Andrew Somers
Forum Replies Created
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I misspoke I suppose — by “multi-threaded” I meant “Multi Frame Render”, I was following along with the OP’s question instead of correcting semantics.
Just FYI: All versions of AE are “multi-threaded” since before CS3 (where multiframe render was introduced as a way to improve processor efficiency). CS3 thru CC14 are both multi-threaded and render multiple frames at the same time — I should have been more clear in that I meant multi-frame render, or at least a similar efficiency to CS6’s multi-frame render. My understanding is that some day in the future, the “new” multi-threading schema will either be “much more efficient” and/or “do multiple frames”. But it ain’t there yet.
The latest version I was playing with was 2017, and it was dog slow compared to CC14 or CS6 version with multi-frame render for rendering out long sequences of huge frames, which is what we mostly do.
The CS6 kind of multi-threading did in fact take advantage of multiple processors & multithreading even when set to render only one frame at a time, but unfortunately the efficiency and CPU utilization dropped rapidly as you added processors. With four or more processors the CPUs would never even get half way to max if rendering only a frame at a time. But If you look at processes, you’d see that each of the individual frames were spawning over a hundred threads.
But there were/are a lot of other bottlenecks on the processing of frames that limits CPU maximization.
Michael said …each version of AE adds more and more GPU-accelerated effects
Are those CUDA specific? Because I thought the trend was to go to Open CL, instead of being tied to nVidia.
As for “Master Properties”, it’s not that relevant to what we do, though interestingly we’ve been doing something similar in our workflow for years using scripts and expressions. (Our “template” project is over 20MB empty as it’s preset with all the input, output, test/alignment, and working comps needed).
But all of this is academic. I’m sure the newer versions have great features useful for some people. The upshot is that *at present* for what WE do, which involves rendering frames 4K and larger and straight-froward compositing and titles that don’t use a bunch of “effects”, anything after CC 14 isn’t a benefit, it’s a problem. We need to be able to render multiple-frames at-a-time during the day.
The ability of newer CC versions to “render in the BG” sounds neat, but I don’t like to render until I’m done with the comp, and if I want to render while I’m working on another comp, the first comp just gets sent to the farm. And when it comes to that I’d rather have one farm machine ending multiple frames and sucking 300 watts of power, than six machines each rendering one frame at a time sucking 1200-1800 or so watts of power total (based on real work wattage measurements back when I was trying to figure out how to lower the power bill).
Nevertheless, that feature is not unique to the more recent CCs, as there are plenty of ways to background render even on CS6 with a $35 script.
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
He doesn’t have 100 layers, he has an image sequence of 100 images.
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I like this comment Terry. To add an RR “work around” – in his first film he didn’t have a blimped camera, so how to work around the camera noise? He’d record the actors right after each shot WILD.
How did he keep it in sync? He didn’t. In editorial he used very short cuts so sync drift wouldn’t develop in a noticeable way.
…Then he was heralded for his innovative fast editorial style…
:p
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
Twixtor is really no better than the built in OpticalFlow effects available inside After Effects (namely TimeWarp), And Kronos is what AE TimeWarp is based on — and they all derive to some degree from Kodak “CineSpeed” and/or Michael Black’s oflow algorithms.
These kinds of effects are fairly limited in what they are capable of. Some subjects work very well, others completely break and fail. Typically a lot of manual work has to go in such as rotomasks.
In general best results are using it at specific rates, such as 50%, where a single frame is interpolated for each “real” frame. I.e. make your footage 48 from 24. Slow object going in one direction work well with retiming, but object going opposite directions and crossing will break it (such as pedestrians walking even which way in a street scene).
I’d suggest spending some time with AE Timewarp using the “pixel motion” setting to see how it handles your subject matter.
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
Simply set a KEYFRAME at the beginning for scale 100%, then set a keyframe at the end with scale at 80%. After Effects will interpolate all the scales for the frames in between.
See:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/setting-selecting-deleting-keyframes.html
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
What I would suggest Andrea is to set your comp to 1920×1920, so you start work in what’s caed the “protected” space, and use GUIDES or an overlay to mark an area that is 1080 high, and you will CROP to that area for the HD version.
That 1080 vertical area does NOT need to be in the center (aka common center) it could be toward the top of the frame (common top).
For instance for years the standard at Universal for 1.85 films has been to “Compose for 1.85, but PROTECT for 1.33” (4:3). So when we say “protect” we mean keep the entire image area as useable.
So let’s say your animation has a lot of people walking around — you might want top, choose common top so that you reserve the3 relative composition for where their head/face is located, and only crop off the less important legs.
OUR WORKFLOW:
I have a working comp that is normally sized larger than the final output. Then that work comp going into an output comp which handle any LUTs or final color transforms, and ALSO sets the final frame size. From here I can make adjustments to the final composition as needed in the output comp. (You can also crop in the output module numerically, but I prefer seeing how I am cropping instead of crossing my fingers LOL).
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
Hey Omar, Here are some more answers. I understand this can seem complicated at first, but it will all make sense pretty soon.
Your boot drive as a PCIe card may support multiple SSDs, M2 is a form factor that fits well – Mine has two on the card, striped as Raid 0. SSDs are extremely orbust so it ‘s not “recarius” to use two SSDs in Raid 0. As a result they appear as one drive.
Your SWAP and CACHE will both be on the same boot drive as your system and applications.
No, SWAP is not just for when you’re low on memory — SWAP is integral to every modern operating system.
As for doing a Raid 0 with a couple regular hard drives — when I say continuous backups, I mean like Apple’s Time Machine, which does HOURLY back ups of only the files that have changed. If you are only using the Raid 0 hard drives for source footage, and you have that footage stored with the same file/folder structure elsewhere (as in on the delivery drive you received) then running time machine style backups isn’t needed — if you have a problem just re-load the media.
Myself, I have a Raid 0 with Time Machine, and I use it for more than media, so the consistent backup is a requirement. I do however keep the media files (that are available on other drives inside a subfoler at the root of ally my volumes, called /NOBACKUP
/NOBACKUP is excluded from Time Machine backups – but I’m not concerned as whenever is in the no backup folder is easily replaceable.
So to recap: You SSD(s) will all be joined as Raid 0 for performance, and will appear as a single volume, onto which you will install the OS, Apps, and set for Swap and Caches, and where appropriate source media.
If your SSD(s) aren’t big enough for holding your source media, you want that in hard drives striped for Raid 0.
If you strip physical hard drives to Raid 0, to protect against a high chance of a failure, you need to run frequent incremental backups, unless the media/files are easily replaced.
I hope that clears it up.
EDIT TO ADD: In an easier post I indicated needing a 16x PCIe slot for the SSD. That of course is only if you are getting a 16x SSD controller — in retrospect, for your application, even a 4 late PCIe controller should do well.
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
Got it.
So, all of my machines (except laptops) are Dual Xeons loaded with RAM.
BUT ALSO, I *only* use versions of After Effects that ARE still multithreaded. And I absolutely will not upgrade until Adobe fixes this issue.
Your RAM requirements are directly tied to your number of cores and multi-threading requirements. So if you are going to stick with a consumer grade CPU like the i7, then 32 GB is fine.
However, the higher end graphics card isn’t that much more expensive considering it will boost the speed of a LOT of things in your working environment, not just raytracing. Having a really fast graphics card is important for display previews.
As for SSD, do not skimp.
I will only recommend that the SSD boot drive be in a 16x PCIe slot — PCIe not SATA — (And as I mentioned you need a motherboard with TWO 16x PCIe slots, one for the SSD and one for graphics.) The best configurations have multiple M2 SSDs in a RAID 0, and the speed is phenomenal.
Having the fastest SSD makes an enormous difference if you configure the System and After Effects correctly, meaning:
1) Make the SSD the SWAP drive for the OS.
2) Make the SSD the ADOBE CACHE drive (and set the cache big, like 50GB or more).
