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workflow compatability and I/O
Hello there,
I’ve just stumbled upon your PI3 app. It seems very usefull..maybe….it certainly would turn around the mid-price clients much more quickly and easily than the “full-pull” way of using more complex particle/vfx systems, or having to disappoint them over the cost of a Flame artist.
Here at TDG we primarily use, Max/Combustion/Lustre and some others on the PC workstation and Smoke/Flame/Lustre on the SGI.
My question is: will your software output frames/alphas of the effects themselves – minus the initial footage – for later colour timing in Lustre and vfx comp’ing in Flame/Combustion? And at what output resolutions? Or input resolution? 2k?
I see there is a workaround for DV-AVI input. A lot of my clients in the mid-range bring this type of stuff in. Will you be adding it, natively, to your app in the near future?
Thanks for your input
Jef Knight
All-Knight Music / TDG -
1 Reply
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[knightro] “will your software output frames/alphas of the effects themselves – minus the initial footage”
Yes. There are a couple of different alpha channel settings that will allow you to generate a clean alpha for the particles.
[knightro] “And at what output resolutions? Or input resolution? 2k?”
In pIllusion itself, you’re currently limited to slightly less than your desktop resolution. For higher-res renders, use the included standalone renderer “pIllusionRender”. pIRender will render at 2K, but on Windows it uses software rendering which is quite slow, especially when compared to the hardware accelerated pIllusion. On the Mac, pIRender can use hardware acceleration (yay!) but it seems that most video cards limit the maximum output size to 2048×2048 (boo!), even with software rendering (app rendering including software rendering is done with OpenGL). Some newer Mac video cards allow 4096 x 4096.
One difference with pIllusion right now is that you’ll need to plan for your output res early on. Make the stage size what your final output res is, make sure your particle sprites are large enough, etc.
I think you’ll find it extremely useful, and capable of some quite realistic effects (if that’s what you’re looking for) — especially in the Pro Emitters “Eclectic” libraries.
Hope this helps.
Alan.
wondertouch
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