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Null Object 2.0
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I could live with such a grouping feature. It would remove all “issues” with über-nudles and what not.
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[Walter Soyka] “a more malleable render order for compound effects,”
Which is one of the feature requests I’m going to file after this conversation 🙂
It’s crossed my mind before that the Collapse Transformations/Continuously Rasterize switch should be available for bitmap footage items. I can see this working essentially as a switch that says “Transform me before rendering my Effects” much in the same way it works for vector items and pre-comps.
This doesn’t immediately solve the problem of Set Matte looking only at a layer’s pre-effect contents. I always expected (hoped) that Adobe would add a checkbox to each compound effect to either look at the source layer “pre-effect” or “post-effect.” I may file that feature request as well but I’d love to hear whether someone has another option that makes more sense.
[Walter Soyka] “some kind of effects instancing manager,”
Are there models out there for this sort of behavior? I could see allowing a special mode of “paste” that would keep a link between the source effect. Maybe this could just be some automatic expressions applied (problem: not all properties are accessible by expressions) or something else.
In Nuke you get pretty green lines connecting nodes that have had one or more of their properties linked together via expressions. Is some indicator like that necessary or desirable in order to find the ‘parent’ effect? Perhaps parenting is a better paradigm to approach the problem with, although I could see that getting out of hand. Too many layers in a comp? Imagine having to sort through all of the effects too! Perhaps just a little button off to the right of the effect in the timeline that says “Linked” and if pressed would jump to the parent effect.
Darby Edelen
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[Cassius Marques] “which to use? read the help and understand what’s the difference. Is it adding complexity? perhaps adobe should strip away all the other complex features AE has then?”
The feature you’re describing is not itself complex. The complexity, in so far as I can see, arises out of the workflow confusion of a new feature that could be advertised as almost-entirely-the-same-as-pre-comps-but-a-little-different. Not only that but the difference is there to solve a problem that can already be solved without the new feature.
In a cost-benefit analysis the feature as described doesn’t make sense to me.
Darby Edelen
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[Erik Lindahl] “I could live with such a grouping feature. It would remove all “issues” with über-nudles and what not.”
Go get Zorro [link], and you can pretty much have this today.
GoodMotion was working on FoldLayers [link] a while back, but I haven’t used it or seen any updates in some time.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Darby Edelen] “Which is one of the feature requests I’m going to file after this conversation 🙂 It’s crossed my mind before that the Collapse Transformations/Continuously Rasterize switch should be available for bitmap footage items. I can see this working essentially as a switch that says “Transform me before rendering my Effects” much in the same way it works for vector items and pre-comps.”
Cool idea about using collapse transformations to swap the render order.
I might like to have a per-layer adjustable render order (drag to rearrange METL badges, or maybe represent the entire render order in the ECW or similar, so you can intermingle masks, effects and transforms, and layer styles within the same layer and eliminate some precomping scenarios entirely) — but that might be a really, really big can of worms.
[Darby Edelen] “This doesn’t immediately solve the problem of Set Matte looking only at a layer’s pre-effect contents. I always expected (hoped) that Adobe would add a checkbox to each compound effect to either look at the source layer “pre-effect” or “post-effect.” I may file that feature request as well but I’d love to hear whether someone has another option that makes more sense. “
The issue of compound effects seeing pre-effect contents is pretty deep. I’m torn about how I want this to work — a “post-effect” toggle in the compound effect itself, or a “Use render instead of source for compound effects” toggle on the source layer?
[Darby Edelen] “Are there models out there for this sort of behavior? I could see allowing a special mode of “paste” that would keep a link between the source effect. Maybe this could just be some automatic expressions applied (problem: not all properties are accessible by expressions) or something else.”
Good question. I’ve been using pt_EffectSearch for linking effects, but you’re right that expressions are limited because they can’t handle custom controls.
Possible solution — expose custom controls to expressions, even if it’s just as binary blobs? You may not be able to do much with them, but you could at least link them.
