Basics for compositing.

[R.Stewart]

Hi there, I am learning how to animate and I need to master the art of "comping in post"

 

I've watched a few tutorials and read a few threads but none seem to fill me with confidence.

 

I'll just rule out what I really want to know to get started.

 

1. As a rule of thumb which render elements should I save (i'm using Mental Ray) diffuse, reflections, shadows, self illumination etc. I'm doing interior and exterior shots and want to be able to play with materials.

 

2. I'm rendering to jpeg so how can I play them all back as one piece? I can't use the RAM player or Video Post from what I can tell. It just makes an .avi of one element. Even with the .ifl file. So I guess I have to put them together in After Effects. Can I put them all together in Premiere?

 

Looking forward to your reply,

 

Richard

[datacrasher]

Max is not really compositing. You can do it with video post if you have camera 1 for the exterior and then animator the camera 2 (interior)

 

now go into VP (video post) and add a scene event make sure it reads camera 1 you need to set a timeline when you want the camera to go into the building make sure you take the VP end time to whatever time you want it to be now click on ok now C1 has been set!

 

camera 2 do the same as above but make sure you have c2 selected now change the start time to whatever you set on camera 1. make sure you have the correct time set or it won't be setup correctly. now when you have that setup correctly now choose the execute video post from here choose the range set the start time and use the end time.

 

change the output size to 800 by 600 now choose add image output event. Click on files choose AVI type in a file name when your finished just click save leave the defaults the way they are then render it

 

Tony

Edited September 10, 2011 by datacrasher

[R.Stewart]

Hey thanks for the reply tony.

 

I think I may have my terminology mixed up. I think it's called compositing or multi pass rendering where you go into Render setup > Render Elements > Add and then add different elements such as shadows, lighting etc. And then it saves each element as a separate jpeg for compiling in a post production package such as Adobe After Effects or Premier. At tafe we will be using Adobe Premiere as our video editing program but we are not quite at that stage yet and I know nothing about how to use it. Video Post is great for checking how an animation is going but doesn't seem to be able to stitch together multiple passes that have been saved.

 

Am I on the right track here, or am I diving into something that is too complex?

 

Thanks again

 

Richard

[datacrasher]

I'n not too sure i would have a look in the reference file under max's help:

 

what i thought you meant was this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHl0MnqfFbo

[R.Stewart]

Oh ok no, it is great that you can do that in Video Post but Adobe Premiere is apparently far better. I know I'm probably trying to take on too much but I just want to get it right from the start because I'll be using this animation to sell myself when I complete my study next year.

 

My teachers know nothing about it and they say 'slow down Richard you're trying to learn everything all at once'. So basically if I render each frame as one single element it makes post production touch ups far harder to make. Just say I've saved the 'shadow' render element, then I can go into Adobe After Effects and lighten or darken the shadows with out affecting any other part of the image/images. I think that saving individual render elements for stills or animation is the only way to go. I just have to learn how. Everyone should!

 

You should check out PSD Manager http://cebasstation.com/index.php?pid=product&prd_id=38&feature=708

[datacrasher]

your teacher is right it does not take 5 minutes to learn max i have been using it for 5 years most people have been using it a lot longer from the dos version and they are still learning new things.

 

anywho

you can render different Jpegs if you make a folder on your desktop and then rendering it as a range but they your have a 100 still frames in the folder you cannot to my knowledge stitch them together in max. i don't know anything about Adobe After Effects. if you have an account with lynda they mite tell you on there under after affect

[R.Stewart]

Yeah getting into this industry means a life time of learning which is why I love it. Something to keep hacking away at.

 

Thanks for your time tony.

 

Richard

[datacrasher]

Richard

It's hard to get into the industry there are so many people doing architecture design unless you have the contacts No ones hiring due to the world economy. I have not had any emails for the past year wanting my skills. Hopefully you have another job lined up and used max in your spare time.

 

I don't know how it is in Australia in this recession but it likes the rest of the world then it's may take 5 years to get back to normal if it ever does lol

[R.Stewart]

Yeah well the course I'm doing is a drafting course so I'll be a qualified building designer in November. I can get work as a draftsman using revit but I'm not too keen on construction theory : / I'm taking on another 6 month course next year which is just revit modeling, max rendering and web design with flash and Dream Weaver. I'll have a few paths to take, I'm really happy with the course it's amazing.

 

I've been looking online and I've seen quite a few jobs advertised down in Melbourne which is where I plan to move. Also in Sydney. Not so much in Birsbane. Well I hope things pick up for you soon mate.

[dande]

I use Premiere Pro all the time for compositing. If I need to edit the animation I use After Effects. It's easy enough to pick up. But I'm sure I'm only using a tiny fraction of the software.

 

I would recommend you render out to Tiffs with the Alpha channel. This will give you a better image because Tiffs aren't compressed like JPGs and the Alpha channel with give you more flexibility.

 

You should also look at Composite the composite software that comes with Max.

