Brendan Coots
Forum Replies Created
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The key here is planning. In order to put together a piece this complex you have to break it down into its essential ingredients and plan it out pretty carefully.
For example, with the video you referenced there is a relatively clear break point between each shot, where the prior animation stops (or at least takes the back seat) and the next animation takes over. They all seem to be part of one flowing animation, but on a project of this size there were probably multiple artists. These artists were probably assigned a few scenes each and, as a team, they had a method for binding them together as one big master composition. In this particular animation, I would probably use a mixed approach – each artist’s animations are stand-alone comps, imported into a master project file and laid out as 3d layers. Provided each artist knows the end frame of the prior animation and the start frame of the animation that follows their own, they can fill in the middle with whatever they want. Using subtle camera animation and lights within the master comp, you can really tie the entire thing together and give it an extra level of cohesion, smoothing over any minor defects from shot to shot.
In the end, the ceiling a lot of people hit is only broken when they realize that design-as-you-go is fun and rewarding, but you can only go so far without really planning a project out, shot by shot. You will even need to conduct a few tests now and then to see what will yield the best result before going forward and spending a lot of the client’s money.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Quad-core Mac Pro, 8GB RAM (order the RAM from a third party supplier like Other World Computing or you’ll spend a bundle), video card is not important. Get (at minimum) a 22″ widescreen LCD monitor – Dell has great monitors for great prices. You would be even better off having a pair of these – one for your work area and palettes, and one just for the comp window so that you can preview HD comps at 100%.
You would also be wise to invest in three extra 500GB drives in RAID 0 configuration, ideally with a proper RAID card rather than using OSX’s built-in software RAID. This 1.5TB array would be perfect for your media – fast access since it’s RAID, plus plenty of room for those large files.
I know Windows users will say otherwise, but after years of trial and error I think macs are the way to go, especially with HD work. Dollar for dollar, a PC of comparable specs and build quality to a mac will cost you the same (if not more) and macs hold their value MUCH longer than any PC could hope to. Also, you would need 64-bit Windows to access the amount of RAM macs can, and Windows 64 has heaps of issues.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Congrats! Just make sure to load that puppy up with 2GB RAM per CPU (16GB in your case) to ensure that multiprocessor functionality uses all 8 cores.
You can get affordable, Apple Certified RAM from Other world Computing for a fraction of the price Apple charges. I have used it in 7 Mac Pros at my studio and it seems to work great.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
OpenGL implementation in After Effects is dodgy, most people don’t bother. In fact, you really won’t see much benefit unless you have a true workstation card like one of the nVidia Quadro or ATI FireGL cards.
If the check box is grayed out, that means your card doesn’t support the required openGL components, not much you can do about that.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
You are looking for a post-production facility/studio/company. Search around on Google and you’ll find plenty to choose from.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
It is a “cool” idea, but marketing via misinformation and fearmongering isn’t.
Or am I taking it a little too seriously?
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
I would wager that audio is probably NOT the real source of your problem, because that would have no impact on performance when the playhead is parked and you are trying to draw masks. The trouble overall sounds like data overload.
I do think that loading 20-50mb photoshop files could be a bit of an issue. While a video file may be 10GB and AE can handle it just fine, the datarate per frame (with, say, Animation codec) is only going to be 2MB/frame or so. With a large, single frame file like that, AE is having to shovel through a massive amount of data per frame – I would imagine the full 20-50MB. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong on this aspect of how AE handles single frame files.
That said, you may want to look at certain factors with your PSD imports. For example, can any of them be rendered out of photoshop to a lossless format like PNG, which will be much smaller than the full layered PSD? Also, are there any Layer Effects or Styles applied to them in Photoshop that are left “live” before importing the PSDs into AE? How many layers are in each PSD? I would guess that the size of your PSDs, or potential issues within them, is what is causing the trouble.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
On the risk question, I was referring to your client’s financial risk.
On the other stuff, I hear ya. The only thing that matters at the end of the day is whether or not your client thinks this is an acceptable arrangement. I know that many business clients would laugh if you told them you wanted to resell the footage they paid you to shoot for them, but this is a little different.
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
Project files are typically considered proprietary, confidential information BUT not because the law covers this – simply that most companies have this type of stuff covered in their contract. All of these issues come down to what is in your contract. If you don’t stipulate, in a signed contract, that you own the project files, then the only true answer is “whatever the judge decides.”
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com -
One of Photoshop’s palettes is the “Actions” palette. This lets you record a series of steps that you apply to an image, and then apply those steps to any other image you want. The process is roughy as follows:
1. open the Actions window
2. create a new action and name it
3. Open one of your images. Press the record button on your new action and apply the effects etc. to your open image that you want it to apply to the other images. This is not timed or anything so don’t worry about moving quickly. Bear in mind that things like saving the file and closing it after changes are made can also be recorded. If you plan to apply this action to 100 files, this is very important since you probably don’t want 100 fies open in Photoshop that you then have to save and close. You probably don’t even have the RAM to allow having that many images open at once.
4. Press the stop button on the action palette. At this point your action is done and ready to use.
Under the main photoshop menu there is an option to apply actions as a batch operation. You can also create a “droplet” of the action. This makes an .exe file (if you are on windows) on your desktop or wherever you choose that you can then drag files onto and the action will be automatically performed to them.
Sorry if some of these steps are mislabeled or not perfectly clear, I am not sitting in front of photoshop right now!
Brendan Coots
Splitvision Digital
http://www.splitvisiondigital.com