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Problem while rendering
Hey guys,
at first – happy new year!
Since some months I’m the proud owner of Particle Illusion 3 for Mac OS X.
At first I had really no problems, everything was fine. I created my effects and did animations for my hobbyfilms. Now I changed my old MacBook (running OS X Snow Leopard) to a new iMac (running OS X Lion) and my camera is another one, too. I don’t know wether that’s important or not. Anyway, I was going to render a short clip (with a transporter sequence like in star trek, you know :D) and was really surprised as it didn’t work. The settings were the same like all the times before (saved as quicktimemovie (.mov), Apple Intermediate Codec 1080i and so on), but when I pressed “OK”, the whole thing became really creepy: “elapsed time: 00:00:00”, “estimated time rendering: 00:00:00”, “frame 99 of 9999 – 100%” while the progress bar hasn’t even reached it’s half.
Has anybody an idea what’s wrong? It’s possible that the whole thing is my faut, but is there any problem with “pillusionRender” and OS X Lion known? -
10 Replies
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On the new system, are you trying a simple project with just one emitter and no background footage? Are you certain that the pIllusionRender settings are exactly the same as on the old system?
Alan.
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Alan Lorence
Product Manager
GenArts, Inc.
http://www.genarts.com
http://www.wondertouch.com -
I tried a simple project with just one emitter and no background footage, and it worked. Then I tried a project with something like four emitters and a background footage (5sec; HD1080i; rendered and exportd with Final Cut Pro X) with the same settings and it didn’t work. Indeed, I’m pretty sure that the settings are the same (not 100%, but I don’t know I have changed anything).
Notger
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It’s probably the background movie. Try saving the project, then running pIRender manually and loading it there.
Alan.
………………..
Alan Lorence
Product Manager
GenArts, Inc.
http://www.genarts.com
http://www.wondertouch.com -
I tried it – sadly it still doesn’t work. It seems do be the same problem like before.
Notger
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Create a project that has no background footage and one or two emitters. Render it as a QuickTime movie. Then use that movie as a background movie in a new project and see if pIRender still has a problem with it. If not, something about that other Quicktime movie must be the problem.
Alan.
………………..
Alan Lorence
Product Manager
GenArts, Inc.
http://www.genarts.com
http://www.wondertouch.com -
I did this. The whole thing worked as it should be. No problem while rendering, no problem at all. Now I’m wondering what can be wrong with the quicktime footage I wanted to use as background? I can open the file without any problems with the quicktimeplayer… Any ideas?
Notger
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Does particleIllusion (not pIRender) load your original footage correctly and play it? Try zooming out the stage to 50% or 25% or whatever you need, then render in pI3. When it asks you if you want to set the zoom level to 100%, click “no”. The idea is to render a lower-res version inside pI (avoiding pIRender).
Alan.
………………..
Alan Lorence
Product Manager
GenArts, Inc.
http://www.genarts.com
http://www.wondertouch.com -
Okay. Now the rendering worked for the low-res output without PIRender. I can open the file with the quicktimeplayer, and wath it. But now there’s another problem: The output changed from 16:9 (original) to 4:3. Now the whole video is distorted. That’s, together with the fact that it’s low res (compared to the HD original footage). But I’m pretty happy that it seems like there’ll be a solution.. sometimes…
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Okay, so pI3 can read your footage, but pIRender can’t it seems. Sounds like a bug in pIRender, but can’t be sure.
The 4:3 issue is probably because the footage uses non-square pixels, and particleIllusion only uses square pixels at this time.
Your best bet will be to convert the footage (using another app) to another format that uses square pixels and a different codec that pI supports. Then use that footage in pI. If the quality after converting it is bad, render just the particles with alpha in pI, then composite onto your original footage in your video editing app.
Alan.
………………..
Alan Lorence
Product Manager
GenArts, Inc.
http://www.genarts.com
http://www.wondertouch.com -
Thank you very much for all your advises. I’m pretty sure it’s going to work. I’ll just try it.
If there are more problems, I’ll be back ;DNotger
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