[Jon Bagge]

I have a Windows workstation and a Mac laptop and it’s simply not an issue for most things. I use MacDrive to read mac drives on windows, beyond that they share the same network with no problems.

Files belonging to any adobe product or avid (which are the two I use the most) can be interchanged freely without any problems.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

This is certainly possible, but I don’t know how easy it would be with whatever rig you’ve already made.

If your animation is done using a rig of nulls linked/parented together and then linked to graphic layers, it should be possible to make this rig fit another character. For that to work all the characters will of course need to have the same basic elements, but also your rig will need to have features to allow you to scale it to fit the possibly differently shaped characters.

If all the animation is rotation of limbs, you may not need to do any scaling, but can simply use an expression (pick-whip) to link the rotation of the character to the rotation in your rig.

I’m mostly hypothesising about what I can imagine doing here. I’ve never done this, and if your rig and animation is already done it may be difficult depending on how you’re done it.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

Does it contain an alpha channel? If it does and the alpha channel is set to ‘uncompressed’ it will massively increase the size of your file beyond the normal DNxHD bitrate. Switching to ‘compressed’ will make it only slightly larger.

You can change compressed/uncompressed alpha channel within the DNxHD dialogue box when you change render output settings.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

Just to clarify about the puppet tool which may be causing your issue:

When you first apply the puppet tool, it uses the current alpha channel of the layer to determine where to draw the mesh outline. This base outline will never change regardless of any changes you do to the layer itself.

So after applying the puppet tool you can’t do anything that would change the original alpha channel or everything will go wonky.

You also can’t turn on the collapse transformations switch on a puppet layer, as this will move any layer transforms to before the puppet effect, thereby potentially changing the alpha again.

Hope this is of any help.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I am kind of surprised how quickly some folks easily give up the control of their purchased software. I dont understand this lemming like approach.

I agree with this and would rather just buy the CSnext update when it comes out. But they’ve made it so only the Cloud subscription allow installation on both Mac+PC so unless this is changed it looks like I may have to jump on the bandwagon.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

Is this different from the standard first year deal for customers who already have a regular outright bought product?

I have the CS6 suite, but I was planning on switching to the Cloud for the next update since I need to be able to install on both PC and Mac. I’d really prefer not to, but it seems the only option.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

If you absolutely need to upgrade right now I think the options really are either an iMac (if you desperately need to stick with Apple) or buy a PC.

For £1500 you can get a pretty decent up to date PC that will blow those two old MacPro’s out of the water.

I wouldn’t get an iMac myself, but plenty of people seem to be very happy with them even for After Effects. It won’t match a PC for price/power or flexibility of upgrade though.

With regards to memory, I’d say 16GB is OK for a 4-core machine. For 6/8 cores I’d aim for 32GB. A 6-core i7 with 32GB is a reasonable aim for a low cost workstation, whether it’s a PC or an iMac.

If you can wait, Apple has supposedly promised something to replace the MacPro later this year. What it will be only Apple knows.

Remember when comparing old vs new workstations, it’s not only clock speed (GHz) and number of cores that count. Newer generation CPU’s are a fair bit faster than the older ones. Newer memory also run much faster.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

Regardless of whether you use precomps or not, your main problem is with Collapse Transformations. In most cases you don’t want to use it since it changes the AE render order. It causes transformations of the subcomp (transforms applied to the subcomp layer inside the main comp) to be applied to the layers inside the subcomp before effects and masks inside the subcomp.

For your type of project you can really only use Coll Trans if you don’t use any masks or effects at all to either the layers inside the subcomp or the subcomp itself. (at least not without causing massive grief)

If you keep everything in one comp like the others have suggested you can use Cont Rast on the Illustrator layers so long as you realize any effects on these layers will render after transforms. This is reverse of how it normally is. It will also render masks after transformations which makes them hard to use.

I have done quite a few project of somewhat similar nature to what you’re doing, and this is my method:

I use subcomps like you do. I make the subcomp about twice as big as it needs to be (or more). This means in the main comp I scale it down, and I can move it around and scale it up/down a bit while remaining sharp.
If you use Illustrator layers, scale the layers up so they fit this larger subcomp, and enable Cont Rast. This will make them sharp inside the subcomp. DON’T enable Coll Trans on the subcomp itself.
With this technique you can also add effects to the subcomp without running into trouble. You can also use adjustment layers and whatever else inside the subcomp.

For shadow, duplicate the subcomp layer inside the main comp, and use the second comp for shadow. You can then add tint effects, blur, and so on.
Or use 3D to cast shadows.

The general rule is: Don’t use Collapse Transformations on subcomps unless you have a very good reason. If you must, there are severe limitations you have to be aware of.

Bit of a long explanation, but hope it helps.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I’d recommend trying to do all this on local drives instead, if possible. Warp Stabilizer is very very intensive both CPU wise and drive wise. Your project file will be massive – this appears to be where AE stores the information it collects.

At least make sure your project contains this comp and nothing else. Always do Warp Stabilize in separate projects from anything else.

I did a very large project recently, it had about 40 final comps, maybe 200 sub-comps, and several hundred source files.
I also used Warp Stabilizer on 4 shots, about 30 seconds each. I placed those 4 comps in a separate project. The Warp Stabilize project was nearly twice the size of the main project.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

PAL square pixel is 1050×576. This got changed from 1024 a few years ago. All the Adobe presets uses 1050. If you’ve done it 1024 already it shouldn’t matter too much.

————–
https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects