How to create a portal effect for extremely lartge scene or for special effects.

 (by Jean-Sebastien Perron)

Watch the video (10 meg)

When do I need this technique?

-You are doing an vast landscape flyover animation with a camera entering a log-cabin in a single shot

-To link 2 scene that are to large and different to be rendered at the same time

-To get a better control on lighting

-For special effects

-To reduce rendering times

The video layer that were used in the video above

Watch the video

Watch the video

Watch the video

Watch the video

The example used here in this tutorial is not related to the video above

-A camera flying trough a forest then entering a small house

The outdoor scene

-Create your forest scene

-Create you house without the interior

-Animate the camera roaming around outdoor and then entering a house

-Stop the animation when the camera begin entering the house

-Save your scene to outdoor.r3d

-Render your animation

The mask scene

-Save your scene to mask.r3d

-Delete any unnecessary objects

-Delete and close all the lights

-Delete all materials

-Create your mask object around the door hole with a material  illuminated fully white

-Now your render should be 100% black with only the mask apearing white

-Render your animation

Some example of mask rigging (the mask is not tight close the the door for demonstration purpose only)

The indoor scene

-Load the outdoor.r3d

-Save it to indoor.r3d

-Delete the forest and everything related to outside

-Model the interior of the house

-Continue the animation of the camera to where it stopped

-Continue at the frame it has stopped

-Render your animation

The compositing

-So now you should have a video of the outdoor, a video of the mask and the video of the interior

-Now add everything together by compositing only the frames witch you seed the switch from outdoor to indoor.

-See the "lazy compositing tutorial"

Merging all the pieces

-Add the outdoor + outdoor to indoor + indoor

-Fin

Optimization

-Do everything pieces by pieces

-Only render the necessary frames

-Always render your animation in numbered images files.

-If your mask is not perfect, correct it in your favorite 2D editing application

Note

-You can import the camera motion inside the indoor scene instead of working from the previous scene