3D Production Lighting + Render Passes

This ended up going a lot better than I had expected. I had to take this into Nuke and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. But with the help of the Internet and YouTube I was able to figure it out and, though it was a pretty simple process, I was rather proud of myself for getting this to where it is.

I still do need to run an occlusion pass on it though.

Just this past Saturday I was having a breakdown, exhausted and frustrated, over something that wasn't even that difficult. I just needed to be more patient with it. My lights all just looked bad and the render looked awful. It looked like one of those purposely bad 3D animations that my friends and I like to watch on YT and make fun of. I felt up against a wall like I couldn't figure out how to fix it. But eventually I just kept adjusting things until I got something that worked.

My models aren't very good and I was upset to run into an issue with my felt overlay not working right, but in a sense I can feel good about all that I've accomplished and LEARNED with this project. I think I've mentioned this before, but I'm not at all scared away by this. It was a lot of work and is admittedly probably the hardest thing I've ever done since starting school in pursuit of the animation industry and despite it causing a lot of tears and disappointments, I really just want to do it all over again. I want to do this all again, but with all the knowledge that I have now after doing this the first time.

Learning how to do something is one thing. Taking what you've learned and making something that looks good is the next thing.