Using Detonation HD live elements I have added smoke/steam coming out of the space shuttle's jet engines. Very subtle but just adds something. May have to apply a little drop shadow from the 'cones' onto the smoke for added realism.

From Thursday more 'extras' will be added so hopefully by the weekend it's done. Can't really add too many more as it will be glaringly obvious it's only 4 people cloned lots of times!! As it is only on screen for 1 second I reckon I can get away with it !!

Spent the morning creating separate shadow and ambient occlasion layers for each object within the hanger scene in PhotoShop and then re-importing the lot back into Shake.

This allowed me to 'put' Steve behind the foreground rigging and in front of the servers.

I have also started to get the hang of the Shadow node in Shake at last - may go back and rework the previous ones!

Put in Steve and Graeme chatting and pointing nearer the foreground.

More to add - walking on the gantry; walking from behind the cargo containers to name a few - getting there though !

Without being too selfish (!) I have added myself and Joan into the hanger scene first...

All keying done in Shake despite my post about the keying workflow using Keylight in Finall Cut Pro.

After watching some online tutorials have used Primatte and Keylight along with a KeyMix node to pull the key. Need to check the workflow as I am not quite sure I have mastered it but seeing as the 'extras' are small I seem to be getting away with it!

Added a shadow for me, very subtle but it works okay. Basically copy the key node tree and add the Shadow node to it and then bring it back into an Over node with the original key - that Over node then plugs into the main Multilayer node.

I am 'working' a server and Joan is looking at the space shuttle from the gantry way in the distance. Using a fair bit of Blur and Desaturation to get them to blend in.

Not done any light wrap yet as I need to work out the best place to fit this node into the tree.

Having fun though !

Without being too selfish (!) I have added myself and Joan into the hanger scene first...

All keying done in Shake despite my post about the keying workflow using Keylight in Finall Cut Pro.

After watching some online tutorials have used Primatte and Keylight along with a KeyMix node to pull the key. Need to check the workflow as I am not quite sure I have mastered it but seeing as the 'extras' are small I seem to be getting away with it!

Added a shadow for me, very subtle but it works okay. Basically copy the key node tree and add the Shadow node to it and then bring it back into an Over node with the original key - that Over node then plugs into the main Multilayer node.

I am 'working' a server and Joan is looking at the space shuttle from the gantry way in the distance. Using a fair bit of Blur and Desaturation to get them to blend in.

Not done any light wrap yet as I need to work out the best place to fit this node into the tree.

Having fun though !

After a lot of testing to work out the best way to get the CGI hanger interior scene out of C4D into Shake, all is now done.

Used the Standard Renderer as didn't really see a major difference between that and the Physical Renderer. May change that later.(!) Rendered two passes in the end. The hanger interior on its own as a multi pass render with a Blend channel housing ever pass except Ambient Occlasion and Shadows. These kept separate so I can adjust in Shake. Each object within the hanger had the 'Seen by camera' tag unchecked so that they produced shadows etc but did not render out.

Second render was all the objects within the hanger, each with their own Object Buffer to produce separate alpha channels. The hanger interior was included in the render but the compositing tag had 'seen by camera' unchecked.

Brought both final renders into photoshop to produce one file for Shake. Each object is on a separate layer including the hanger interior itself; a separate layer for the casting shadows and Ambient O; and a separate layer for the objects own internal shadows and ambient o.

Made sure the file was 8 bit and imported the Photoshop file into Shake. Opens with all the layers as separate nodes; joined together by a Compositing node ( basically a multi layer node).

Added a Radial Grad node - resized and reduced opacity to give the hanger some atmosphere and to help with depth. Reduced the saturation of the canisters at the back of he hanger, again to help with depth.

Added a very low overal blur node and tested a very faint film noise node and it's definately getting there!

To do:

Blur the back canisters and the back wall of the hanger slightly to help more with depth.

Add some smoke from the shuttle using some real footage clips

Start keying out the 'extras' and placing them in the scene.

At the moment the scene is barely 13 frames - half a second long - think I might change that to at least a 1 second to give it some 'air' and for people to acknowledge it.

Overall colour correction won't happen until everything is together which includes the foreground actors. May rotoscope these as they don't move much as keying is proving a little difficult!