[Joe Moya]

If your looking for faster renders… the best cheapest gain would be moving up to at least 3Gigs of RAM (2,4 or 6 Gig RAM is preferred for most mobo’s) …. Second (but definately not the cheapest), you could go with is a Adaptec Raid card setup using e-sata 15k rpm Fujitsu Drives. At least one set of dual HD/stripe raid for your disk cache and another set of dual HD’s/stripe setup for your operating system/software application. That set up will be a 4 drive (i.e., 2 striped raid) setup. You could repeat this set up for each disk cache drive setup you want to use…(see the Media and Disk cache setup preferences).

Multi-processors are a step up in speed (specially with 64bit OS)… but, typically the biggest bottleneck is the Hard Drive (and, the HD’s search time for long renders).

[Joe Moya]

Find and old windshield… break it a fashion you want to look like (or, find a windlshield that is already broke the way you want it to look)… green screen the background… then, film or photograph the broken windshield from the same angle you want the final shot to look like… superimpose using a seperate layer to put into project. You don’t even need AE to do this effect…. a pro-level editing software should be able to do this.

[Joe Moya]

In Pro-animator…While in object mode, you selected all objects… then, go to material setup and apply to the “palette window?” the metalic materials available in the Materials tab.

… the key is being in the material setup window…

I am not sure this is the same in invigorator (although they are similar)… but, hopefully this will provide enough info. to help you out.

[Joe Moya]

Does that work with CS4?

[Joe Moya]

Well… now that I looked more closely at my post…

… it should be R”MY”ownFP… for clarity…I didn’t mean to be rude toward anyone… I just can’t write correctly this evening… and actually didn’t mean to direct the RTFP toward anyone except myself.

At any rate… I never got the cache to purge… however, I did manage to get a back up to work by resaving the file and copying ALL the comps to a new comp (within that same newly named file). However, it is still acting a bit “flakey”.

I have spent some time trying to figure out what caused this… and, it seems to come down to an overall very complex composite project that uses many 3D objects created by Zaxwerks in combination with Shatter (…even if you use Proxies). Those combos of HD plus numerous 3D objects with shatter applied makes for some nastly rendering problems for a 32bit PC system (…and, to say the least my system is pretty much the fastest mobo, video card, striped HD Raid plus processing chip setup available).

If I was guessing… when you are using HD projects with Zaxwerks and Shatter (to name a few)… The XP limits of usuable RAM (i.e., 2G/3G) is the culprit. I want to go to 64bit for it’s extended usuable RAM capacity… but, I am waiting for some driver issues to be worked out for my RAW file video editing side of the process.

Joe Moya – who put the M in RMFP

[Joe Moya]

I am not sure english is your first language… it certainly must not be mine since I failed to make clear that…

… the Edit>All/Image Caches/Video does not work…

hmmm… maybe it should be RTFP…

Any other solution?

[Joe Moya]

Thanks for the suggestion:

Now… it appears that with the 4 5 1 version NOTHING will render and the Material Set-up doesn’t work. I should have known better than switch out midway through a project.

At any rate… My 2 week HD project seems to be pretty much toast unless a miracle can be found in one of the many back ups I have.

I re-install 4 5 0 version and Material set-up works… but, that’s about it… unfortunately, the render is still no longer functional (either OpenGL or ProAnimator’s). Before the attempting to use the upgraded version…at least the OpenGL render worked… now, no rendering works. Who would have thunk’ that a simple drag and drop install of a new version would cause this kind of problem?

I have come to the conclusion that when you attempt to use Pro-Animator with projects that require some heave lifting by lots of RAM then XP (with it’s 2G limit) can’t work well with ProAnimator.

At this point, I have hundreds of layers of HD composition that represents hundreds of hrs. of work is pretty much a big problem… I plan on contacting tech support and see if there is a solution to this problem. My plans are to do nothing else in fear of screwing up the project file (moreso than it alreadys seems to be).

Not that this means much (or maybe it does)… but, AE’s Image Caches will not purge either…

BTW, these are my computer specs.

WinXP, ASUS W6T6 WS Rev., Intel i7 3.2Ghz 8X32bit CPU, 6G Corsair DDR3 (low lat.) RAM, GeForce GTX 280, LG DVD, Realtek AC97 Aud., Adaptec 5405 RAID SAS controller for 2 Stripes of 2xHD 15k rpm Fujitsu 300G each (i.e., thats a total of 4 – 15k RPM HD’s operating as 2 stripes for maximum I/O), 2×20″Samsung 204t monitors.

[Joe Moya]

The problem is that there is no mask in the entire composition.

In fact, I copied the entire comp to a new comp within the same project… then, deleted all layers withing that newly created comp and the Selection Tool is still lock as a mask.

Another thing I noticed is that when I use this locked Selection tool, the border color is white… a typical (or default) mask border color is yellow. This white bordered mask can not be deleted… and, the only solution to removing this mask is File>Revert the project.

Also… I found out that if I create a mask using this locked Locked Section Tool, the Selection tool returns to “normal”. However, then when I use the mask tool or the shape creating tool… then, create a shape layer… I can not remove the shape created or any mask created.

It seems these two buttons (Selection Tool and Shape Tool) are inter-changeably locked and can not be deleted when used

Any one know what a White Bordered mask references? The preferences are defaulted so that the color of the mask is yellow and borders of the layers are suppose to match the layer color. I have no layer that is colored white in the project. Also, why would the Shape Tool and Selection tool be inter-locked in a fashion that prevents deletion of the mask and Selection tool becomes unlocked and useable but the masks can not be deleted with either Tool?

[Joe Moya]

BUG?

Try and copy a shatter effect applied to a layer image…make sure the Shatter View is Set to Render and the Pattern is Custom with a Custom Shatter Map equal to the current layer (i.e., layer 1.)
Then, apply another image to a new layer…
Now, copy previous shatter effect to new layer… Layer will disappear.
Solution?
Go to second layer…
change View to Layer… the copy (or at least my copy) defaults to Wireframe + Forces… and, Pattern will be Brick with no Custom Shatter Map.

Change View to Layer to – Render… then, Pattern to custom and set Custome Shatter Map to current new layer (i.e., 2.)

Now – the shatter layer is visable.

It appears copy of Shatter does not copy View, Shape Patten and Custom Shatter Map. Shatter copies from previous layers when pasted to a new layer defaults to Shatter presets for these (and perhaps others… haven’t check this out) elements. This results in the layer disappearing since the layer had no defined pattern and/or render format. This is why pre-composing will not fix this disappearing act.

This only took me a few hours to figure out…

[Joe Moya]

Thanks for idea, but I was trying to avoid rendering… but, will try your idea out and see if any difference in quality degradation occurs during the render (ie., degradation as compared to rescaling in percents).