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Z Depth Question
Hi all
I am rendering numerous scenes out of Maya to be composited with live footage. In many shots i want to have control over the depth of field in AE. I have rendered out a targa sequence out of Maya, but targas obviously dont support z channel as maya automatically created a seperated sequence of iff files with the z information.
Is there a better format that is still of production quality and supports alphas, that can also store the z channel all in one file?
Also, i couldnt import the iff sequence into AE so i converted it into a tiff sequence and then brought that in. Is there a way to use the tiff sequence as the z depth channel for another layaer in my comp (ie. the rgb sequence layer)?
What do you guys find to be the most efficient workflow?
Cheers
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4 Replies
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RPF and RLA will imporrt the Z depth buffer as embedded channels, as in theory would OpenEXR, but AE does only handle RGBA in EXR files, so it’s a moot point. If you have AE 7, you can use the Lensblur effect with any greyscale image type. Quality wise it’s much better than the 3D channel equivalent, anyways. If you want to push it even further, get Lenscare or Sakura Labs’ Iris filter for ultimate realism. Also many plugin collections such as Boris FX or Tinderbox contain this type of effect with varying degrees of control and quality.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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an .IFF sequence should also work.
-stev=o
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In theory yes, but I’ve heard so many people not getting it to work (because of some changes to the IFF format related to MentalRay in Maya), so I don’t advise to use it(with AE, that is; it seems to work just fine in other apps; go figure :-\).
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Thanks for your responses.
Yes the iff files did not open and yes, i was using mental ray.
Mylenium, with the use of the lens blur effect in AE7, i have 2 questions:
1. Am i right to assume that it still calculates the depth by the percentage of grey, therefore with a proper z depth sequence i should still get the same effect?
2. Assuming it does, as the z channel info will still be on a seperate layer to the actual rgb sequence, who can i transfer the lens blur from the z depth layer to my rgb layer?
Cheers mate
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