Mylenium
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No way. Expressions have no access to system info as they run sandboxed. You could try to have a script that gives you the IP of a machine, but it would have to be executed as a post-Render script and for it to work you needed to have another script that renders every single frame as a separate render queue item. If you are really dependent on such info for debugging resons and have a considerable render farm, I strongly suggest you get a render manager like Muster. They do all the logging and can greatly help you there.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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I don’t think so. You can’t blend, color correct and whatnot 8 HD streams in realtime in AE as you can on a fully powered DS. As for the rest – if you stick to the strict conventions of “compositing”, then a quad mac with Nucleo is certainly a good option, but then again DS and flame are finishing systems, they never were meant as just compositing tools. They do anything from editing to keying to rotoscoping to color correction to native 3D object rendering and most of it in realtime or at least hell of a lot faster than AE running on the most speedy system thinkable. You see, there will always be differences between hardware-based and software-only solutions, and that what makes the difference in price. I’ve seen two or three flame/ inferno systems in my short career (not used them myself, just watched in awe, several Quantel systems (which do similar things, but more broadcast-oriented) and DS as well and trust me, as much as we all love AE, compared to the options you get with those tools, AE is “just another software”. If you can, try to find some companies that use those systems (if even I can in the valley of the retarded that Germany is post-production wise, you should have no problem at all) and have a look at them.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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If you’re concerned with the rendering, then the smart thing to do would be to rasterize as much as you can. There is no shame in using bitmaps and AE will handle even relatively large bitmaps better than it does Illustrator files. The rest is more a matter of you having a plan. I think the most critical thing for you will be to figure out which arrow needs to be used as an inverted matte on other arrows to effectively give the illusion of proper 3D obscuration. I would also advise you to create a view standardized, pre-rendered matte clips or use transition effects. So if e.g. an arrow mainly moves from bottom left to top right, you can easily revela it with a simple linear wipe and only need to fix up the rest with masks. this should drastically accelerate your work and ease the burden on your system.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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[Wayne Keyser] “Doesn’t anybody write software anymore that doesn’t require voodoo to work?”
Hehe, sure it is done, but if you expect any of the graphics apps to be included on the list, you may find you are working in the wrong industry. ;O) All compositing programs have their issues one way or the other. Anyway, your pain and frustration is understandable. It is indeed puzzling to see that a big company like Adobe couldn’t manage to come up with better and less flakey OpenGL implementation when many others with less resources could. But we have to keep our hopes up that they actually might in one of the next versions.
Mylenium
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Do not render GIFs from within AE. Render a MOV and import that into ImageReady. You have much more control there and everything will certainly look a lot better even at the default settings.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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The logs are there regardless whether the render queue is finished or not. Try to set logging to “extra info per frame”, maybe this will reveal the source of your problems. If it’s really just those few frames, you could also twirl down the render queue and take a look at what AE is actually doing. Either it hangs on processing a layer, is unable to retireve a frame or can’t write a frame.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Just as Filip said – most likely a fields-realted issue. Check your footage interpretation and your render settings. As for the jumpy playback – I wouldn’t make to much of it when viewing your file on the computer. There can be a plethora of reasons why it’s choppy from old CoDecs to general system problems or simply insufficient CPU and graphics card performance. The only advise in that regard I can give; If you intend playback on the computer, don’t use “keyframes” on the compression. they will only make your data rates go up and can cause slowdown. That aside, you only know if your footage is okay if you check it on the target device – if it’s supposed to run on a TV, only playing it to tape or burning a test DVD will give you ultimate control.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Have you checked the render logs? What format are you rendering to? Perhaps just all your drives are full and your OS locks them so AE can’t write its files anymore? Or maybe one of your footage files is damaged? Could be many things.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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In addition to the Maxon site you may wish to check other suppliers pages. modo for instance comes with a full video tutorial (you need to download the trial version and register but get full access to the help and docs) on that thing and while it may be a different program, the techniques are applicable to C4D as well. I also believe there is something almost identical based on Lightwave. So you see, you have quite a few options.
Mylenium
[Pour Myl
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Yes, simply renaming will give some functionality, but I think he was more after having those previews which you can’t do that way. ;O)
Mylenium
[Pour Myl