MOD302: 3D Digital Environments

Class 1: Creating the Promo image. To warm for the course, we're going to tackle the easiest shot , creating the atmospheric promo image with our female hero standing on a cliff high above the clouds. This will cover the creation of the cliffs in Vue before exporting to Mudbox for some higher res detailing and the creation of the dense cloud layer. The shot will be tweaked if we need to so that it fits with the final locked down script.
Class 2: The Photoreal Tree Lined Road Part 1. This lesson will cover the creation of a full 3d tree lined photo real road plate, starting out by creating the custom tree in Vue and how we can use other applications such as Autodesk Mudbox to vastly improve our final result above and beyond usual Vue quality.
Class 3: The Photoreal Tree Lined Road Part 2. Continuing on from the last lesson, after finishing off our scene we'll be moving onto lighting the whole scene and showing my own way to quickly get our lighting right. Then it's time to sort out all the passes we need to export ready for use.
Class 4: Joan of Arc: Shot list Matte #1. This lesson will be creating the first of the photoreal scenes from the final locked down script. This could be a scene containing anything from set extension to a full 3D shot or match move.
Class 5: Joan of Arc: Shot list Matte #2. This will be the creation of our 2nd photoreal scene needed from the final shot lists. Again at this stage we don't know what these are going to be, this all depends on the final script and shot list. Should the shot be something simple we'll also be creating 'filler shots' completely in 3D for the story.
Class 6: Detailed Water Scene / Joan of Arc: Shot Light Matte #3. To cover as much ground as possible we'll also be covering the creation this week of a detailed scene that includes water in the shot and show how we can sculpt things that will make our live easier in external applications such as Mudbox. Should there be a 3rd (or more) matte shot on our shot list to do, we will do these instead of the Water Scene this week.
Class 7: The Epic Lighting Week. This week concentrates on lighting and we'll take the same scene of a castle in a dense valley and show different ways we can light both night and day and different seasons. As an extra we'll show ways we can get the one pass missing from Vue…the cloud pass. We'll create its own depth and alpha pass to enable fine tweaking at compositing level later.
Class 8: Joan of Arc: Cathedral External Match Moved Shot Part 1. Continuing on from the interior shots created in MOD301, for this lesson we'll start tackling our main scene with the big cathedral external reveal which needs us to match all lighting and materials to a shot with no HDRI available. So we'll start by importing our tracking data into 3DSMax and blocking out the positions for everything before sending it for approval by our art director in time for week 9.
Class 9: Joan of Arc: Cathedral External Match Moved Shot Part 2. Making any changes that have been requested we'll import everything into Vue and add final materials and lighting, add any extra set dressing and test our final composite.
Class 10: Joan of Arc: Last Minute Shots / Tips and tricks. As well as catching up on any last minute shots that have been handed to us at the last minute we'll cover a healthy dose of tips and tricks to help get out of sticky situations on a full 3D Matte as well as go back over what we've done in previous weeks and answer any outstanding questions.