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Adapting a 3D animation from SD to HD – how ?
Hello
I have a series of animations that are used for a TV show. They are mostly made of Illustrator objects flying in 3D space.
I’m being asked to convert those animations from SD (720*576 widescreen) to HD (1920*1080). But I can’t see how. I can enlarge the SD comps into HD ones, but of course the objets become blurry.
And if I change the size of the comps themselves, or if I nest SD comps into HD comps and collapse transformations (with the 3D flag on), every animation is corrupted. This is because After Effects uses pixels as the 3D units. The coordinates are linked to the comp size and the origin is on the top left corner.
So, is there a way, apart from redoing everything ? Maybe by writing a script that would recalculate new coordinates and keyframes. But this is waaaaaaay beyond my abilities.
Or maybe I’m totally mistaken and missing something ?
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4 Replies
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[Tonton1] “Maybe by writing a script that would recalculate new coordinates and keyframes.”
There is a Comp Resizer script that comes with AE and is meant exactly for this purpose. It does not take care of 3D layers, though, if I recall correctly. It may need to be adapted slightly to accomodate for the extra Z position/ rotation/ scale channels. Still, you can’t possibly avoid re-doing quite ab it of your stuff manually (adapting font sizes, stroke withs, blur radii etc.) because stuff will look different even though the positions may be correct, so tell your client they’ll have to pay a bit more.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Thanks, I’ll check that.
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I’ve just had to do this exact task (well almost exactly, there was 3D but only very simple), Mylenium is obviously correct; there is no way to avoid manual tweaking. However, take heart because the whole job of remaking was easier than I had imagined.
I duplicated every comp and added ‘HD’ to the new ones. I then started with the top/render comp and changed it to 1920×1080 (add your correct frame rate), then using the alt-replace trick I started switching all the nested SD stuff with my HD comps. Every time I did that I made sure to open the new HD comp and change the settings to 1920×1080. I then did the same with the solids I came across. Finally I went through and tweaked settings for fonts and effects.
Have a coffee, be methodical and I hope it works out.
A
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With the animations I have I think it would be a re-creation rather than an adaptation. I have to deal with objects moving in 3D, cameras, lights and shadows : a nightmare.
I think this is as much work as doing it the first time.
Too bad AE doesn’t work like a 3D program, with units and origin independant of the camera “size”.
Anyway, thanks for your advice.
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