In this course, professional animator and director Lee Lanier shows how to create render passes in Autodesk Maya, recombine the passes in Adobe After Effects, and motion track the passes to live-action video footage that contains a moving camera or a moving character. The course covers both the Render Layer Editor and mental ray contribution pass systems. Additionally, 1- and 2-point motion tracking and match moving, stabilization, and 4-point corner pin tracking are discussed.

Topics include:

• Working with image sequences
• Matching the 3D camera to video footage
• Lighting models in Maya
• Splitting a scene into multiple render passes
• Batch rendering
• Recombining render passes in an After Effects composition
• Setting up motion trackers
• Refining layers with rotoscoping
• Adding blur and effects
• Adjusting shadows and matte edges
• Using color correction
• Stabilizing shaky video