3) When you have unusually large files, like 20,000 x 20,000 image maps, store them on the SSD (and add that storage location to your files path for C4D or in AE keep the folder structure the same, and just relink one file and the rest will follow)).**
4) Either render TO or source FROM the SSD, so that you are not doing both read and writes from/to the spinning hard drive.So then:
• An i7 Motherboard with two 16x PCIe slots.
• 32 GB Ram
• PCIe mounted SSD.
• Ideally a 1080ti, but a 1070ti with 8GB is okay. But forget the 1060, the 1070 has twice the cores but isn’t much more expensive.
• If you are doing anything “long” or at resolutions higher than HD, then you really need at least two hard drives in RAID 0, and am additional drive (USB 3 is okay) for continuous backup.Edit to add:
** Footnote: While you’re probably going to keep most footage items on the Hard Drive Raid, it IS helpful to temporarily move the “really big” files you might have to deal with to the SSD. Using the search and replace path script can help facilitate this. Also, if your comp has several big files being comped together, you’ll definitely improve render time by moving those big files to the SSD and then rendering to the Harddrive Raid (if multi threaded such as with Render Garden — if not multi-threaded then read and write to the SSD is fastest as AE won’t be reading and writing at the same time. At least until they fix multithreading.)Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
Masks don’t respect what an effect on the same layer “sees”, only what that layer outputs.
As such, you need to:
1) Remove that mask from the adjustment layer.
2) Apply that mask to the footage layer below to cut out the bag entirely.
3) Copy that footage layer and put it ABOVE the Adjustment layer.
4) On the copy above, change the mask to ADD instead of subtract (or make it not inverted — also remove from the above layer any masks that conflict with showing the bag clean.)
5) if needed, expand and feather the mask on the above footage layer to smooth the edge.
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com -
You can multi-thread with “RenderGarden” and it’s cheap!
AE used to multithread, it went away only because they are changing the render system and are “supposed” to be bringing multithreading back in a better way…….. but apparently not yet.
The AE Ray Tracer WILL take advantage of your CUDA cores, but the ray tracer is of limited use.
Nevertheless, your CUDA cores will go great with OCTANE or REDSHIFT which are physical raytracers that work with C4D, and run amazing on CUDA.
All that said — is this for hobby use? Then your build is fine. But if you are going to be doing actual production wok with deadlines to meet, your rig is about half the power/capabilities you need.
IMO get a dual CPU Xeon system, with 6 or 8 physical cores per CPU. With 8 each that will giver you 32 threads. Here’s the thing, you could get a new but older gen XEON setup for about the same money or less than a new i7 rig, and the Xeon rig will outperform the consumer grade i7.
48GB RAM is a minimum, but 64 total is more ideal especially if you get the full 32 thread version. You need the RAM so you can render in the BG with RenderGarden.
You’ll want a graphics card with more CUDA cores (for using a real physical raytracer), and more RAM on that card, so the 1080ti is a better choice – 11GB RAM and over 3500 cores (more than twice the 1060 – you WILL notice the difference).
And something you didn’t list – you want a RAID. Even if it’s just two or three drives striped as Raid 0, the speed difference is very noticeable both in terms of working and in terms of render time.
SO IMO, go Workstation:
1) Dual XEONs with 6 or 8 physical cores each.
2) 48 to 64 GB RAM.
3) nVidea 1080ti with 11GB RAM (getting two would be *ideal* if you’re going to do a lot of ray tracing).
4) PCI mounted SSD controller & SSD drive (better speed than SATA).
5) two or three drives striped as Raid 0 — (note than when you are striping as Raid 0 you pretty much *have* to run continuous auto backups like TimeMachine on OS X).
6) A dual Xeon motherboard with at least two 16x PCIe slots (one for the SSD, one for the 1080ti), slots for at least 48GB RAM, 3 or more SATA ports for striping drives together, etc.And you could build this yourself too.
Edit to add this article from https://www.techspot.com/review/1155-affordable-dual-xeon-pc/
Good luck
Andrew Somers
VFX & Title Supervisor
https://www.GeneralTitles.com