"A Feature Rendering Pipeline" is a presentation about proven methodologies and work diagrams specific to today's content-creation production pipelines, namely lighting, color and rendering for film and television.

The core of the presentation focuses on my implementations and observations on lighting & rendering cycles and on how they closely depend on and interact with other disciplines and departments.

Various production examples are analyzed throughout the panel using a cost-effective mentality thread. The objective of these lectures is to enhance both new and estabilished studios’ delivery methods through basic guidelines, innovative solutions and open technical discussions.

It is based on 15 years of production experience and collected into a lecture series of over 6 hours and 200 slides, which can be tailored down to smaller dedicated panel discussions, the complete review covers 5 main topics.

A production pipeline from a technology, budget and creative perspective

• 1 - Technology, Budgets and Creativity: Pick two of three.
• 2 - The key advantages of a destructive pipeline environment and modularity levels.
• 3 - Layout integrity.
• 4 - Tracking versioning and approvals while supporting back-compatibility.
• 5 - Minimizing shot and production costs using a projection network.
• 6 - When UIs are not production friendly.
• 7 - Who wants to lock the render camera in a large shots production?
• 8 - Maximizing a small crew.

Lighting and rendering flow

• 1 - Locking a neutral look-developement and colour correction scheme.
• 2 - What is a "key" from a rendering point of view. 
• 3 - Defining show, sequence and shot level locks, re-usability: pushing versus pulling data. 
• 4 - Naming conventions. 
• 5 - How open does your controlled environment need to be? 
• 6 - Dealing with render complexity and dedicating rendering farm resources.
• 7 - AOVs, IDs and frame tracking: why more is less.
• 8 - Prioritizing tools, crewing and production complexity.
• 9 - The importance of a stable playback tool.
• 10 - The missing links. Expanding tools' reach.

Tracking a dynamic production flow

• 1 - The advantages of knowing what you may not want to know.
• 2 - When and where to release a new pipeline?
• 3 - Ticketing schemes.

Lighting elements

• 1 - Building lighting blocks: which are the lights to focus on in a large production flow ?
• 2 - Dirty lights versus pure lights.
• 3 - The advantages of a controlled but unrealistic lighting rig. 
• 4 - Continuity mosaics.
• 5 - Prioritizing a shot construction.

Lighting and color guidelines

• 1 - Light types and guidelines.
• 2 - Harnessing ambient illumination. 
• 3 - 3 point lighting. Colours elements.
• 4 - Drive lighting direction, shadows and fall-off. 
• 5 - External influence. 
• 6 - Light's perception and reproduction.
• 7 - Color elements: the 7 color harmony factors.
• 8 - Materials influencing lights.
• 9 - Lighting Cheat-sheet