Birdland Swing

Lighting / Compositing Specs

Our shot pipeline is:
layt > anim > light > rend
where layt is the set-dressing phase, with all elements referenced into the scene via the Reference Editor, rough lighting is completed, moving objects are blacked out and camera is animated; anim is the scene fully animated; light is the scene fully lit with fur and paint effects turned on; and rend is the render-ready latest iteration with all the presets in Render Globals set. Dynamic simulations can be run in either the anim or light phases, as the situation requires.
We are NOT tech-supported by any production at Disney, so we are not using any proprietary Maya extensions. Try to use "clean" Maya (no plugins loaded except those that ship with Maya). If you must use third-party or proprietary tools, be sure to delete history afterwards so that the file can be opened on a machine without the plugin.
Always use Maya ASCII when saving from Maya. Use tif or psd for textures, and make sure all textures and other external references are located within the same Maya project directory (see below).

Steps to the Lighting Stage

Open the tech-approved file from Animation. Re-save it in the same folder with the naming convention shot_dept_user_version.ma, for example:
01_light_evanhorn_v01.ma

Use the lights from rough lighting (layout) as a starting point or delete them and build a new light rig. Use light linking to avoid every light affecting every surface - it's messy and increases rendering time exponentially.
Check the color keys / color script. Much of the overall color comes from colored lights - the heatlamps in the various cages. Use volumetric lights and fog to show very definite light sources. All light sources should be close and direct. Pools of light should pull the foreground from the background. Go for high-contrast. Look at film noir for inspiration. I recommend The Third Man by Carol Reed. Again, the ARL is excellent for this.
Check that CAM1 is your render camera. Make sure its resolution gate matches the output settings in render globals.
Change all poly characters to subdivision surfaces before render time. Call me if you have any questions about this.
Make sure paint effects and fur are set to render correctly. Try to do them in separate passes.
To get the final images to pop, we will do an occlusion pass by changing the renderer to Mental Ray and throwing an occlusion shader on everything. You can save out this intermediate file as something like 01_mentalray_evanhorn_v01.ma. Afterwards, additively composite this grayscale image with the color pass to darken the cracks and crevices.
To differentiate your final renderable file (complete with all polys changed to subds, etc.) name the file you render from with the department token rend, as in 01_rend_evanhorn_v01.ma.
Test renders should go into subdirectories of the shot's images folder. Final renders should go into the editorial pix folder, in a directory named after the shot.
You may use the compositor of your choice, be it Shake, After Effects, etc. but the final rendered images should be 1:85 2K tiff files with no compression.