HD Animation Workflow

[Nils Norgren]

Hi Brian, to you questions, last first, we always deal with square pixels these days, all the HD specs are for square pixels, the only thing we touch with non-square pixels are DVDs (we are trying to talk everyone out of them). The reason for the 23.976 is that all video systems that we deal with, Sony Cinealta, Panasonic Varicam, etc. all have a "24p" version of the capture system, what you find out when you get into the details is that 24p is really 23.976, (similar to 30 is really 29.97) for all practical purposes this is 24p with a frame dropped every few min. From and editing standpoint, all our footage is playing out at 23.976. Within MAX we always use "Film" as the frame standard, in AE we import as 23.976, FCP on the other hand calls it 23.98 fps, but this works for us and everything plays smoothly.

 

That is the technical reason, now the creative reason, 24 frames per second is "Film" frame rate, video is 60i or 60 fields a second, most people would say that a sitcom shot on film, getting dated here but "Seinfield" was all film, and soaps are mostly shot on video, the look of 24 frame film with all the motion blur, vs the look of video with all it's crispness, is the underlying idea behind this justification.

 

The Business reason, with 6 less frames per second to render there is opportunity to get that many more seconds rendered a night. the other side effect is that when compressing the compression on each frame can be that much better (there are not as many frames fighting for the same bits per second).

 

One big key to 24p is motion blur, it is very important, without it your animation will be a stuttering strobing mess. This often causes artist to panic, they often have a beautiful frame rendered, then they render it out with MB and find that it all turns to mush(or so it seems), but what they are forgetting is that when it plays that mush looks much better then a sharp, stroby, CG looking animation. If you freeze a scene of spiderman swinging between buildings in the recent movies the buildings are a blurry mess, but when they play it all gets blended into a smooth beautiful "filmic" shot.

 

this is one of the keys to "Film" look in my opinion.

 

Hope this helps!

 

-Nils

[BrianKitts]

Hope this helps! -Nils

 

definitely..... thanks for the knowledge

[pipjor]

I going to go out of my comfort zone and try some new things that spiked my curiosoity reading this thread..

 

1. FRAMES----23.976 (instead of the default 30)

2. SIZE--1280x720 (instead of 720x480)

3. 3D MOTION BLUR---instead of 2d blur in AE

4. LINEAR WORKFLOW-- .exr instead of .tga

5. h.264--instead of whatever WMV used out of AE CS3

 

Nils do you all use exr or tga???

 

my tools

3ds 2009, Brazil 2,

AECS3

Final Cut Pro

Edited August 22, 2009 by pipjor

[BrianKitts]

4. LINEAR WORKFLOW-- .exr instead of .tga

 

EXR versus TGA isn't a product of linear workflow. you could actually run LWF into jpgs if you want. You just have to know how to set the output gamma to get the correct appearance.

 

I always work in LWF, but my next project I'm working on I'm giving RPF a shot. Been running tests with it for post production and really liking the controls that it enables.

[pipjor]

EXR versus TGA isn't a product of linear workflow. you could actually run LWF into jpgs if you want. You just have to know how to set the output gamma to get the correct appearance.

 

I always work in LWF, but my next project I'm working on I'm giving RPF a shot. Been running tests with it for post production and really liking the controls that it enables.

 

Brian, why rpf instead of exr?? just curious

[SandmanNinja]

I'm looking at doing an animation for my demo reel as well and have been reading through this post.

 

I was checking out Adobe Premiere and saw 2 options: 1080p and 1080i.

There doesn't seem to be an explanation of the difference.

 

Since I have XP64 and Apple hates Microsoft & 64-bit operating systems, what alternate format do you guys suggest?

 

And I assume that once I have the full-frame, uncompressed image sequence files, that I'm free to down-size it for web delivery as well as other formats (i.e. web, streaming, Blu-Ray). Adobe CS4 has that new encoder app (Media Encoder?) and it seems to have all sorts of options (I saw it at a demo last week). But the person doing the demo wasn't able to save it at H.264 Blu-Ray and he was using XP64 (same as me).

 

I'm guessing I'd need to put it on a computer running a 32-bit operating system to make a H.264/QuickTime movie.

 

Not trying to hijack the thread, hopefully these questions helps others as well.

[gfa2]

One big key to 24p is motion blur, it is very important, without it your animation will be a stuttering strobing mess.

 

What is the trick to not killing your render times with motion blur on. I'd love to use, but it just seem to take waaaaay to long to render.

[Chad Warner]

What is the trick to not killing your render times with motion blur on. I'd love to use, but it just seem to take waaaaay to long to render.

 

We use a plugin for After Effects called reel smart motion blur. It tracks the pixels and blurs the frame based on the pixel motion. It's a very speedy alternative to rendering motion blur in Max.

[Noise]

I second that - rendering out motion blur isn't really possible from max - reel smart motion blur for AE is the way forward.

[pipjor]

???/s about 23.97, I'd like to try this frame rate on a current project as i'd like to take advantage of 3d motion blur(Brazil).

 

1. do you have to really choose your frame rate in 3ds as "film". isn't say 100 frames rendered out just 100 frames

 

2. In AE, I'll be setting up my workspace as 24 fps, but i'll have a few video clips shot at 30fps in the film as well, will this look funny when playing back at a 24 fps.

 

thanks