Nicholas Toth
Forum Replies Created
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If you own AECS3, you can put it on 2 machines, being your laptop and tower.
Set up a shared network storage. Collect your folder there, and set your output folder on the server also.
Open the project on both machines, and set the output to skip existing files. Run it through nucleo and you’ll be creating 6 frames per pass, not too shabby.
Thats the long way to do it, as stated earlier, the simiple ‘watch folder’ command can be easier, but sometimes it just acts stupid, and if you’re collecting big projects to a server and re-doing it, its a pain. I’d do it the manual way, I was setting up 4-5 machines in a studio to render the old fashioned work around way in around 15 minutes….its not hard….
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More of an after effects basics post — but here you go —
Put the video layer below the text layer, and set the track matte to “ALPHA MATTE.” You can toggle that on and off with F4. It is taking the opacity of every pixel in the text layer and applying it to the video layer.
There are other ways, but this is the nice and simple solution.
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Output an image sequence and set it to skip existing files.
Make sure your secret prefs (hold shift while in prefs) are set to flush the cache every 1 frame.
If worst comes to worst, you’ll just have to render, crash, re render, crash, re render, crash, until all the frames are created, then make a sequence reference quicktime movie (in quicktime import image sequence…) and toss it in FCP.
Are you using any 3rd party stuff?
Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com -
Yeah, I know about the new AE supported multiprocessing, but we’ve already worked nucleo pro into the pipeline. I’m not so impressed with AE’s multiprocessing, its good, don’t get me wrong, but it won’t work on my laptop (it disables it due to lack of ram) but nucleo forces it to multiprocess.
Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com -
From your screens, I’d stay away from the POI and use the XYZ rotation keyframes….
Or set and expression so your POI is looking at a null, and controll it like that…
Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com -
You need 2 gigs of ram per core —
And they are all fast.
The quads will run faster than the duals in CS3, but also cost you more to run.Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com -
I got an email from tiger direct with a half decent barbone kit.
( i have no opinion of Tiger Direct, I’m just pointing you towards a deal that was offered to me )
If you know your stuff, you can build a monster system. If not, get your tech friend that you always call at the wee hours of the morning to do it for you (we all have one…). Dump as much RAM as you can in it, and buy Nucleo Pro. Best for your money, but no support.
Building a workstation for under 1.5k is a tough call. Anything half decent usually will cost you between 4 – 8k. A high end station will set you back 15ish, but it will become outdated much less quickly.
Overall suggestions — get a nice video card that AE supports, and put a boatload of RAM in it, and Nucleo Pro.
Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com -
or if you have more cash pick up Sapphire LIGHTING suite — yeah it costs more but you may be able to do more with it as a whole. Its not just a couple flares, its also glows/glints/etc. https://www.genarts.com/sapphire-ae.html
I have knoll. I love it. It is completely editable and the motion blur on it looks great. The preset library is HUGE, thats where sapphire is lacking.
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Conduit is great for basic stuff. Pulling a simple key, or doing some simple color corrections on multipass 3d animations. Especially if you know the nodal approach, and not the motion effects approach to a concept, it comes together pretty quick. The tutorials on their site can really get you rolling pretty quick.
Conduit’s edge is speed. Quick and simple nodal compositing. It has about 10% of the functionality of shake, but speedwise it IS REDICULOUS. Everything happens in realtime. Your quicktime output will wind up being a minute or two.
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Yes you can. Just output an .swf.
I’d recommend doing it in flash though, because you could have the banner randomly pull images, so it isn’t as sequential. Also, flash will use the image a single time, and after effects will use it multiple times per frame in the .swf. Thats ae’s big problem right now in my mind, it doesn’t make ‘intelligent’ .swf files.
To sum up what I just said, which may have been convoluted, if you output a banner out of AE and use rasterized footage or photographs, the files are huge. If you output the same style out of flash, it is much smaller.
See if you can buy some templates if you aren’t flash savvy.