Rendering is where the modeling, texturing, lighting and animation come together. It is where the computer calculates each pixel in the final frame by considering all the elements that make it up. It is an extremely processor-intensive aspect of creating 3D animation and requires raw computer power.

At this point in our production pipeline we pulled in the heavy, full resolution elements of our scene, including the remaining set and smooth-bound character meshes. This significantly slowed our interactivity with the scene files, so it was important that animation had been signed off beforehand.

On receiving the approved animation file we:

Imported the lighting setup

Imported any additional set elements

Deleted any objects that were not visible in the shot

Switched to the smooth-bound versions of the characters and adjusted their smoothing resolution to a value appropriate to their size in frame.

Switched on the hair and reflective outer eyes of the characters

Divided the render file into sub-files containing the different layers.

Rendered these files over our network using Spider.

We designed the lighting setup for absolute ease of use. We had a global setup consisting of a giant area light simulating soft-shadowing and a directional light simulating the hard shadowing of the sun. Where the shadowing was too stark, we added small fill lights to even out the shading.