Compositing in Animation: Why It Is Important

Wondering what is compositing in animation?  Compositing is actually the final process in making animation videos or movies or any piece that involves combining all animated elements like shapes, characters, animated sequences, and special effects, along with the background plates. The process lets you create the finalized version of a sequence, scenes, or animation frame according to the vision of the director.

Since compositing in animation is the end process of the production pipeline, animators attain parallax, uphold the style of 

 all over the video, and install the depth illusion in it.

Being a compositor, it is your responsibility to maintain video continuity by placing different images, shots, digital art, and animated shapes, characters conveniently to enhance the shadows, lighting, and motion blur in the video where required.

This blog will highlight what compositing in animation is all about, why it is important, what compositors actually do, and what benefits you get through compositing. 

Compositing in Animation: Definition

The true definition of compositing is the process in which separate animated visual elements are combined to create one image. In the case of 3D animation, compositing means is to combine multiple renders to elevate the final video’s quality.

What Role Compositing Plays In Animation

Compositing has a major role to play in any animation production process. In animation production, compositing is critical as compositors gather animated artworks and objects from artists along with various sources and highlight any mistakes to edit them or send them back for further improvement.

Being a compositor requires you to be experienced and mature in the animation industry. You can start as a junior compositor, modeler, or roto artist and acquire a senior position.

Compositing in animation makes sure to keep these factors in check:

The Art of Videography: 

Compositing in animation checks all the aspects related to photography and cinematography to recognize excellent perspective, color, lighting effects, and composition.

Pay Attention to Details:

 Scrutinize image possessions, color theory, all animated assets, and special effects to make them cohesive and consistent.

Keeping Track Of Project Deadlines: 

Meet the project deadline by completing work within the timeframe of video production.

Keeping Production Pipeline Of Animation In Mind: 

Understanding the workflow of animation production along with the various animation roles.

Be Updated About The Compositing Tools And Software: 

Keeping updated knowledge of all software used for compositing and animation like Maya, after effects, Nuke, Houdini, and Photoshop. 

Compositing in Animation: How Essential It Is

Compositing is essential to produce high-quality animated videos. There is an increase in demand for talented individuals with expertise in composting. Especially, the videos about fantasy worlds, war or calamity destruction, virtual reality effects games, movies, and videos. 

The compositing actually ensures seamless transition in and between scenes and shots frame by frame to make characters, objects, and VFX look absolutely realistic.

Similarly, gaming and video effects compositing is merging or creating entire worlds to balance the video aesthetics overall by collaborating with lighting and video effects artists. 

The compositing in the animation production pipeline is essential because: 

• It blends 2D and 3D elements of all sequences and shots while keeping the balance of the creative and technical aspects of each animated element. 
• To grain images, fix paints, chroma-keying, rotoscope, grading, and color continuity, 
• To stitch different background plates together, especially in the case of live-action footage. 
• Create mattes and take care of green screen effects.  
• Improve lighting in shots and create realistic object shadows. 
• To Incorporate rear projection perfectly into images in the background.

Besides these, compositing also includes extensive research on numerous production elements, including matching the full video to the specific shot, color correction referencing, requirements for matte painting, and finding stock material.

Compositing in Animation: Why It Is Important To Focus On It

Every animation studio working on 2D, 3D, or hybrid animation videos prioritizes compositing as an important process. Compositing is as important as other pre-production, production, and post-production processes. 

Why it is important to focus on compositing? Here are some reasons:

Compositing improves the quality of all types of animations and animation-based content like games, movie backgrounds, feature films, shorts, and even digital ads.

Compositing saves a lot of time by setting color grading, lighting, shadows, and background fixes. It helps in the refinement of rendered pieces and combines them all together coherently. Composition polishes your animated videos and makes them worthy enough for publication.

A compositor works on cohesiveness in videos along with merging various styles in animation. It results in the production of unique outcomes depicting high-level creativity. 

Compositing In Animation: Step-By-Step Process

To understand the utmost importance of compositing, you should be aware of the steps involved in it. The process of compositing is performed by a graphic artist aka comper. Here are some responsibilities of a comper that he performs in the following steps:

Gathering the animated elements that are required to be combined:

Through compositing, you get a chance to gather all the animated elements necessary to be combined to make one refined shot. Animated characters, objects, backgrounds, plates, and props, are some examples. 

Scene Set up

A digital workspace is created in compositing step two. All the elements are imported into compositing software like Blender, After Effects, Nuke, Maya, etc.

Layer Organization 

Choose a correct order to arrange all the elements in your shot and scene to regroup them, and fine-tune their positioning and timing as required by the storyboard and director.

Adjustments according to the details

Refine the scenes and shots by making necessary adjustments and tweaks to the animated elements. You can take multiple retakes to achieve the level of perfection. 

Final Rendering For Output

Before rendering, go through all the composition work and finally render as single or multiple images or footage.

Conclusion

That concludes the whole composing in animation information. We have discussed and highlighted about compositing in detail in this blog and we hope you have a better idea now of why it is essential and why you should focus on it. Remember, you should always invest in talented compositors if you want to achieve the desired outputs you have planned for.