[Mark]

Hello Greg,

The chroma keyed export is what I meant, sorry, maybe it wasn’t clear in my post.

I re-read your original post, back face culling will not help here because it is a transparent glass…..for any 3d where the back is not always visible then back face culling would have helped.

My 3d movie is not posted anywhere…at the moment I am so busy with projects that I don’t have time to get it to my webmaster. It was more of a test than anything else…I will have to check if I still have it.

Good luck, I hope these will help…don’t give up, Red is an awesome tool to have in your arsenal.

Mark

[Mark]

I am not sure that BCC3 is compatible with AE7. I tried BCC2 and had issues. I now use BCC4 with AE7 with no issues. As for the ATI graphics card, I use an ATI, not an Nvidia and have no issues. Some prefer Nvidia, some ATI. I like ATI because it works better with my NLE (Avid Liquid)…if I were running Xpress or something like that, then I would move over to Nvidia.

The graphics card is NOT our issue here.

[Mark]

First thing I want to check with you is the following : Are you rendering in the Red engine, or are you using Red as a plug-in through an NLE. The reason I ask, is because in my experience, Red works faster as a stand-alone. Don’t get me wrong, it is a great plug-in, but a better workflow for complicated comps is to set-up in NLE, save the Red setting, then open the standalone. This is due to the RAM and processing that the NLE must pass along to Red.

I am assuming that you are working in the stand-alone (The Engine). To speed up previews, turn off motion blur on all layers. Motion blur is quite render intensive. Turn on motion blur to check a few frames, but then only enable it for final render.

Now, render times obviously are all due to your machine. Your machine seems to be a pretty quick machine. I am on a PC (dual 3.2 Xeon). Rendering can be quite long with Boris Red. Many reasons factor into this. You are working with 3d objects in 3d space. Things like lighting and textures has to be calculated. Also, unless you check back-face culling in the extrusion tab, the back face will have to be rendered even when it is not seen.

Other things that can help speed up work is pre-rendering. Your back face has a still image with a chroma-key applied. Could you not chroma key the PSD and then simply export as a TGA this frame, then map this to your object. The chroma key is being calculated on each and every frame. When you export from Red this frame (File-export-TGA), the TGA will retain the alpha info from your Chroma key. Anything that is a still, and doesn’t animate can be pre-rendered in this manner to save time.

Are you using reflection tracks ? These can add time to the rendering.

I recently rendered a 10 second movie. It was my company logo (AI file) extruded, mapped back to front and back with a reflection map. The reflection map was a water background that I created using the noise map. The 3d extrusion was then duplicated, filled with black, tumbled and blurred to create a reflection. I also used the water background as a displacment map for this reflection. This was all composited over the water background which had the noise map, a slight blur and the tritone filter applied to it. The text was animted to spin slightly with motion blur. This short movie took around 10 minutes to render on my machine. Not too bad for 3d text.

I have also worked on projects, on other machines that took way longer.

It is impossible to say if these render times are too long. I am suspecting that by preparing materials in advance, along with settings such as back face culling that you will be able to reduce these times….dramatically ??? I’m not sure.

Hope this helps,

Mark

[Mark]

I wish I could help you, but alas I can’t get my head around Vegas….

Have you tried posting in the Vegas forum ????

[Mark]

To help sell the effect, animate the opacity really quickly (I use the wiggler for this) so as to get a flicker on the sign.

[Mark]

You can also use the psd file as an alpha matte. Now create a new solid layer, and add the vector paint filter. Set the filter to paint on transparent and the shift paint records to realtime. Now draw with the brush the psd file. Set the paint tool to animate all strokes and adjust the playback speed of the filter to the speed you need.

Hope this helps,

Mark

[Mark]

Can’t you time stretch the precomp….

Mark

[Mark]

Scopo Gigio (Do a google search) is a waveform-vector combo that works within After Effects. It is fairly priced and works well.

Mark

[Mark]

Andrew,

That is way too cool. I love the colour grading you used on the shots. The gun shots were very good. I really enjoyed the piece. I’m not sure that i could fit the muzzle fire into my sports promos, but hey who knows.

Regards

Mark

[Mark]

Can you counter-animate the background so as not to see the edges (Use ease keyframes so movement is less obvious) ???

What is the background ??? Is it a solid colour ????

Mark