What's included

• Pre-production. Storyboard and treatment

  The scenario is based on the project idea, purpose (to tell, to interest, to sell), target audience, analysis of existing experience, concepts. In parallel with the script, a treatment is created - a document filled with references (pictures/videos). The treatment is responsible for the visual component of the video - it shows the idea, the path for visual realization. The results at this stage are as follows: -a finished and approved storyboard with a voice-over in the .doc file format. -a finished and approved treatment with references and visual representation of the video.

• Pre-Production. Concepts

  This stage deals with the dynamics of the project and editing. At this stage, it’s necessary to make sure the storyboard, voice-over and sound match well enough. We cut together the storyboard, a selected music track and a rough draft voice-over. This makes it possible to track the dynamics of the video, timing and editing. Once the photomatic is approved, the team will start creating an animatic. The results at this stage are as follows: -Key arts for key plot points -Architectural drawings and concepts -Concepts for key characters, vehicles or environments (if required)

• Pre-production. Boardomatic/Photomatic

  This stage deals with the dynamics of the project and editing. At this stage, it’s necessary to make sure the storyboard, voice-over and sound match well enough. We cut together the storyboard, a selected music track and a rough draft voice-over. This makes it possible to track the dynamics of the video, timing and editing. Once the photomatic is approved, the team will start creating an animatic. The results at this stage are: Video editing of a storyboard with a selected music track and a rough voice-over

• Pre-production. Animatic

  This is the most important stage of creating a CG video. At this stage we create an animatic. An animatic is a rough version of a video. The environment can still be crude, with gray or low-quality objects all around, and the animation might still be rough, but we almost have the final camera, and the characters, although still somewhat clumsy, are already in the set-up, performing the necessary actions. We can see the cut-scenes and edits. At this stage we develop and agree on: -Frame composition -Camera movement -Size of objects, their location and speed of movement + quantity -Editing (transitions and cuts)

• Production. Characters

  Unique, high-quality characters make any video not only realistic, but also memorable. Creating characters is an enormous and complex process consisting of many parts. Here are some of them: -concept: an initial idea and image of the character; -brief: a detailed design brief and a list of assets; -sculpting: creating a three-dimensional character model; -texturing: creating surface textures of the model; -clothing creation: designing character clothing; -creating props: creating additional elements, such as weapons or a backpack; -assembly: combining all elements into one model; -body rigging: creating the body’s skeletal structure; -face rigging: creating an animated facial structure; -skinning: assigning various elements to a character's skeleton. -animation tests: testing the animation to make sure that the character's rig and -skinning work correctly and there are no defects. Character creation can be simplified, depending on the final format of the game or video. In case of the most complex characters, Metahuman allows this to be done to humanoid characters.

• Production. Environment

  Action cannot take place in a vacuum, so an environment is always required. It can be abstract, fantastic, it can be cyberpunk, medieval times or today’s reality. The work on the environment usually starts as early as at the stage of creating an animatic, where, as a rule, blocking is used in order to understand the space and boundaries alongside which the character can move. At further stages this blocking is used as a basis and finalized in terms of quality. The result of this stage is a finished environment of sufficient quality, optimized to transfer characters there and work with the set-up.

• Production. Assets

  Each project requires assets, these are colored and textured 3D models. Assets are objects of any kind used in a scene, e.g. vehicles, trees, buildings, rare watches or headphones, and even stones. All these things make up a project’s content. As a rule, some models are freely available or can be purchased to avoid wasting internal resources on their creation, but most often, even when purchased, assets need to be adjusted to each other, optimized or improved in terms of quality. The process of asset creation has a few stages. Briefly listed, they are as follows: creating a model, texturing, shading, optimization, rigging (if required) + render report. This stage results in finished assets that meet the technical requirements of the project, which can be used in a scene or scenes, sometimes even multiple times.

• Production. Animation

  Once we are done with the objects, animals or characters that are supposed to move in the frame, the animation stage begins. Animators watch the approved animatic. If it’s required to make simple objects, such as a ball or a falling bottle, then the animators immediately get to work. If it’s a car or an airplane, it’s a more complicated process; some references have to be looked for to see which parts of an object should move and according to what principle. And if these are characters, a mock-up or video references are often shot, arduous manual animation is used as a last resort. Exceptions can only be made for characters in the background, for which freely available stock animation is sometimes used. Animation, as a rule, is shown to the customer as part of a shot or video.

