Unmasking Visual Effects Academy

Something that I’ve found helpful when I am making visual effects. The title is inspired by an article on a different topic by someone significantly smarter than me.

Question 1 – How would this CGI affect the environment that has been captured in the footage?

• Would it cast light into the real world?
• Would it cast shadows on the environment?
• Would it cause motion in its surroundings due to its movement or size?
• What effect would it have on the camera being used to capture it?
• Would it cause video artifacts or glitches?
• Would it lead to overexposure or other light effects?

Question 2 – How would the environment captured in the footage affect the CGI that is being placed in it?

• Would the environment cast light on the CGI?
• What color and intensity would this light be?
• Would objects in the real world cast shadows on the CGI element?
• Would the environment interact with the CGI in a physics sense (wind, gravity, collisions)?
• Would the light in the scene cause the CGI to appear overexposed, underexposed? 
• What were the settings on the camera used to capture the footage?
• Would the CGI have reflections from the real world?

Conclusion

Realism is a key aspect of Visual Effects. Today we asked the questions: 

1. How would the scene affect the object being placed in it?
2. How would the object affect the scene it is being placed in?

These can be further seen and applied in:

1. The way light, shadow, and reflections interact in a scene.
2. The way that object in the footage and digital objects interact with each other.
3. How imperfections in the footage should translate to 3D renders and the properties of a 3D render affect the footage.