Thoughts on how to simplify this project to speed rendering?

Adobe After Effects

Thoughts on how to simplify this project to speed rendering?

Posted by Stephen Pickering on February 12, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Hi everyone,

Here’s the project: https://we.tl/UAtxWYBUFP

I have a project I’ve been working on which is essentially a “Venetian Blinds” effect controlled using sliders. I’ve never done expressions to this extent, so there was A LOT of learning. And I’m sure I’ve even got bottle necks in the expressions themselves…

But here’s the deal, the video is for an awards ceremony which will have MANY awards (meaning many videos (about 30+)). Currently the videos take a lot of time to render. I know this is because I am using 3d, lights, shadows, and lots of comps.

But I’m wondering if anyone might be able to take a look and see if there is anything that stands out as being an unnecessary bottleneck.

Of course “pre-rendering” is certainly the first thought I had but nearly every comp is taking information from the comp above it, so I can’t figure out a way to make that work. I have an additional “highlight” layer with blending, a ramp, and transparency one each layer which is not needed but adds the “Bevel” look which I cannot figure out a different way of achieving. The biggest issue is that I want (but don’t NEED) my control slider to control the size, rotation, spacing, etc (which it does now, but then limits my ability to pre-compose, pre-render, etc.) Every animation will be near identical but just different text and video.

So, anyone willing to take a look to see what I might be able to do away with to speed up my render time?

Thanks for any suggestions!

-Stephen

Stephen Pickering replied 13 years, 3 months ago 45,961 Members · 2 Replies
2 Replies

Stephen Pickering
February 12, 2013 at 11:44 pm

Thanks Dave,

The system this project is currently on is a PC with Windows 7 64bit
Intel Xeon X3440 @ 2.53 (8 cores)
16GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 video card (I know this is not a supported card)
After Effects CS6 v. 11.0.2.12
Multiprocessing disabled, 13GB RAM reserved for AE, ray tracing off, “Classic 3d” on.
The video footage is h.264 (.mov) from t2i, however I think I will end up just using still graphics instead of video for this opening.

I know these specs are poor so I’m not expecting great performance, but I thought there might be some gurus out there who know the effects are that kill performance (or tricks to simulate render-intensive settings without the real thing).

Thanks Dave,

Stephen
Stephen Pickering
February 19, 2013 at 12:49 am

Thanks Dave,

I appreciate your help on this. I’ve read about h.264 being hard for AE. Even without the video (just the stills) it was sluggish which I realized was due to the lights. The nature of the project was multiple layers of a single composition (split up like blinds using masks). Each layer both accepted lights and cast shadows.

My workaround was a bit of a cheat which actually worked really well in this case. I rendered out the animation with just white layers (accepting lights and casting shadows). This created a video with just shadow. Then I turned off the lights in the original composition and simply put the rendered video on the the top layer with a multiply mode and 32% opacity. I also needed to compress the curves a little. While it was not perfect it worked really well and allowed me extremely fast render times which let me hit my deadline.

I really appreciate your time to help on this Dave!

Take care,

-Stephen Pickering

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