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How could I have done this more efficiently?
Hey, I just finished a commercial spot using AE CS3, and everything worked great, but the render time was close to 3 hours, and I have a feeling that I could have done the same thing much more efficiently.
Here’s what the spot looks like:
https://video.ericbarker.com/Commercials/temp/Beaver_Sports_nosound.movIt’s a floating grid of hexigons. Here and there in the grid, I have photos of people doing various winter activities. The “camera” pans around the grid and zooms in on the pictures. Since the pictures are close to full screen when zoomed in on, I had to make the entire grid high resolution. To do this, I tiled 6 smaller grid segments, each 3700×3700 pixels, comprised of about 150, or so, hexigonal shape layers (polystars). All 6 grids were parented to one of them, so that they’d all move and rotate together, creating one large continuous grid.
To move the “camera” around, I animated the anchor point instead of the position, so that at any time, rescaling the grid would cause the viewpoint to zoom in on whatever was directly centered on the screen.
I suppose I could have used a real camera layer to animate the viewpoint, instead of moving the grid, but I’m finding it difficult to truck the camera around, the controls seem more aimed at panning and tilting than trucking left/right and up/down. Also, the fact that the grid is tilted at about a 20° angle would have made camera movement even more difficult.
This isn’t a very complicated concept, but it still took 3 hours to render on the Dual Xeon XP machine I have at work. What could I have done to make it more efficient?
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6 Replies
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Use vectors for the grid. You’ll save yourself loads of storage and render time if you can use them. You’ll need to check the continuously rasterize button in After effects to have them properly load. (It’s a black sun looking shape) You’ll have a much better time with the Camera if you use the Orbit/Track tool. Hit the C key and a ring show show up, this will let you orbit around the scene, hit it again and a crosshair icon shows up, this lets you track on the XY axis’, hit it again to track forward and backward. It probably won’t help your render but will help your creation process. You’ll need to add keyframes on both the position and point of interest parameters of the camera. Good luck.
Jeff McBride
Motion Graphic Designer/Editor
LimeGreen
Chicago, ILhttp://www.limegreenproductions.com
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Oh, actually I did use vectors, I used shape layers for each of the hexigons. Or are you speaking of some different vector type?
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it turned out nice, and 3 hours is exactly awful….
but things that might speed things up some would be to make your grid layer (fully composited with images and zoom blur effect) in photoshop. if you had created this mostly in ae, that most likely would have effected render times.
if the background animation wasn’t footage, pre-comping those layers and pre-rendering that would have helped speed things up some.
as far as working with 3d camera, try parenting the camera to a 3d null. when you move the null it will move the camera and the focal point. you could still animate the focal point if you wanted to track the different images as the camera moves, kind of like your eye might fllow those images as you were floating around the scene.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Yes, thankyou. I forgot about the “parent to null” idea for the camera. Thanks for reminding me, I need to do that… it might completely change the way I use AE.
As for pre-comping, I wish I could, however since the entirety of the grid is around 10,000×7000, when I tried putting them together, the program ran out of memory and had a fit. However, had I taken those 6 hex fields and precomped them, things would have been A LOT better. Obviously, doing them in Photoshop vs. AE wouldn’t make a big difference. Doing them in AE just made more sense because the glow filters are already there for the images. Also, I tend to like AEs vector tools a bit better.
Anyway, thanks a lot, you’re right, I think your way would have been a lot better.
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I just want you to know, that 3 hours is a blessing in my book. I’ve done 6 min videos that take 16 hours to render with no “hardcore” effects, no blurs, and pre keyed greenscreen footage.
I think using PS or AI would have helped your over all render times though. As the constantly rasterize will extrapolate the pixels needed per frame. and not use more than needed
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What are the specs on your machine? If your using a vector based grid, it doesn’t need to be 10,000px large. Scale your vectors down, and put it into a comp that is 1,000px. AE does not like huge comp settings or layers. It will drastically, slow down preformance.
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