[Jerry Smith]

Like I say, I have been able to isolate it to quite a simple situation. The precomp is super simple. Just a solid. The comp is just that precomp with a mask.

I did play with changing the blur settings under the advanced tab. And yes, it increases the blur for the translation. But again, for the rotation, there is almost no effect. I can only get rotation blur if I turn off collapse transformations.

[Jerry Smith]

Thanks John for your patient. And yes, scaling up the text makes me want to believe everything is going to be fine. Buttt, I have worked very hard to make all my edges razor sharp, except for a few that are allowed to have a one pixel transition from black to white. I’ve spent most of the last two weeks zoomed in to the MAX. And now I see text that has a two pixel transition and I am not happy about that. Not happy at all. Furthemore, it definitely goes away when I turn off 3d. Moreover, even in 3d, depending on position, scale, etc, sometimes it goes away.

I’m just confused about something. This is the vector age we are living in. And I assume text is vector based. So, if somebody draws some straight text, like “I” or “T” or “L” then I have assumed that there will be no more than a one pixel transition. And even if we put it in 3d, as long as it is parallel or perpendicular to the earth, then again also there will be no more than a one pixel transition.

Am I wrong about that??

If not, then there must be something wrong with some setting. I am assuming that my RAM preview tells me exactly what my rendered version will contain in terms of sharpness.

[Jerry Smith]

I had been so busy with other issues that I failed to give much thought to text. Now I realize that neither the camera nor the z value are relevant. Almost all my text is a bit blurry.

I am using Classic. I tried Ray Trace briefly, but to no avail. Adobe explains that Ray Trace doesn’t help with text.

How can I see how blurry the render is? I can get a .mov, but I can’t seem to zoom in with the default mac viewer to see what is going on.

I’m thinking that either this is a well known unfortunate fact about 3d text OR it is some simple setting OR it will look better when rendered.

(I’m pretty clueless about rendering. Despite about 200 hours of AE, I’ve only rendered about 10 things.)

[Jerry Smith]

That is about a 71pt font that is scaled down to 51% and then brought into z=-2050. That is the top of a bolded “I”. I also have the same problem elsewhere with other font sizes. It seems to be purely a 3d problem because it does disappear when I turn off 3d for text at z=0.

[Jerry Smith]

This happens with the camera off and with rasterize/collapse on.

[Jerry Smith]

Thanks Derek.

But I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand either “clock the motion blur” or “powerful the whole thing”.

I have been doing some experiments. Even when I turn on 3d and motion blur for the pre-comp simple solid (maybe this is what you mean by “clock the motion blur”), it doesn’t change anything. Also, collapsing transformations does change the translational blur a little bit. But it still looks good. But collapsing transformations seems to almost completely totally remove the motion blur in the rotations. I can sorta convince myself that there is a tiny bit of blur, but even if I speed up the rotation, it doesn’t increase, so confusion remains. Eventually, I may have to just get rid of motion blur for my layers and just apply it at the very end to the whole thing. But first, I would like to figure out what the heck is going on.

Also, I might add that the text that is on top and parented to this layer is rasterized and blurs just fine!

[Jerry Smith]

OK, I see that this is due to turning on 3d. But why should that make the text blurry? Is there any way I can clean this up?

[Jerry Smith]

If you enable time remapping, they disappear.

[Jerry Smith]

Man, I earned my AE stripes. I did a partial redo. Lobbed off 7/8. Wrote a script to homogenize all inexact numbers. Then duplicated the remaining 1/8th three times. Then I turned on the Matte Choker just enough to get rid of all offending 1 pixel edges. Then I had to still go in and move many edges by hand taking into account a 61% scaling. Then I had to automate the chocker to come on just as the motion is stopping–two frames to turn it on.

Now my render times have gone through the roof, maybe 20 times longer? I dunno. Seems like I can’t RAM preview the entire thing. I guess that choker is choking my 16MB of RAM i7 macmini?

But, man, you’ve never seen sharper edges!

I’m going to tell the boss I deserve a raise.

[Jerry Smith]

Thanks Kevin.

1) Modifying the masks via draft quality is one of my current candidate strategies.

2) I’ll have to read up on chokers.

3) Pre-comping is a possibility, but would require considerable revamping. The white can’t simply be turned off and new masks would be needed. I’ll have to read more about preserve transparency though.

4) Too late in the game to reconstruct the rectangles. I thought about it last night for a few hours.

5) Something that you haven’t mentioned. I can use backgrounds that are less saturated.