Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
-
Stacking order doesn’t generally matter when working with 3D layers, instead the position of the layers determines which is in front. Motion blur complicates this a bit more as there are now several sub-frame samples being taken to render the layer, some of the samples may appear in front and some behind. Your Shutter Phase may affect this.
The easiest way to solve this problem is to separate your two layers more using the position. If one layer has no keyframes, that’d be my first choice for moving 🙂
Darby Edelen
-
Are these 3D layers?
Darby Edelen
-
Only the top camera layer in a composition will be rendered. Submitting the same composition multiple times to the queue won’t get around this, when you start the process only the top camera’s view will be rendered.
You can render a composition, switch off a camera, then render again.
Also you can use this “top layer” scheme to your advantage by layering cameras on top of one another for cuts from one to the other.
Depending on how your composition is set up it may also be possible to nest your main composition inside several different render compositions, enable the “collapse transformations” switch on the pre-comp and create unique camera layers/views in each of the render comps. Then submit these separately to the render queue.
More info on collapse transformations:
Darby Edelen
-
[Evan Robinson] ”
Thanks,I just found a way to get the effect done perfectly:)”
Glad to hear it. I’m sorry that the solution I offered earlier confused you. It worked great for me.
The images you posted looked like incomplete solutions, did you end up using parenting at all or did you find another solution?
Darby Edelen
-
[Kevin Camp] “darby had a 560ti (not 570ti), and it has a power consumption of 500w. the 580 is 600w.”
Those power numbers are not the card’s power consumption but rather the minimum total system power supply recommended. I believe the dual quad core Mac Pro power supply (what I have) is 980W so that’s plenty.
The 560 Ti and 570 both use 2x 6-pin power connectors, which the Mac Pro can supply from its motherboard via the mini-to-standard 6 pin connectors I previously linked to.
The 580 requires one 6-pin and one 8-pin power connector though, and I’m not quite sure where an 8-pin power connector can be attached in a Mac Pro.
Darby Edelen
-
[Evan Robinson] “What i mean by having to adjust the picture to the video is this. When i make the image layer 3d, it moves position as seen here.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24316879/CreativeCow/made%203d.png
Now i have to adjust the image to video, by scaling, rotating, etc.
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/24316879/CreativeCow/adjusting.png“
Unfortunately I can’t view dropbox or other file sharing links at work.
Did my suggestion of relocating the solid via a null from a track point (or series of track points) not work?
Darby Edelen
-
The white solid moving once you’ve made it 3D is not entirely unexpected since the camera is most likely not pointing in the same direction as the ‘default’ or 2D camera.
You can select a few track points to create your solid from and then change the solid properties from there. Or you can create Null objects to use as locators and parent your already created solid to them.
I’m less sure what you mean by adjusting the image so that it’s at the same position in the video. If the below doesn’t help, please tell us more about the problem.
Once you’ve got your tracked camera you can duplicate your source footage AND the tracked camera. Parent the duplicate of the footage as well as your projecting light to whichever camera is lower in the timeline. Position the light at the same location as the camera [0,0,0] and position the duplicate footage directly in front of the camera by some distance like [0,0,200] (exact amount will depend on your scene scale). At 200 pixels in front of your camera you will need to scale your duplicate footage down until the edges of it exactly meet with the edges of the composition, then switch it over to cast shadows only.
When you want your “photo” to be taken, you need to stop the motion of the lower camera either with an expression or by deleting keyframes. You also should position your white solid to face the camera at this point. The projected image should stick onto the white solid.
Darby Edelen
-
Everything Kevin said lines up with my understanding.
From other things I’ve read the OS is not 100% aware of how to handle features of the card like the various power states, but the experience has still been better than any other card I’ve used. That said I’m not throwing my old card off the roof any time soon 🙂
The easiest power connectors to get to in the Mac Pro are on the motherboard and are mini 6-pin (not standard). These cables worked for me: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002UR1654/
I’ve read some posts by more adventurous folks who are rerouting power from the power supply, but I’m not comfortable trying that myself.
Darby Edelen
-
Rest assured that your color values are all doing just fine. Photoshop and AE don’t dither color values before sending them to your display. Your display is incapable of showing all the color values in the gradient, so you see banding.
The only time Photoshop or After Effects will dither the values is when converting to a lower bit depth. If you convert your image to 8bpc by rendering to a QuickTime MOV through AE, for example, the image will be dithered and you shouldn’t see the same banding. The same is true for converting to 8bpc in Photoshop.
If knowing that your colors are okay isn’t enough then in 32bpc you can add a black solid, apply a small amount of noise (say 0.1%) to it and set it to Linear Dodge (Add). Your gradient should look nice (although you’ve now changed your rendered color values slightly).
An alternate method for checking your gradient would be to create a Levels adjustment layer and slide the gamma value around. What you should notice in 32bpc and 16bpc is that the color banding looks like it’s moving. This indicates that each band is in fact made up of several different color values (rather than just one, as displayed on your monitor). If you tried the same thing with an 8bpc image the boundaries of each band would not change, only the colors within the band.
Darby Edelen
-
[Kevin Camp] “if you’re not sure if you’d use the gpu accelerated features, then you might look at the gtx285. it has about the same number of cuda cores and should give you similar acceleration as the 4000 for a lot less money.”
If you’re running Lion, you can download the latest Quadro drivers and use a GeForce GTX 560 Ti (EFI flash not required). You’ll need to get the right PCIe power connectors for it and add the card to the whitelist contained within the After Effects CS6 package. Technically it’s my understanding that even the GTX 580 will work, but I’m not sure about the power connectors required there.
I just installed a 560 Ti in my Mac Pro and it renders faster than a Quadro 4000. The Quadro, of course, is a tested solution while these others are not.
Darby Edelen