Animating with Blender

Faster Renders

When your characters do not actually touch the set within the frame as in shot 13.2, this is easy. Figure 15.8 shows the characters from the shot, and Figure 15.9 shows the set render. Because the light is fairly ambient in the kitchen, and the strong directional light from the window would cast shadows away from part of the set that is in the frame, there is no need for the characters to cast shadows into the visible portion of the set. This means that the set can be rendered once and used as a static background for the shot. Only the characters are rendered for each frame. In Figure 15.10, you can see the final composited frame. The nodes network for building this is found in Figure 15.11.

Figure 15.8. The characters from shot ...