Then I came across something called Shadow Catching which I thought would fix the black render issue. The person was using older versions of the software so it made it difficult to follow. There was one major problem with this method and that was that the plane was rendering out as a black square so when it was imported into After Effects it wasn’t showing as transparent.

I had to delete the cache to replace it with a new one for the animation but the fluid container glitched and deleted the fluid itself when I did this so I had to start from scratch which was a major setback in terms of time. Alec mentioned the importance of using caches in my simulations, I really struggled with this especially towards the end of the project when it came to the final animation. Although I definitely have a long way to go before I am fully confident in them it was really fun to explore dynamic simulations. I really enjoyed having the opportunity to learn during this project especially when it comes to using Maya Fluids, particles systems and bullet dynamics. This has been one of my favourite projects so far and I definitely want to further my knowledge in VFX Compositing, while doing this project I did a little research into camera tracking in After Effects and I hope to use this knowledge in the future to progress into adding 3D elements (models and effects) into live footage. I still struggle with using render layers in arnold so this is something that’ll I’ll have to work on. Although I highly enjoy group work the change of pace was nice, I liked having the opportunity to work on my own on a project because it gave me the freedom to approach it however I wanted.

I struggled at the start with learning how to approach it but once I tried a few methods and learned how to worked out the kinks I really enjoyed it.

I have absolutely loved learning about this as it is something that I hope to pursue in the future. Since the beginning of this project I had no doubts in my mind that that I wanted to explore VFX compositing and I am so happy that I did.

Aishadowmatte