[Matthew Woods]

I’m pretty sure that Element currently only supports one graphics card, so you actually have twice the V-Ram on your older machine (6Gb vs 3Gb). Unfortunately, only Apple stuff seems to support their dual graphics cards well. That is the main reason, we haven’t upgraded to one of the new mac pros. I’ll take an older mac-pro tower, upgraded with a new graphics card, an SSD, and a usb3 card over one of the new mac pros any day. I’ve always been an Apple guy, but I’m not happy with their current “pro” offerings.

-Matt

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

If you try a full res render on your old mac and I bet it will crash. 6500×4800 is a very high resolution for element, and there is a big difference between full and half resolution which is one quarter of the pixels. Because Element renders in the graphics card, Vram is more important than ram, and if Vram runs out, Element crashes. I would try experimenting with lowering Element’s multisampling and render settings in the offending section. In my experience, lowering the multisampling usually works to avoid crashes on high resolution renders. You can safely increase Super-Sampling to improve the anti-aliasing, but it slows things down.

See this for more suggestions. https://www.videocopilot.net/docs/element2/troubleshooting/render_problems/

Good luck,

-Matt

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

Thanks for the assessment Joe,

I’ll probably continue to use Element and Cheetah for the most part then. I too find it hard to unlearn a workflow with 3d software. I downloaded a trial of C4d awhile ago, and also found it a little unintuitive. I’ve seen people do amazing things with Blender, but I find its interface completely bizarre. I started with Maya a long time ago, then switched to Cheetah because it had similar controls to Maya, but with a simpler interface. It’s also much cheaper, and is sufficient for most of my needs. Every now and then I run into something that I can’t do with it though. Good to have C4d/Cineware to try if I run into something that I can’t do with Cheetah/Element.

Cheers,

-Matt

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

Thanks for the tutorials Bourke,

How do people feel that Cineware compares to Element 3d? I’ve been using Element 3d for awhile now and love it. Its the main reason I felt ho-hum about the introduction of the cineware 3d pipeline with CC.
I was more curious to try prepping models for use with element with Cinema 4d as Element 3d also natively supports C4d files. With that workflow it would have been nicer to have C4d Lite as a standalone. I have been using Cheetah 3d to create obj files for use with Element.

-Matt

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

Found it. Thank you! That is a strange implementation. The Cinema 4d Lite App itself is in the plug-in folder, but apparently you can’t open it except through AE.

Thanks,

-Matt

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

To really get the look you want, I think you need a physics engine.
A lot of 3d animation software has physics built into it. You could use a 2d shader to give it a more 2d look.
If you want to do it in AE, and can afford to buy the script, Newton2 is great for such things.
I actually have done a good balloon with a string in it. The string was composed of many tiny rectangles.

https://aescripts.com/newton/

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

I’d been looking for an easy way to do 9 slice scaling in AE myself, so I wrote an FxFactory plug-in that will do it. It has just been released, and is on sale for a limited time. FxFactory plug-ins are mac only, but it will work in AE, Premiere, Final Cut and Motion on a mac. Check it out:

https://monadnock.org/9slice/

-Matt

Check out 9 Slice Scale.
A way to scale graphics while preserving the border and corners.
An FxFactory Plugin for AE, Premiere, Motion and FCP.
https://monadnock.org/9slice/

[Matthew Woods]

1 fps is a great idea. Another thing to consider is having separate rgb and alpha movies, and luma matting/track matting the color movie with the alpha. Then you can use whatever codec you want for your rgb. Depending on your animation, for something like a clock, you might even be able to use a still image for your alpha channel.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

Sounds like a job for Trapcode form or Particular with a textured Polygon particle, textured using a single pre-comp with “Split Clip – Loop” set for the time sampling.

-Matt

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

There is no way to make a true isometric view of a 3d scene in After Effects because there is no isometric camera in After Effects. If you need true isometric, you either need to use a different program that does have an isometric camera, or animate in 2d.

That said, you can approximate isometric, by putting your camera really far away from your scene, and setting the zoom level on the camera really high. This minimizes the perspective in the scene, but you won’t get rid of perspective entirely. It will also make camera moves tricky. If you need camera moves, you are probably best off keeping the camera in place, and moving/rotating the scene.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com