[Nicholas Toth]

try to ouput an aaf and consolidate the media separately

the import isn’t particularly clean, but it works.

[Nicholas Toth]

Buy a Mac Pro workstation
Load windows 64/or XP Pro until Binary AE comes out
Then get Binary AE.

Maybe even swap out the woodcrest Xeon for the new quad cores that are rumored to fit in it….

[Nicholas Toth]

I’m in your same shoes. I’m a photographer and animator — just think of it as popping off layers and stamping/healing behind the images. Use depth of field also, makes it look more realistic. Color correcting is crucial also so you can use elements from different photographs.

And Chris is right — Nuke/Shake/Combustion/Smoke/Nitris DS/blah blah blah all have 3d capabilities. Maybe it was AE — maybe it wasn’t. But the look is DEFINATELY ACHIEVABLE in AE. Think of it as peices of paper in a 3d world.

[Nicholas Toth]

Photoshop layers in 3d space with a 3d camera — some clever corner drop shadow compositing too —
Film clutter burnt or multiplied over the animation.

That is actually easy to do. The bulk of the work is having the PSD’s look good.

[Nicholas Toth]

window>the wiggler

use very small amplitude numbers.

[Nicholas Toth]

window>the wiggler

use very small amplitude numbers.

[Nicholas Toth]

Paulie

My comment had nothing to do with OSX being the problem. I was commenting that there are substantial gains running Windows on your machine.
Just lookin out! Why network render if you don’t have to? Rosetta’s benchmarks are awful. They run at around 20-30% of what an old dual core g5 ran at.

[Nicholas Toth]

are you shooting on a green screen?
we had a rig in the old studio I was out for a short period of time, and they’re pretty straight forward.

Camera is on rig — camera rig records data — data exported to a 3d program (we used cinema 4d…) then export the camera to AE.
Its all pretty straight forward.

[Nicholas Toth]

I’d strongly advise installing windows. It runs REALLY fast on those new woodcrest xeons.
Windows 64 or Windows Pro is pretty cheap too, no more than 200 bucks. I’m a Mac guy, but the speed increase is REDICULOUS on my macbook pro running windows xp pro vs stupid rosetta.

[Nicholas Toth]

I have had ZERO SUCCESS WITH THE WATCH FOLDER COMMAND. I skipped it and now I do this instead, which is tedious, but for the turnaround, who cares.

Collect files to the network. Open project on machine #1, set the render location, and set to skip existing. Save ONLY THE PROJECT to the desktop of that machine.
Start rendering off the desktop saved .aep.

Open up the network file on machine #2. Save that file to that machine’s desktop, then start rendering to the network folder.
Open up the network file on machine #3. Save that file to the machine’s desktop, then start rendering to the network folder.
Because you have set skip existing, they’ll work together. (ie machine #1 does frame 1, machine #2 will skip frame 1 and do frame 2, and so forth for machine #3)

Our network is pretty fast, but if you want it faster then collect all the media to each individual machine. I find it easier to have them access the network media, although it is technically ‘slower,’ I don’t think it is substantial when I have 7 machines working in tandem.

Definately the ghetto way, but damn it this method has saved my butt.