[Greg Sage]

Are you talking about just adjusting the black and white points in the shader for the image, or something else? I wasn’t able to invert it any other way. I ended up creating a separate image with pure black for all opaque parts and pure white for all transparent, though it would be nice not to have to.

Still digging into a few of the options.

Also worth mentioning for anyone stumbling across this. If you have normal map that includes portions you are masking out with transparent panel, it will add shading to the portions that should be transparent. Couldn’t find a way around this, so I ended up fixing by taking the normal map into photoshop, masking out the portions that I’m making transparent, and replacing them with black. Solved the issue.

I have another related question, but it’s really a new topic beyond the title here, so will do in another thread.

thx

[Greg Sage]

Well, after a bunch more trying, it would appear that it doesn’t matter what’s loaded in for image in color, and it doesn’t matter whether the image is a transparent png since transparent gets treated as black, but the one thing that does matter is the image loaded in to transparency panel for the material… and that white is transparent.

That’s what was screwing me up. My images were very dark except for transparent parts.

Anyway, do I have this right now? Basically, I need to create images that match may mapped images, but are all black for the opaque parts, white for the transparent, then load that into the transparency panel?

Sorry, not sure how to post the “save with assets” version since it won’t let me select the folder that contains both the project and the assets, but rather makes me keep going until I select a file.

[Greg Sage]

Thx. I’ve been digging for a few hours and was zeroing in on something similar.

I do a lot of scripting in AE, and teach Middle School math, so I’m not afraid to dig into some basic scripting, but still wrapping my head around the flowchart xpresso editor as I saw it for the first time a few hours ago.

From what I can gather, it’s incrementing with time, then finding the remainder if out of range to keep it in range, then adding or subtracting to that value (and re-remaindering to keep in range) for the offsets, correct?

Digging in now…

Edit. Ok, I think I understand most of it, but missing one thing… it would appear that everything feeds from the camera alignment property which is still keyframed. Can this be an expression instead and the rest feeds from that? This will ultimately be timed to music, so in AE, for instance, I have everything timed to expressions that calculate various rates based upon the bpm of the music. I just enter a new bpm, and everything everywhere adjusts accordingly. Trying to get similar functionality here.

[Greg Sage]

Thx. Never used a formula to generate a spline before. Didn’t realize it was that easy.

Here’s the result:

9539_editabletrefoil.c4d.zip

Working great with camera inside following spline except:

1) The only way I could figure out how to make it loop was to put keyframes on first frame, and one frame beyond last frame. Did this for camera, for camera target (null 7% ahead on spline), and light source (15% ahead on spline) It’s not quite working, though. Even after I open up the f curves and make sure they’re exactly on right values, and set to constant velocity, there’s still a jump at the loop point. This is much worse for the other objects that were offset from 0 starting point since the program really doesn’t seem to like looping from a negative value,or to one over 100%.

Is there a better way to handle this? One that is more flexible? If I just want to speed or slow the animation at this point, it’s going to be a bit of a hassle as is.

2) I thought the rotations would be smooth, but they actually seem rather sudden. I see that the camera uses hpb rotation coordinates while following the spline, and that the bank value does not change. Is there perhaps a way to set some sort of formula for the bank to even it out… for instance so that if you swept the spline with a square, you could always have a certain side facing down? (at least from the perspective inside the knot)

3) Still trying to figure out how I can apply textures in After effects. Just not seeing that option anywhere, and I’m trying to wrap it with images that are dynamically created inside AE.

[Greg Sage]

Ok, thx. Wasn’t sure about bit depth slowing things down. I have plenty of ram, it’s the cpu cycles that are at a premium.

So I’ve switched to 16 bit, and linearizing with 709 workspace. Part I’m not sure about is output. I understand it’s not all up to YouTube, but it’s pointless for me to worry about it from there. I only control the point up until it’s transcoded at YT. I just need the closest I can get to some sort of reference after it gets processed by YT.

Given my settings, and given that I am delivering only to FB, YT (or similar in future), can I improve on my current practice of outputting from AE like this:

and then generating delivery format in AME with this:

For instance, I’m not specifying color space. Could or should I be using different codec, etc?

[Greg Sage]

Yeah. a minor issue there. Possibly less of a gamma issue perse and more of crushed blacks. Bigger issue appears to be the monitor drift though. Thx. Need to save up for a better monitor if it’s going to shift enough to be noticeable within 24 hours. I knew it was an issue… just not this big of an issue.

Moved on to some of the lingering color management issues this has touched on that I need to get squared away in this thread:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1068667

thx again. Good to have a troubleshooting system in place.

[Greg Sage]

Nope. My mistake. VLC looks right. Yeah, issue appears to be the transcode at YT.

Upon some digging, though, it would appear my (cheap lcd tv) monitor is also drifting significantly, so even though I’m in same room with fairly well controlled light leakage, no reflections on screen, and (best I could manage) calibration via colormunki, it would seem that there was a fairly significant gamma shift from when I output it to when I uploaded it (both viewed on same system and same screen. I’ve got windows blocked out, etc.

Since I recently had a major issue from output to QT player, I guess I assumed more if the issue was due to those sorts of issues. I’ve since figured out to just not ues QT player at all due to gamma mismatch. VLC seems to be much truer to how it looks on YT or fb (all I really care about)

Anyway, thx. It’s an opportunity for me to dig in and fix some of my workflow / color management issues once and for all… but that’s an item for another thread.

[Greg Sage]

The images from the dynamic link and the final mp4 are essentially identical. Scopes almost identical as well.

[Greg Sage]

AME settings to compress for delivery to YT and FB:

Yes, I have PR. Not sure what the scopes are you’re referring to, but I’ll open it up and start figuring it out.

No, no color management on AE project. If I remember correctly, I should also be doing something like sRGB with linearized workflow and higher bitrate, but I never could get all the details worked out, and video production is only one in a wide range of activities I rotate in and out of, so if I don’t get it all squared away into a preset, I’ll forget some of the details by next time around.

OK. I appreciate the help, and you’ve got my attention. Time to work out that preset. Opening PR and setting up dynamic link…

[Greg Sage]

Project settings:

Output module:

Then I run it through media encoder to turn into mp4 with YT’s recommended specs.

I remember doing a bunch of digging on here a couple years back to get a starting point and being so discouraged by the flood of unresolved info that I just left it alone. Not looking to write a thesis on color management here. Just want a decent workflow where I don’t have to worry about gamma shifts or other issues where YouTube version doesn’t match what I’ve been working on. (compression artifacts aside)