[Andrei Firtich]

OH, I am an idiot, Thanks. What about an arbitrarary map?

[Andrei Firtich]

Simple they cut out the elements in photoshop, then bring it into after effects or the composite of their choice, make them 3d layers and then move around their camera; if you can fake some paralax it will look good. Actually it takes a bit of time to make it look good, kinda of like rotoscoping. Also they add a moving element or two their final composite, like smoke, fire, birds in the background that kinda of thing, maybe even a 3d render or two too truly spice up the scene. Some sweet particles spewing at the camera are always nice but i guess it falls into 3d render.

[Andrei Firtich]

Edit:Displace Map

[Andrei Firtich]

Well it all depends on the shot, if the camera was static it could have been possibly done in AE, most likely it was done in 3d app and then composited in AE. As for as the whole thing being a full 3d render, I don’t think people realize how much effort and rendering time it takes to make photorealistic full scene render…it is a lot simpler to make a small render and then composite it to video or AE/Combustion scene. As far as using 3d tracking in my experience it is royal pain in the butt, ofcourse I have only used Synth Eyes 3d, maybe Benjouir makes it faster/easier.
Just my 2 cents

[Andrei Firtich]

You could try to enable Disk Cashe, Just go to Preferences, Memory and Cashe and click the checkbox, you might mess around iwth the other settings in the dialogue. Other than that no idea

[Andrei Firtich]

Try going to the Illustrator preference menu and into File handling and Clipboard, then in the Clipboard on quit uncheck AICB(no transparency support) and check PDF. This worked for me when I tried it

[Andrei Firtich]

Just render it out as targa sequence or RPF sequence, more flexibility.

[Andrei Firtich]

Did you try to play the clip in a another application, i.e. quicktime player, or windows media player. Because I noticed that sometimes, even when you render something out and play the clip in AE, with RAM preview there is certain flickering that is not present when you play in another application.
Just my 2 cents

[Andrei Firtich]

Did you actually render out and the artifacts are still there, or are you seeing the flicker in the RAM preview. A lot of times I see flicker in RAM preview but when I render out it is not noticiable.
Firtich

[Andrei Firtich]

Thanks for responding, it was a little late for this project, but I tried fractal noise with some turbulent displace and it looks really nice for some clouds textures. I just animated offset and evolution on fractal and evolution on turbulent displace and I love it. I have been looking for a way to animate a cloud texture for a while, this is definatly it. Thanks