I was going to post an image that I submitted for the showcase bulletin but the limit for images is 8 megs and this bad boy is 28 megs! I'll size it down later or post another one but I'm back because its Friday, Norton full system scan day!!!
More victories. I tried to do the .bat executable and made some mistakes at first, not managing files right, using the wrong flags, forgetting to specify number of processors and maximum memory, finding out that Maya doesn't like to batch render Vector globals and makes unreadable .iff files in their stead. However after these early teething gaffs, I see that rendering is manageable. I finished scene 12 which is the car driving past the screen. I imported an image plane (fashioned in Photoshop using the cutout filter and a number of other tweaks) and constructed three different scenes: the first is a beauty pass, the second a shadow pass using a homemade ambient occlusion render using all geometry shaded in a white blinn, with the camera using a white background, the last being the vector render which I do with the using interface running. In my homemade ambient occlusion, I forgot to change the light and shadow colors to black and white, but I used the multiply blending mode in After effects and things looked great anyway. The car drives past the image plane (matching the perspective of the photo to the Maya grid) but what makes the scene come together is the shadows and the lighting. I could even do a vector render of all the geometry not using outlines to match the cutout quality of the Photshop background or even bring the animation into Photoshop and apply the filter to the animation and re-composite it in After Effects, but this is giving me the look I always envisioned.
In bringing files into After Effects I place the vector render on top and play with the opacity. This is also where I apply the dust and scratches and the motion blur. I will use motion blur in the beauty passes, but I think they will only be partially visible under the vector layers. After Effects doesn't seem to be able to read the first or last few frames of a Maya batch render without getting a parser error. I don't know what the deal with that is but since I'm leaving a little padding it I can work around it. I'm finding there are quite a few work arounds that I have to figure out in order to make everything work but I composited the last scene and added the logo (also made in Maya using beveled and extruded curves) made using a drawing as an image plane. The tag-line was also made (in Illustrator) and brought in and animated. I was really rewarding to see the final animated imagery reach fruition. I'm looking forward to seeing everything else move and exist in the reality I'm creating.