First Pass on Rendering and Lighting.

Right, finally got this done. This was a milestone in the production. Set all the passes up! And have organized all the render layers in Maya. Then into After Effects and started to sort out any post work, such as motion blur(Real Smart for this, great plugin) A rain plugin and some lightrays. Alot of work too with the lights in After Effects. This is very handy, and helps to flesh out a shot, add a highlight, change the ambience. Changed the edit in the house, before you didnt see why he was scared, so I have added a few shots to deal with that. Much clearer. So now that is the last change.
Other reasons for sorting this out is to try to evaulate the work remaining. I have done my first pass on the lighting, now I can see what worked and the elements that need more work. Colour pallete, shot consistancy. Even just the rendering. The same lighting set up might not work for all shot. The same rendering settings might not work. Shots inside the house I am starting to like. Different tints on the occlusion pass help to change the ambience. The other major factor was the fur. I really need to see how the fur behaved and how it rendered. Which settings work, etc. Fur renders change depending on the distance to the camera, so fur would need to be adjusted - made thicker and amount decreased. All pretty obvious, just has to be sorted. I didnt have the fur on the character until most of the animatic was done, so I didnt bother with any test. This is my test, and this way I can fine tune my renders and animation to suit. Dad fur is very poor, have alot to do, I am hoping that is just a rigging problem primarily, and then I tune up the fur. Other thing I have had trouble sorting is the flicker on the fur and getting the nicest settings here. Imposable to see in this movie, its rude and is high on my list to fix.
Next up is a breakdown for me regarding fixes. Will show the animation to some collegues, and get feedback. Get the octo rigged, fix the dad and kids rigging. Do all the animation again.Render it all again. Do the final grade on it.