avi vs. image compression

[STRAT]

well, the advantage of rendering straight to AVI is that you dont have to go through the hastle of compiling your separate images at a later date.

 

But, if you do render straight to AVI and your machine crashes half way throught the render stage then you've lost all and need to completely restart your rendering again. Thats why you should render to separate images instead.

 

And yes, rendering to JPG format is fine, just turn the JPG image quallity to best before you start the render process.

 

Now many people will insist you render to TIFF or TGA format, or a non-compressed format, just for optimum quality, but i dont go with this.

 

If you're rendering for super hi-resolution broardcasting/film purposes then fine, i agree about the TIFF rendering, but if like most ppl you're rendering for AVI or MPEG or MOV animations for example, for personal or client use, then rendering to JPG is fine. the file types are smaller to store, faster to process and easier to cope with, and i defy anyone to spot the difference between a tiff and a jpg!

 

Viz will save as a sequence of jpg's - just set the render frames to all frames, then in save as just click on the jpg format

[cullen]

Thanks. Thats actually a lot of what I was wanting to know.

 

when rendering the jpeg sequence, that isn't going to compile them for me is it? Wont just put them in the right order?

[STRAT]

ah, your talking about max's video post i pressume. unfortunately Viz doesnt have video post

 

what you do is first render out your animation as a sequence of jpg's, then ideally you compile them together as an animation in something like Adobe Premier, but if like me you havent got that you can either -

 

a) use viz's RAM player (located under the render tab) and load in the sequence and save it out this way (as long as you have enough ram to cope with the amount of frames) or

 

b) set the time slider to the amount of frames you have, then goto the environment tab and select a backround material and you can automatically load your jpg sequence in this way and save it. thats what i usually do.

So set up your backround material in the material editor as the sequence of jpg's, then go back to the main screen and hit the render button saving as an AVI. takes a bit more time but works perfectly.

[cullen]

Option B is awesome!!!! I don't see how anyone could have thought of that but it's complety amazing. I think that is going to give me the effect that I am going for.

 

Thank you very much for your help. Can't wait to put it to use.

 

I just remembered that my animations looked a lot more "crisp" when I used this process.

 

Thanks,

crw

[STRAT]

hey, no problems, glad to help

 

just 1 extra tip -

 

when you're setting up your material in the mat editor, goto it's filtering properties by clicking on the image name in the diffuse slot and you'll find the filter is default set to a pyramidal smoothing value of 1.

Change this to summed area smoothing to a value of 0.5. This will make sure the rendered jpg's dont come out too blurry or too crisp.

 

[Carlos L]

Hi

I have tested both options and here is what has resulted the best for me:

 

If you work with animations it's easier to work with image sequences rather than compressed AVI or MOV video files.

A great advantage is that you can render frame ranges, that's desired number of frames.

let's say you have an animation of a total of 360 frames. you can render frames 0 to 60, and fix any possible errors in the scene or simply schedule this rendering time to render overnight.

You will have the chance to work on the scene next day morning.

 

About the format, i would go for PNG with an alpha channel stored, perhaps you will need to composite your animation with a background plate.

 

thanks!

[cullen]

I need some an opinion on which is better.

 

Going through school, when rendering, I used image compression (not sure if that’s what it’s really called :???: ) but rendered all frames as .jpg's instead of rendering directly to an .avi.

 

However I was using MAX at the time. Now our company has VIZ4 and I’m not aware of a way to do that in VIZ. (if you know please tell…. )

 

Overall outcome, what are the advantages and disadvantages to the two?