need draft quality visually, but best quality accurate positioning

[Bill Clotz]

Not sure if it would work or not, but you could try rendering out your source files (without motion) in draft quality, then apply your motion to these with best quality.

Or you could also try the mosaic filter. That does a pretty good job at giving your footage a pixelly look.

[Realethan]

Are you using vector or raster artwork?

If its vector (Illustrator, etc), try “collapsing transformations” on your vector artwork layers.

If raster (Photoshop, etc), make sure that the layer positions _always_ fall on whole pixels. Press “p” to open the layers position attribute and make sure there aren’t any numbers to the right of the decimal point for the x and y values. Check this at every position key frame.

[Colin James]

its all raster artwork…and they were all on whole number positions, and still offset a bit 🙁 Even when the scale factor is 100%. any ideas?

/ colin
/ https://www.pinknbrown.com

[Chris Smith]

just so i understand, did you create a comp with a rediculously low res then nest that into a broadcast output comp?

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Realethan]

Are you doing any scaling or using a camera layer?

[Colin James]

Hey all, I hope this thread gets checked again on Monday 😉

Basically I’ve created all the pixel-art/atari elements very small in photoshop. Then i save a copy, and do an Image Size and scale the small image 2000 percent w/ Nearest Neighbor (faster) in the scaling options of pshop…so it retains the pixel’s hard edges. Then i import the large photoshop files into AE, I scale them down and composite them in a broadcast res environment. The reason I make them large first is because when i scale them down it maintains the look, and I retain the freedom to do closeups, and long shots. Everything works perfect, except the SLIGHT inaccuracies in the placement of layers. Thats more important than usual in this project because they are characters and I’m bringing in separate poses for arms and legs etc. and sometimes there is a minisule, but visible separation between the arms/legs etc and the main bod, with draft mode enabled.

hope that made sense.

[Andrew Yoole]

Seeing as how the objects already have the pixelated look you’re going for, couldn’t you just use “Best” quality, but add an adjustment layer with a harsh sharpening filter to hide the anti-aliasing?

[Andrew Kramer]

Maybe you could use best quality then add a mosaic filter to everything that is very fine.

Interesting question.
Andrew

[Chris Smith]

Have you tried not doing the scaling in PS and just scale up in AE while keping the rough settings on so it doesn’t kick in Ant-alias. Just wondering if PS scaling is the culprit.

I would think you could still scale up and not “lose quality” because blocks are blocks when you are dealing with that low of a res.

Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com

[Peter Litwinowicz]

I think what you are seeing is AE’s attempt to subpixel position the layer. I thin your problem is not really an blur-upon-scale issue, but it *is* related to AE’s attempt to position things at subpixel positions. Basically, as far as I know, AE does a bilinear interpolation when your image has moved to a non-integer amount of pixels.

Have you tried using an expression to round or truncate the pixel positioning when in best quality mode? (you’ll have to ask the experts about how to do that, but I believe there is a round function in the scripting language).

Pete