Placing scene in AE

[Edward Wu]

Hi Fred,

The OpenGL renderer is the high speed renderer, but does not render shadows, transparencies, bump maps, or final quality antialiasing. The Invigorator renderer is the final quality renderer, so when you are rendering your project for the final output, always leave it as the Invigorator renderer.

You didn’t mention what was the resolution for your project, but if your project is HD quality, or contains motion blur, then the render time for your project seems reasonable. Your project is currently rendering at about 6 seconds per frame, so if you have motion blur applied, then it will add multiple passes per frame, which will explain the longer rendering time.

a. In the ProAn app, should I make sure the pose is only as long as it will be visible? even if it is not moving after some point?

The pose shouldn’t add to the rendering time if you made your object fade off at a certain point. If the objects stayed on screen but are covered by other objects, then consider removing your objects.

b. Should I make sure the containing solid in AE is trimmed to start and end corresponding with the required visibility of the scene item?

You don’t necessarily have to trim the solid to correspond with the visibility. If the objects are not visible, then they should not add to the rendering time of your objects.

To reduce the render time for your project, look at your project setting and check to see if you are using motion blur, or also have shadow casting for your lights. These settings can add significant render times to your project.

Best,
Edward

[Fred Clewis]

Thanks Edward,

The comp is 640×480, 62 sec, 1 camera, no lights, 13 PA solid layers (most only used for a quarter of the time). I looked in project and comp settings, did not see a way to determine if motion blur was on, comp settings did have some motion blur settings, but no switch.

Before I got your response I shortened only the solids to their visibility. That render keeps growing in it’s estimate, up to 7+ hours now.

Just thought of something, is my problem that the PA solids have the AE 3D button on?

thanks,
fred

[Edward Wu]

Hi Fred,

Motion Blur is determined by the Solid that you applied ProAnimator on. If you set the Solid to enable Motion Blur, then your ProAnimator objects will have motion blur applied to them.

In terms of your ProAnimator Solids, they should be 2D Layers. The Solid should be comp sized, and kept as a 2D layer. Set your animation in the ProAnimator interface, and it will be placed in your After Effects composition.

Hope this helps your setup.

Best,
Edward

[Fred Clewis]

Thanks again Edward,

I now turn motion blur off in all layers in the render settings as I do not see a solid setting for that.

I returned all PA solid layers to 2D. I was thinking I would make PA objects usually from AI files and then navigate by them in a 3D AE setting. To do that they would need to be 3D solids, but perhaps that was the time hog. You suggest that is not a recommended use of PA.

I started getting lower render times, especially in draft/half res mode. However, I started getting that “unable to allocate image buffer” failures. I followed all of the many suggestions for that in this forum, but I still get them or either AE crashes.

I think I should just start the development of this comp over with fewer PA solids. I see that I can put multiple tracks in a single PA scene. I have just been using it for one object at a time and have 13. If I could lower the total number of PA solids, perhaps that would get me operational again.

thanks for your help,
fred

[Edward Wu]

Hi Fred,

Are you getting the “unable to allocate image buffer” error message at the end of the render, or is it happening right when you hit the Render button?

If you submit a screenshot of the error message and also your After Effects scene (minus the footages), I can take a look at your setup and see what you might be running into.

My e-mail address is ed@zaxwerks.com

Best,
Edward