Overall VFX Suitability of AE CC

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It seems like you’re overestimating the work AE would need to do. You could choose your 3d program, choose your motion tracker and then create the animation in your 3d program (sound like it’s a sky dome for the star field and a 3d matte painting for the city). You would then bring the shots into AE for composite.

AE as a 2.5D program is simply a program that can composite 2d elements movable in 3d space. Once you start moving the animation to your 3d package there isn’t much to worry about as you’re dealing with the composite.

I suppose it depends on exactly how these scenes break down. If it’s some insane establishing shot where you need to do procedural z-depth based masking…. then yeah go Nuke.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

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[Jonathon Sendall]

Well I’m aware of most of the things AE can do but I’m no expert. We already have a matte painting for the city but it wasn’t done for the job so I’m separating the elements out for z space and then filling in behind the various elements as well to compensate for camera movement. I guess there might be atmospherics in Z as the city is in dusk and some smoke is in there too far rioting but it’s distant so very little movement.

What I’m asking really from a lack of knowledge overall, what can’t I do in AE that I can in Smoke or Nuke . . . or Resolve for that matter. You’ve already mentioned Z depth masking. Anything else?

Thanks for replying.

JPSendall

Story, not pixels.

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

z depth matte – you actually can use that in Ae:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103a9d3c597-7bd9a.html

Not knowing your shot it’s hard to say what can’t be done in AE. From what you described I find AE suited for the job in all aspects.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Jonathon Sendall]

Thanks Ted

So I’m getting the impression that as a comp piece/camera tracking software AE is all I need.

Cheers

JPSendall

Story, not pixels.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

Jonathon,

I wouldn’t say that z-depth masking is something AE can’t so, I was leaning on that example to show you something that Nuke handles with far less steps.

Comparatively, they can do the same thing in terms of actually compositing images. Nuke has the upper hand in terms of how easy it is for it to access multi channel files (accessing z-depth or UV passe), doing rudimentary 3D work because it supports 3D models directly better than AE and so on.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

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[Jonathon Sendall]

Ok, so for instance I have a 2.5D Matte, some CG elements such as flying vehicles, and then I put in some atmospherics, some smoke in Z. You’re saying Nuke will give me better access to those files in unison than AE can?

JPSendall

Story, not pixels.

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I would say, based on what you’ve told me so far, that these comps are essentially both background replacements/establishing shots.

I would probably build all elements including atmospheric particles in your 3D package along with a Z-Depth channel. In AE you can access the Z-Depth channel, and that’s where I would do lens blur/DOF if needed. The one drawbacks is that AE’s access to these aux channels is limited to 8-bit. I would investigate an alternative to the direct process.

If you have a lot of roto/repaint work then Nuke has a toolset that usually makes that process quicker.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

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[Ryan Freng]

Comping/camera tracking is certainly the least of what you can do. AE CC can even import c4d files thanks to the new interchange in AE CC. The camera tracking in AE is great as long as you don’t have more than two types of movement, ie: pan+tilt+dolly=bad, pan+tilt=good, tilt/pan+dolly=good. For those more complex moves you’ll need mocha or boujou or another camera tracker.

Shoot smart.

Owner/Director
Backflip Films
http://www.backflipfilms.com

[Shawn Miller]

[Angelo Lorenzo] “In AE you can access the Z-Depth channel, and that’s where I would do lens blur/DOF if needed. The one drawbacks is that AE’s access to these aux channels is limited to 8-bit.”

Sorry for coming in so late on this. But are you talking about channels from an OpenEXR file? I thought AE accessed .EXR channels in 32bit… am I wrong?

Shawn

[Angelo Lorenzo]

I’m looking at Effects > 3D > 3D channel extract

Slipped my mind to forget about EXtractor which is, indeed, 32-bit. My apologies.

——————–
Angelo Lorenzo

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