Andrew Yoole
Forum Replies Created
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Download the demo of Light Factory and you’ll understand immediately why they are completely different products.
https://www.redgiantsoftware.com/knolldemo.html
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Use Motion Sketch to give the dot an erratic hand held feel.
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AE won’t import ANY 3D object natively, regardless of what application it came from. A third-party plugin will allow you to work with true 3D objects within an AE layer: Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator
Save your Bryce object as a standard 3D file (like 3DMF) then import to 3D Inv. within AE. You will need to re-texture it etc.
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You’ve already explained the easiest way to do it in your own post, duplicate the layer. Takes too long? Cmd/Ctrl D is all it takes.
An alternative is to use an adjustment layer, but note that this will affect ALL layers beneath the adjustment layer.
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Do you have the Continuosly Rasterize button checked for the Illustrator layer? It’s the little sun-like check box, near frame blending and motion blur.
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[Bobby Mosaedi] “The dimensions are 2290×1050 with blending. And motion JPEG compression is going to be fine, so i think a loopable 30-sec .mov on DVD will be fine. “
Not sure if I was clear in my previous post. You should either:
Provide UNCOMPRESSED quicktimes to the Watchout guys, so they can create the split files with compression themselves.
Or:
Get the split file requirements and render the splits yourself WITH compression.
If you compress the full size Quicktime and the Watchout guys then have to split it up, the resulting files will have been compressed twice, compromising the image quality of your work.
[Bobby Mosaedi] “What kind of renderfarm performace will i get out a dual 500mhz g4 powermac and a 1GHZ G4 powerbook while composing all my work on a 1.8 ghz imac G5?”
At the risk of repeating myself, FORGET render farms for live production work, unless you have hardware that makes it worthwile. Stringing 3 low-end processors together will not dramatically increase your render time, plus you will have the added headache of having to re-render the final image sequence back into quicktimes before delivery. (Render farms can only render image sequences, not Quicktimes) Plus all the network administration, making certain you have licenses for every plugin on all machines, font management on each machine, etc.
If you don’t want to take your own desktop Powermac, rent one.
[Bobby Mosaedi] “now that has raised another question for me… how would i deliver to them my file if it was larger than 4GB? i couldnt format a firewire hard disk in FAT32 since it wont allow large filesizes. and im sure their PC with watchout on it does not have software that can read HFS formatted drives. the only way i can think of is to do a network transfer, but what if that is not an option?”
Buy a copy of the software utility called MacDrive (50 bucks), and get the Watchout guys to install it on their production control machine. This will allow the PC to read any Mac-formatted drive faultlessly.
https://www.mediafour.com/products/macdrive6/
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Okay Bobby, here’s the deal. I’ve done Watchout design work all over the world, and the main thing I’ve learned is you need LOTS of render time and render power. Forget your Powerbook, and forget render farms. The network will fail just when you need it, and you’re talking about a bunch of ill-equipped machines connected in a line. 3 machines equals 3 sets of headaches.
Rent yourself the most powerful desktop system you can get, preferably a Quad G5. You’re working in Vegas, there are plenty of options. Here’s the first link of many I found with a Google search:
https://www.iccrents.com/apple-computer-rentals.asp
Treat your Powerbook as an emergency backup machine.
Give yourself plenty of time to set the rental machine up properly. Clean install the whole OS if you have the time.
Speak to the Watchout guys well in advance. Find out EXACTLY what files they require for playback. You can simultaneously render an uncompressed full-res version, and all the split files they require for each playback scene. Create multiple templates for the output modules you require, using the Crop tool in the output module to separate each split. Make sure you understand the overlap concept of Watchout, or you’ll mess it up. This way you will provide them with the exact files and dimensions they require, and they won’t need to do any conversion. Odds are you will need to generate numerous Quicktimes using Sorenson or similar compression. If you set everything up properly you can render everything in 1 pass. The more time you save the Watchout guys, the more time you’ll have to render.
Make sure you have a fast Firewire drive that is PC compatible. Forget DVD-R’s, they’re too slow and flaky. Put all your output files on the firewire drive and just hand it to the Watchout guys.
So long as you get your maths right with the Watchout guys, the job will work smoothly.
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Simplest way to get clear about this is render a test. Animate some text or a solid moving right to left over a few seconds. Render interlaced and non-interlaced copies. Import both into your Avid and watch them on an interlaced monitor. The difference will be glaringly obvious.
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When you render with fields, each resulting frame contains two fields. Each field represents a different moment in time, each one 1/60th of a second apart. (Half of 30fps frame rate). So the position of a moving object in field 1 is different to it’s position in field 2. The effective result is 60 positions in time in one second.
If you rendered non-interlaced frames and then split a resulting frame into two fields, both fields would represent the same moment in time, or 30 positions in one second.
Field rendered motion appears smoother.
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Firstly, your image size for a sq pixel PAL image should be 768×576.
AE will adjust the size of the above image so that it fits perfectly in a PAL DV/D1 comp. If it doesn’t check that AE is interpreting the image correctly as sq pixels.