• Adobe After Effects

  AE7, OpenGL & a Mac Pro: Success… kind of…

  Posted by Kevin Camp on March 2, 2007 at 9:11 pm

  I’ve been doing some experimenting today with OpenGL and After Effects 7.0.1 on a Mac Pro 3GHz with an ATI X1900 XT card. And I’ve found something rather odd, and I’m curious if anyone else has seen or noticed this.

  I’m not sure if this is just an Intel-Mac issue, or possibly an ATI-Mac issue (or maybe my issue), but what I’ve been finding is that most while of the OpenGL accelerated features work great, like motion blur, transfer modes, etc., the effects that Adobe says are OpenGL hardware accelerated (or GPU accelerated, see Adobe Help for list of OpenGL accelerated effects) to any solid or layer (when OpenGL previews are enabled), AE crashes. Nothing new about that.

  However, if I apply those same effects to an adjustment layer, it works as advertised… previews were more responsive and the OpenGL render (Use OpenGL option ON in Render Settings) was about 20% faster than a standard render of a project that used a lot of motion blur, fast blur and curves (all OpenGL accelerated effects).

  Does anybody know why the OpenGL render plugin would behave any differently on an adjustment layer versus a normal layer or solid?

  Toddy The aussie replied 19 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Filip Vandueren

  March 3, 2007 at 1:27 am

  Try animating the scale/ position / rotation of your adjustment layer and see if that crashes…

  s
  If so, then in theory it might be the anti-aliased edges of a layer that has such an effect applied to it, with an adjutment layer that’s perfectly comp-sized, this wouldn’t come in to play

  (I have absolutely no basis for this, just a hunch)
• 

  Kevin Camp

  March 3, 2007 at 2:08 am

  i’ll check that out when i get a chance… but i will say that other opengl accelerated features, like motion blur and blending modes, preview fine with opengl enabled. it’s jsut when i use an effect that is opengl accelerated, like fast blur, gausian blur, levels, curves, etc…

  but put those on an adjustment layer and they fine.

  just seems strange…
• 

  Toddy The aussie

  March 6, 2007 at 9:51 pm

  Mate, you’re WAY ahead of me – I’ve just gotten the same set up as you – Mac Pro + ATI + AE7 – but in preferences it says that my card only supports lights and shadows in open GL [ apparently no support for blur, blending modes, etc ]. Am I missing something?!

  Also, AE7 crashes A LOT – is that normal?

  And wisdom / insight would be hugely appreciated!

  Cheers

  Toddy the Aussie

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