Setting up the character :

I have rendered out this diffuse pass for our man character which will allow me to generate the diffuse and ambient colour of this element in shake using colour nodes and therefore will be very quick to tweak

1. fileIn and import all your passes.

2. Take manDiff.iff and create two image=>color nodes. Name one amb_colour and the other diff_colour.

3. Select manDiff and create a colour=>reorder node. Set its channels to nnnr (none,none,none,red). Rename it nnnr_reorder

4. Create a Layer=>keyMix node.

5. Now connect amb_colour to the background input of your keyMix, connect diff colour to the forground input and connect nnr_reorder to the key input.

You can see I have set my amb_color to 50% grey and left my amb_colour more or less black. Once we construct the comp we can tweak these values to our hearts content.

6. Select keyMix and create a layer=>Switch matte and connect manDiff to the background input. Pre-multiplying our colour by our matte here will ensue that you don�t get any unwanted results if you increase the amb_colour node.

That does it for our man for the moment. Maybe now is a good time to save your scene.

The Ball element:

One could go to the trouble of emulating the ambient/diffuse workflow for all elements in the scene. But for the sake of brevity I will skip over this for the ball and floor. If you want to tweak the colour just shift the hues on these elements. They are glossy and reflective to instead I will focus on constructing these looks instead.

7. Select ball_diff and create a colour=>gamma node.

8. Select shad_onBall and create a reorder node. Set its channels to nnng to move the shadow value from the green channel into the alpha channel. Rename this node nnng_reorder

9. Connect nnng_reorder into the mask input of the gamma node you have created. Set the r_gamma to 0. g and b_gamma are linked to this value so they all should follow along. This node will determine the colour of the shadow of the man on the ball.

10. With your gamma node still selected create a layer=>iAdd node. And connect ball_ref into the background input. Adjusting the percentage attribute of this node will allow you to control the reflectivity of your ball.

11. Use ctrl+shift+LMB to Create a layer=>screen node. Connect ball_spec to the foreground input of this node and connect iAdd into the background input.

12. With screen still selected create a switchMatte and connect ball_diff into the background input of the switchMatte.

The ball is done for the moment.

I have like to use iAdd to add refelections and screen to add specularity. Sometimes I will use a combination of blurs and transfer modes to get the most out of these elements, once your are done with this tutorial take some time to play with this.



The floor :

floor diff

I have cut a couple of corners in making the floor. For a start is perfectly flat 3d geometry this is predictable and bad ! It would look a lot nicer with a bit of irregularity. Also I have rendered the shadow of the man character in the red channel and the shadow of the ball in the green channel. Saw it in a movie once!!

13. Select floor_diff create an iAdd and connect floor_ref to the background input.

14. With the iAdd node still selected create a gamma node. Set its value to 0

15. Branch a reorder node from shad_onFloor and set its channels to �rrrr�. Branch another node and set its channels to �gggg�, name them accordingly. Add a fade node under this and call it ballShad_opacity

16. Add a fade node under rrrr_reorder. Rename it manShad_opacity.

17. Create an max node and connect manShad_opacity into the foreground input and ballShad_opacity into the backround input.

18. Connect the output of the max node to the mask input of your gamma node

19. With the gamma node selected make another switchMatte and connect floor_diff into the background input.

Now the floor is done. Lets get layering.