Special paste modes are something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I am having trouble formulating what I’d really want them to do to make a good feature request — this idea seems to feature creep really quickly.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “Go get Zorro [link], and you can pretty much have this today.”
Looking at the demo on their site, no. It’s a show / hide function based on keywords. Not a bad thing to have but not a grouping feature really. Sure I could add the tag “MATTE” to all my mattes and hide them with Zorro but it’s quite a clumsy / ugly workflow I’d say personally. Zorro has it’s place for some for sure but it’s not a clever grouping function from what I can see. -
[Erik Lindahl] “Looking at the demo on their site, no. It’s a show / hide function based on keywords. Not a bad thing to have but not a grouping feature really. Sure I could add the tag “MATTE” to all my mattes and hide them with Zorro but it’s quite a clumsy / ugly workflow I’d say personally. Zorro has it’s place for some for sure but it’s not a clever grouping function from what I can see.”
Not just show/hide, but select.
If we’re talking about organizational groups, not compositing groups, tagging has a big advantage that grouping does not: non-contiguous selection.
I also use layer colors pretty frequently as a poor man’s grouping function, as you can multi-select based on layer color with two clicks.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
[Walter Soyka] “[Darby Edelen] “… compound effect to either look at the source layer “pre-effect” or “post-effect.” I may file that feature request as well but I’d love to hear whether someone has another option that makes more sense. ”
The issue of compound effects seeing pre-effect contents is pretty deep. I’m torn about how I want this to work — a “post-effect” toggle in the compound effect itself, or a “Use render instead of source for compound effects” toggle on the source layer?”
This is exactly what I tried to solve with being able to apply masks in a group basis. I can’t imagine why set matte ain’t able to see the source layer post everything else and as if it were collapsed. This would solve 50% of my problems. I just hasted in bringing everything together in an arguably possible solution.
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[Cassius Marques] “This is exactly what I tried to solve with being able to apply masks in a group basis. I can’t imagine why set matte ain’t able to see the source layer post everything else and as if it were collapsed.”
It’s as designed. When a compound effect in one layer looks at another layer, it sees the layer source, not the rendered layer. Of course, precomposing to “flatten” the METLs is the traditional solution, because then the layer’s source and its rendered output are one and the same.
It’s not just masks, it’s effects, too. The Set Matte effect works fundamentally differently than track mattes, but I think it often feels as though they should work the same way.
[Cassius Marques] “This would solve 50% of my problems. I just hasted in bringing everything together in an arguably possible solution.”
That’s why I’m asking about what the problems you see are. Maybe we can solve 100% of them if we break them down intelligently and handle them separately.
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events -
I guess one issue is the fact that you in the time line keep everything connected to that sequence. This makes sense but can get messy as described here.
1. Mattes
These can double the amount of layers even if one matte is used for multiple layers. To remedy this one should be able to able to use an arbitrary layer as a matte instead of just the one above the current layer.2. Multiple instances of the same layer
This can be for example creating a light or glow effect on top of a logo with the video footage. You duplicate it, tweak it with effects, add a matte (probably based on the alpha of the graphic). Here I’d say a “clone layer” feature would be brilliant. The clone layer would be identical to its rendered and rastered source. Changes to the source reflect to the clone layer. One would be able to add effects / transforms to the clone layer as well, these would be applied after their source layers processing of.3. “Extra stuff needing grouping”
This includes things like nulls with track-data, an excessive amount of video or audio layers. I don’t do a lot of work with 3D and lights but I could imagine one can end up with heaps of “crap” you’d like to group up like cameras, nulls and lights. Never the less, from my point of view sometimes I end up with:– a of of tracking nulls. Would be great to have group-collect these layers feature for that.
– a lot of layers from a video-source I’ve done frame-by-frame fixes to. I know I can use a pre-comp but I hate losing having instant access to all the “bits”. Here a group or expand pre-comp feature would be needed.There is probably more but I’m completely zonked after a 14 hour day.
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