[Paul Roper]

Coincidentally I tried to do exactly this just last week. I gave up and eventually used Maya instead, with a bend deformer for each x and y axis.

Probably the most unhelpful post ever.

Sorry.

[Paul Roper]

You could try creating a new comp in After Effects at half the size of your ‘main’ comp. (Eg. if your main comp is 1920×1080, make your new comp 960×540). Drop your ‘main’ comp into it and scale it to 50%, and switch on ‘continuously rasterize’ (the little sunshine icon) for the layer in the timeline. Then render this at full resolution (960×540) and you’ll have yourself a half-res QuickTime movie (or whatever format you choose) with the images as good as they can be.

Probably. Without seeing the project, I can only really guess, but this is how I’d do it.

[Paul Roper]

Ah – I suppose the clue was in my original post…I switched to the young spring chicken ProRes 4444 and retired the elderly Animation codec and voilà – problem solved. Kind of silly of me not to do that in the first place, especially as the background footage (and the FCP sequence) are ProRes 422 (HQ)!

Thanks, Bret for the suggestion!

[Paul Roper]

Thank you Dan – it worked perfectly! Kinda seems odd that it works with the anchor point but not the position – but hey, problem solved.

Thanks again for the fast response!

[Paul Roper]

I’ve got 12GB (it’s going to be a much more AE-friendly 32GB very soon), with 0.75 GB per processor.

Thanks for the link to that recommended memory page – I’d seen it before and thought “when I get around to it I’ll check that out and run some tests”. Well, now’s the time!

I’m not going to be using my previous settings – my test render came in at 6m 44sec + 15sec prepping background tasks before the render started. Multiprocessing OFF = 5m 52, but with the recommended settings (and multiprocessing ON) it took just 4min 45secs – a third off!

Most of my projects are kinda similar, so these settings should work for me from now on. Thanks, Dave for prompting me to do this!

[Paul Roper]

Ahhhhhhhhhhh…………radians, not degrees! That’s my problem! A quick degreesToRadians saved the day.

[Paul Roper]

I do believe I am. Thank you very much!

[Paul Roper]

I’ve tried it with and without OpenGL – makes no difference. Very glad you’ve been able to replicate it…I’m not going mad, after all!

[Paul Roper]

Yes I’ve heard that people on other systems can’t replicate this, but I’ve found a couple of other mentions (on the web) of Particle Playground not working for some people on a Mac Pro/CS5 setup.

[Paul Roper]

I’m sure you’d checked this (probably repeatedly) but when you do a ‘collect files’ before a batch render, AE by default sets “Maximum number of machines” to 5, coincidentally the number of your machines that DID pick up the jobs and render them.