• Adobe After Effects

  importing non-sequential frames

  Posted by Graham Macfarlane on December 10, 2011 at 12:02 pm

  I have to render out some non-sequential frames of animation (along with a load of associated vray render elements) from 3D Max and load them in AE for checking.
  For example: Frame 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, etc…

  When loading into AE (CS5) it complains about missing images.
  I know I can either rename the image sequences in Bridge or similar but there are so many separate sequences (all the render elements) that this will take a while.

  I looked into getting max to render out sequentially (i.e. frames 0, 10, 20, 30 save out as frame 0, 1, 2, 3 etc…) using the “Nth serial numbering” option in Max preferences (rendering tab). Trouble is this only works for the main render output (all the vray render elements still get named 0, 10, 20, 30 etc…)

  It would be great if there is a max script to intervene with the vray render element file names (couldn’t find anything at https://www.scriptspot.com)

  Otherwise the only thing would be for AE to be able to treat Nth image sequence numbering as if it were a continuous sequence. (I can’t see any setting for this)

  Any ideas or quick workarounds spring to mind please share!

  Thanks!

  Graham Macfarlane
  3D animator and VFX specialist
  London UK

  Graham Macfarlane replied 14 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Ben G unguren

  December 10, 2011 at 6:27 pm

  There’s an option when importing an image sequence in AE — I think it’s called “Force Alphabetical Order” — which will ignore any skipped frames. (Just make sure you are skipping frames evenly!)

  Once you’ve imported your sequence, right click on your footage, “Interpret Footage –> Main…” and change your frame rate accordingly. For instance, if I were working in a 24fps project and rendered every 12th frame, then my sequence would be 2 frames per second.

  Ben Unguren
  Motion Graphics & Editing
  http://www.mostlydocumentary.com

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• 

  Graham Macfarlane

  December 10, 2011 at 8:20 pm

  Thanks Ben,

  I had all my different render passes in the same folder upon which the “Force Alphabetical Order” ends up loading them all as a single sequence. Not a big issue though, as I just had to move each pass to its own sub folder.

  Cheers!

  Graham Macfarlane
  3D animator and VFX specialist
  London UK

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