Post-Production: Compositing

In some cases, when something looks out of place or needs a touch up, compositing handles this stage by removing unnecessary areas that should not be shown or tidying up areas that were hard to before. Below is a screen shot of a before and after compositing.

This picture is of compositing used in Coraline where on the right of Coraline's face, the seams can be seen whereas on the left the seams are removed from the product footage. This is most likely done with precision and care in Adobe After Effects to remove any seams from the models.

Post-Production: Credits

To acknowledge everyone who took part in making a game/film/tv series, a credits screen is displayed right at the end to show audiences who took part in the making of the game/film/tv series. The credits shows the director, the executive producer, the actors/actresses, the teams who were involved in different areas (Animation, Rendering, Art, Storyboarding etc.) and the music/sound effects used, crediting them to the music and foley artists for their work. Below is what a credits screen normally looks like.

This is a screenshot from Saint's Row 2, showing the Art teams who were involved in concept, background and character designs. It also shows the Animation coordinator too. In some credits, the animators would usually do fly bys of an environment, a place that was involved during the animation and have the words scroll up. This would have been done in Adobe Premiere by using a text box and pulling it from bottom to top.

Post-Production: Synchronizing Sound with Video footage

When the animation is rendered, the footage will then be brought to a video making software in which the animator would take the video and the sound files, place them onto the timeline on Premiere and synchronize all voices, music, sound effects and foley with the footage. Below is a picture of Mark Hamill when he was acting out as The Joker from Batman: Arkham City and also what the timeline looks like in Adobe Premiere.

 

The picture of Mark Hamill and The Joker is an example of what was seen on screen and off screen when the mouth sync was done. It shows where the animators studied Mark Hamill's face when they were recording his voice acting by videoing Mark Hamill himself. They would revert back to this video and see where they would then place the video footage with the sound file and place any other sounds in too. The timeline example shows what Adobe Premiere looks like when adding in footage, sound and any other effects (like foley and music).

Post-Production: Rendering

The final part of animation is rendering out the product itself. Depending on the computer's speed, the amount of objects and textures, an animation can take little time or a very long time to render. Once the animation is rendered the final product can look very well done. Below is a screenshot of Final Fantasy XIII of when it was rendered out.

The things that would be rendered out in this image would be the character, her hair, mouth phoneme for when she talks, the background and any of the character animating (head, arms, neck, eyes etc.).

Post-Production: Effects

Once the animation process is completed, Post-Production can begin. This blog talks about adding effects in scenes. Below is an example of where effects have been added in an animated movie. 

In the Production pipeline, fire would not be added at all. Some 3D animation programs wouldn't be able to make flames, so the effects added in at the Post-Production stage would be done in Adobe After Effects or a similar program. The purpose of After Effects is that it can make creative and crazy effects on any footage, either live action filming or animations. The animator would need to map out where the flames are going to appear on the dragon so that when it comes to rendering it, the program can display where the animator mapped the flames to appear on. To get flame effects, footage of an actual fire would be needed.