• Production. Assembling master shots

  At this point, it is assumed that all the spare parts are more or less ready to start assembling the key master shots. A master shot usually consists of 1-2 important shots from different scenes or sequences that are brought to final form. The shot is assembled from the environment and assets, as well as characters and animation, the lighting and color are finalized, and rough compositing is done. Although it looks the simplest, this stage is actually the longest and most difficult. At this stage what has already been done needs to be adjusted, and some things that were done earlier repeatedly require some improvement, making it necessary to backtrack to previous stages. This stage results in approved master shots or at least approved direction in which the shots should be assembled

• Production. VFX

  FX are visual elements that require simulation. Roughly speaking, these are water, fire, wind, rain, magic lines,all sorts of flashes, explosions, etc. To create them, particular specialists are required, and if we are talking about Unreal Engine, there can be 3 FX implementations and each has its own pros and cons. The result of this stage is the creation of FX that can be integrated into the UE in different ways or rendered separately to be used when compositing. FX get approved in the process of assembly.

• Production. Lighting

  Lighting is the stage at which we configure the display in the program, which defines how objects will react to light and what this light will be like. This is an important stage because it can make an image look cold or warm and thus radically change the mood and atmosphere.

• Production. Creating sequences

  Once the master shots are approved, it is time to start mass production of shots within the scene with the approved master shot. The remaining shots in a sequence need to be made similar to the master shot in terms of the implementation level, keeping the same arrangement, animation, environment, color and lighting. Next, the result in the form of a finished scene or block is shown to the customer. This is probably the longest stage of CG video production. The result of this stage is the alternate finalization of scenes and their approval.

• Production. Assembling, Renders and Compositing

  As it often happens, all the renders made prior to this stage are purposefully cut off in order to save time. To make a quick presentation, it’s common to go for a deliberately lower render quality as well as to disable some settings, so as to calculate render time within 30 minutes to couple hours instead of having to wait for a whole night. But after the video has been approved, rendering often begins as a separate stage. Now shots are rendered at full resolution, e.g. 4k, and with the use of some settings to add motion blur, improve lighting, etc. It’s not uncommon for artifacts and bugs to appear in renders resulting in the necessity to re-render the shots. It’s also a common practice to render the background and the foreground separately. Due to the fact that the final rendering stage can take a long time, we make it a separate one. This stage results in high-quality renders which move on to the compositing or assembling stage.

• Production. Compositing

  Compositing is considered the final stage of working on a visual work in graphic design studios. A large amount of work is done at this stage such as retouching, clearing artifacts, noise suppression; it can also include camera shake, although initially the term ‘composite’ was used to denote the formation of a single cohesive image. In the same way, we combine FX and a few render layers, each of which is edited as much as it’s required. This stage also adds UI/UX for all the stages. The result at this stage is the finished process of compositing.

• Post-Production. Color correction

  Color correction is a common stage of production of any video, from a YouTube clip to a blockbuster. In CG, color correction has a more technical nature of image alignment in all the frames in a sequence, and only sometimes the colors can be somewhat altered and the video might evoke a new sensation as a result of the color adjustment. We usually prefer to do color correction online.

• Post-Production. SFX&Music

  This stage requires collaboration of four people - a composer, a sound designer, a voice actor and a sound engineer. Sometimes there can be fewer key people; for a small project, a sound designer and a sound engineer will be enough. A sound designer is a person who adds sound effects to a video project. They are responsible for ensuring that the viewer hears the sounds that correspond to what is happening on the screen (for example, sounds of nature, birdsong, the noise of breaking branches, etc.). Once all the sounds have been selected, it is necessary to mix the music, the voice actor’s speech and sound design to form a cohesive whole. The sound engineer balances the sound, makes the voice actor’s speech sound clearer, removes any unwanted sound effects and adds depth to the sound. What we get as a result is a finished video with a good-sounding audio component. The result at this stage is a finished audio track.

• Post-Production. Final assembly

  At this stage, the audio track and the image are assembled into an uninterrupted piece, a video. All bugs and errors that may have arisen are finally checked. Also at this stage titles and legals are added. Legals are most often required when it comes to pharmaceutical products for TV and YouTube. At this stage, if it is a film, a crawling title is also created at the end, listing the entire team that worked on the project or took part in the process. In some rare cases, at this stage the project can be edited or slightly altered if each shot has a margin in terms of timing.