[Bart Stevens]

Thanks Walter and Dave,
I had to sleep on it for a night, but I think I have it figured out.
Pretty Simple, if I’m right.
I’ll create my animation with a null in the massive comp, just a null that is a child of a center null parent. The display canvas (for reference) will also be a child of the center null. I create my animation across all the displays, and then cut and paste the null animation into a HD comp. I position the center null for the specific display, and render particular in that comp.
I’ll be testing this morning, so I’ll let you know if I hit another wall. Thanks again for the expert advice.

[Bart Stevens]

Dave,
Thanks for the info.
Yes, flicker would be the generic term I was using for the appearance of moderately fast motion in 24p. Personally, I don’t mind the look, but the company decision is 60i. The thinking would be the use of interlaced frames would smooth out the 24p “flicker”.
I was hoping this would be a task I could do just with After Effects and/or Pixel Motion, but I will look into Magic Bullet and Twixtor.
Maximum frame rate for playback could be 60fps for both the playback and projector, but we would like to show the broadcast standard of 60i.
Thanks again,
Bart

[Bart Stevens]

Dave,
The content is already edited, and I’m trying to maintain the timing of the edit.
The content is specifically for a projector demo. The “flicker” associated with 24p won’t work for our presentation needs.
So I want to take the 24p stock, convert it to 60i for a 60i presentation.
In that process, I’m trying to maintain the pacing of the original edit and reduce the “stutter” effects of a 3:2 pull down.
I’m still not sure, does the 3:2 pull down maintain the timing of the original 24p content?
If not, how does the broadcast world deal with theatrical films that originated in 24p?

[Bart Stevens]

Thanks for the info Walter.
Yes, I’ve learned the hard way that rendering image sequences is a safer way to go.
I did some more searches on the forum about my challenge, and came across an artist that would work with multiple cameras within the “gigantic multiple display comp”. Each camera would match up with a specific display, and he would render specifically for that camera.

Would that method have better performance over importing the “gigantic comp” into a HD comp and position and crop.

I want to avoid the mass computations that would be needed if AE is rendering the massive comp vs. a cropped HD comp.
I’m still not sure if even re-importing the cropped “gigantic comp” into a HD comp would eliminate the processing for the entire Comp.

Thanks again,
Bart

[Bart Stevens]

Thanks Dave,
Yes playback will be a challenge, but we’ve got some good solutions.
DOREMI v1 UHD can synchronize for playback. They’re on the expensive side, so I’m seeing if they can sync with the DOREMI Nugget. Thanks for the feedback.
-Bart Stevens

[Bart Stevens]

Thanks for the link Dave,
definitely seems like it’s a memory issue

[Bart Stevens]

Thanks Dave,
I should have provided that information.
Adobe CS5
Windows 7 64 bit
dual quad core Intel Xeon
12 gigs ram

[Bart Stevens]

Thanks for the response Cassius,
Yeah I understand the concept, but was having a hard time getting it work. I found a method to get the results I needed anyway.
Thanks for the help.
-B

[Bart Stevens]

Since I’ve exported my camera from my 3d animation software (xsi), if I set my renders as 3D layers they would act like 3D planes when being represented by my camera. I tried that idea with collapsed transformations, but that was unsuccessful too.

Finally got it figured out though…
Obvious answer there all along.
I just combined the comp with the positive Z space “masked out” as my bottom background element (2D pre-comp with same camera). And I use the same comp without the mask as my top foreground element.
Definitely over-thinking this one.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

[Bart Stevens]

Thanks for the idea, I’ve played around with generating depth maps from xsi, but I’m not sure that would accomplish what I’m trying to do.
The After Effects project really just needs to be split in two by the Z axis. I need it to be either A(foreground) or B (background).
The goal is to incorporate AE 3-D layers with rendered 2-D images from XSI. Not sure if I’m communicating accurately or not.
Thanks for the assistance, not many working with XSI and AE.