics as guides to set up camera angles and staging.

11. Layout Layout artist are responsible for setting up the initial staging of a shot. This can be accomplished early during the production process before working character rigs are created.

12. Character Setup/Rigging Character Setup artists have to create controls for anything an animator would want to control. Creating animation controls is called character setup or character rigging. During character set up, rigging artist create animation controls for each character. Character rigging artist have to make sure that when a character is animated that it deforms correctly. Once an initial rigging pass is performed on a character, it is usually given to an animator to try to “break” the rig. There is a lot of back and fourth between animation and rigging.

13. Animation Character Animation is done in a series of animation passes which begins with a rough first pass called blocking. Character animators produce many iterations of a shot in order to perfect timing and motion. Secondary animation such as facial animation generally takes place after a first pass of the general character motion has been approved.

14. Animation In addition to character performance, animation can also involve crowd simulation and cloth simulation for the shots that are being animated by character animators. Technical Animators are responsible for applying cloth simulation to character models after they have been animated. Technical Animators are responsible for creating crowd animation with the use of software like Massive.

15. UV Mapping After a 3D object has been modeled it must be prepared for texturing. 3D surfaces can be “unwrapped” into a 2D representation with. This process is generally done by either the modelers before the geometry is sent to texturing or by a texturing artist before texturing can begin. It is particularly useful to know what the final object will look like before laying out UV’s. If and object is just going to be a solid color then the UV’s can be rough, but if the object is going to have extremely detailed textures, then a thorough UV set has to be laid out before texturing can begin.

16. Materials/Texturing Once a UV set is laid out for a model, materials can be applied to the surface. This process can involve painting texture maps or using procedural shaders to define surface properties. Texture artists have to pay close attention to the surface properties of the object they are texturing in order for the object to accurately interact with the cg lighting.

17. Materials/Texturing In addition to creating and assigning shaders, texture artists are required to add aging and wear to surface materials. This includes adjusting materials so that they do not appear “clean and new”, unless that is the desired look.

18. Lighting Lighting artist put lights into a scene and add mood to each shot based on the script and color keys. Lighting artists are generally responsible for setting up their shots for final renders once lighting is approved.

19. Effects Effects artists are in charge of modeling and animating natural phenomena like rain, smoke, fire, and water. This includes creating physically based simulations and dynamic systems to produce realistic looking effects elements

20. Rendering Large complex scenes can require multiple layers and passes which are used by compositors to assemble the final image. Decisions made at every stage in production effect render times. Large productions can sometimes require render wranglers that watch over the render farm and make sure every shot submitted to the farm gets rendered. Render wranglers are responsible for resending shots that crash on the farm or have dropped frames.

21. Compositing Compositors assemble all the rendered layers into one final image and make adjustments before the image is sent out to final output. This stage takes place outside the 3D pipeline and generally makes use of compositing software such as Nuke, Shake, or Digital Fusion. In many studios, lighting artists composite their own shots due to the fact that the two tasks are closely related.

22. Compositing In addition to assembling the final image, compositors are responsible for preparing the original footage for integration with the computer generated elements. This includes extracting keys, rotoscoping, color correction, camera tracking, and any other image processing that is required to complete the final shot. In live action visual effects studios, compositing tasks can be broken up into to more focused departments to handle the large volume of live action footage that must be prepared for final compositing. This can produce situations where many compositing artists are working on the same shot simultaneously.

23. Asset Management In order to keep track of all the models, character rigs, animation scenes, and everything else associated with production some form of asset tracking system has be put into place in order to keep everything organized. Asset management is responsible for know the location and progress of every shot in the timeline. This includes every stage of the pipeline. Asset Management is a part of production management that is usually taken care of by the production team instead of the creative team.