[Michael Duff]

if you do a search in here and in the business forum you will find lots of posts on “charging” “rates” “billing” etc etc

but I’m sure everyones response will be work out an hourly rate and then multiply by the hours…..don’t forget to include in your rate depreciation of software and hardware…. so you might charge $100/hour and spend 20 hours on it….. you might charge $250/hour and spend 3 months on it……..you might do it for free……

[Michael Duff]

I too have been running an external Seagate HD through a really cheap case I got from ebay. No cooling on the case and I leave it on for days straight, often with music streaming off it if I forget to close iTunes. Can’t be good for the drive, but it is nearly three years old and has never had a problem.

[Michael Duff]

search the archives for cinema 4D and you will find loads of info about integration .

the only way to manipulate 3D models in AE is to use a plug-in like 3D Invigorator – apart from that you can do all your 3D animation renders in Cinema4D and then export a multipass with camera data -then your AE camera will match up to the c4d one, and you can colour grade and manipulate the different passes separately. add 3D elements like text in AE and they will match up.

[Michael Duff]

cheers – will try all these methods….Steve, often when I use a shatter map that is exactly the same as object I get lost pieces that just fly around – like the map isn’t matching up correctly. But it must be cause all I do is desaturate the same image.

[Michael Duff]

we just got 7.0 – and it is definetly not a matter of re-learning the software…..it looks different. I think it looks better, and is much more customisable…… but if you know 6.5 you will be fine in 7.0. It takes a couple minutes to setup your workspace and work out where some of the buttons have moved to, and then your fine.

Have a read around the web of the new features and then decide if they will be benifical to you.

Michael Duff –
Bearcage Productions, Australia

[Michael Duff]

oh yeah….. in time controls window – is your framerate set correcttly?

[Michael Duff]

i’ve experienced where the ram preview plays slowly the first time…..then on the second go it catches up to itself….. not sure why…. try doing a RAM preview but skipping 1 frame and see if it’s better…..

btw, what system do you have? how much RAM? speed of RAM?

[Michael Duff]

have you interpreted the footage in the project window? and maybe it looks edgy in the comp because PAR correction is turned on? or maybe you’re not viewing it at full res? or maybe some layer switches are on draft?…….

[Michael Duff]

I always wondered, all you need to log in is a name and your matching email address. It wouldn’t be too hard to match up someone elses name to their email and make bogus posts……… just a thought,

[Michael Duff]

if they are just letters that don’t overlap this is what I do:

Instead of just making a copy of the letters that are black, make black rectangles that each cover a single letter, but don’t overlap. Then use this as the custom map….

does that make sense?