[R.Stewart]

Thanks Dan,

 

so what kind of flexibility does saving the alpha chanel give you? I know if you do it with stills it's great for throwing in a back ground. What els would you use it for? I think I'd most likely be wanting to play with materials, lighting and shadows in post. I've attached an image that has very nasty looking grass. Can I add a more realistic looking grass in after effects? What render element would I save for that material? Or how can I find that out? Could you recomend any good tutorials for this? Thanks buddy : D

[ATTACH=CONFIG]44758[/ATTACH]

[dande]

Alpha channel give you the same flexibility as stills.

 

If you render out a different grass you could replace the grass in After effects or Premiere pro. A great site for After Effects tutorials is http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/ and for Premiere Pro have a look at creative cow.

 

Also look at the shadow matt material in Max. This material is a transparent material but catchs the shadows of objects.

 

Again I would say don't use jpegs. JPegs are a compressed file format. So if you use a composite software and create an animation . The composite software will compress your images again when creating the animation file and you may lose quality.

[R.Stewart]

Cool I'll have a look at that site and try to soak up as much as I can. I agree with saving to tiff. My teacher told me to save to jpeg though so I did. The images are still pretty crisp. I think I'll save to tiff from now on. A minute or so should be around 15 GB of tiffs i think. That's manageable.

 

Cheers Dan if I wasn't flat out with a construction assignment I'd be streight into this : ( The building code is not quite as exciting as animation. I'll let you know if I have any more questions .

 

Richard

[dande]

I'm glad to help. Give me a shout if you have any questions.

 

You could also use png. PNG is also an uncompressed file format and you can store Alpha channels.

 

Good luck in Taffe.

[dande]

Richard

 

I've had the same problem with tiffs and premiere pro. I've never figured out what causes the issue. Some tiffs rendered out of max import no problem. Some don't.

 

If I come across this problem I bring them into After Effects. Then link the After Effects file to Premiere pro. I've never had a problem with AE bringing in Tiffs.

[R.Stewart]

Hey thanks for getting back to me, I deleted the message because I just googled it and found out the issue. Premiere only supports 8bit colour tiffs not 16bit. You'd think it would support all of them but unfortunately it does not.

 

Do you ever have issues when stitching together the tiffs in premiere, and then having the avi that you create not playing back smoothly because all of the images are so large? I didn't think it'd be an issue but my teacher said it may cause problems on substandard computers.

[dande]

I only use 8 bit tiffs and I still find sometimes it won't import the tiffs. I'm using CS3 and I read somewhere the issue is solved.

 

I also render out to MP4. I export to H.264 format as it gives better quality then AVI. I haven't had any problem with playback myself

[ramy]

I would suggest using After Effects over any other post processing program. The main passes I would render would be:

 

Ambient Occlusion

Z-Depth

Volume Light

Glare

 

This example was photoshop, but gives you an idea on one of my processes

[Karrde]

Hey,

 

As far as compositing goes, you may want four things. First is at least 16-bit tiffs as image sequence. 32-bit exr's are sometimes better/nessecary, or completly passable. Second thing is to have as much render elements as possible/reasonable. You never know what and when will come in handy. Reflections, refractions, lighting, raw gi, zdepth, raw diffuse, shadow, specular, normals (normal pass is nice for some lighting touchups). As long as you have disk space nothing is too much.

 

Third thing are multimattes. You really want a matte for every object in the scene (or at least a group with the same material), as it will allow you to do wonders in post, that will take 5 minutes instead of hours of re-rendering.

 

And last but not least, you want Composite. It comes with every max, and is a bit stripped Toxic. Nuke would be better, but hey - you got it for "free". Node based compositing software is a blessing and learning it will be a benefit.

 

Load it up and play with it. If you have time there is hardly a better way to learn then tinkering with it on your own.

[R.Stewart]

Hey Ramy thanks so much for that link. There's so much to learn from that. When I have time I will sit down and really work through that one. I have very limited photoshop skills so it's all very confusing at first glance. I have some books on photoshop and after effects and I can't wait for this semester to be over so I can really get stuck in.

 

Very handy advice Karrde you're right, it's just going to take a lot of playing around with it myself and I can certainly see that the more passes saved the better. I'm really looking forward to mastering this 6 weeks of my building design course then I'm free study what I want!

[Fooch]

few tips while im dashing out ..

 

no jpegs ever = use tiffs (16bit if you have the hard disk space), exr (if network speeds and space isnt an issue) or tga (32 bit to save the alpha channel).

Learn about mattes and rendering out masks. If you are using vray, read up about multimatte id's.

Use the right tools for the right job.

AE to comp, animate .. Go through videocopilot's basic training and play with it.

For serious comp work, nuke/fusion. Nodal compositing is the future.. good to have more skills as well.

Premiere --> NLE = nonlinear editing program. Best to only use for editing films, not comping it.

 

Lastly get very good with your eye. The tech will change and evolve. Your eye and skill sets shouldnt be dependent on software.

Edited October 9, 2011 by fooch

[KiboOst]

Would second that, nodal compositing is a must, and eye opener on what happens and what to do with your files and differents passes, mattes etc.

You have Toxik with maya and 3dsmax, and for arch viz work it is easier than Nuke and as fast (both have best caching and performance on the market). Like Nuke, Toxik allways work in full 32bit and doesn't slowdown with heavy multichannels exr. All node also have rgba masking which is so easy to use with vray multimatte element. Perfect companion for 3dsmax/vray.