Animation settings - Max to Premier/After Effects

[TomA]

What are the best render settings for exporting animation frames from 3DMax to Premier Pro or After Effects - individual frames yes, but what frame rate is best, and what file type, jpeg or TIFF, or?...

 

Thanks

[Francisco Penaloza]

Render setting are different than file format and animation frame rate.

First you need to know what is your target media, DVD, BluRay, TV, Internet, depending of this you'll know you output size and frame rate, also if you feel confortable working with image passes I will recomend use EXR or HDR format, guessing you know how to work in a linear work flow.

If all this is Greek for you (sorry tuios ) JPG, PNG, TGA wil be your best friend, forget about Tiff, that format work better with print, for video will be bigger than you need.

Here are some links for you to learn about it

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_rate

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_format#Video_formats

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_compression_format

[Nic H]

id render to anything lossless (png, tiff, tga)

 

i prefer tga for 8 bit and use 32bit exrs if im bothered about postwork

[TomA]

id render to anything lossless (png, tiff, tga)

 

i prefer tga for 8 bit and use 32bit exrs if im bothered about postwork

 

Does that not given massive animation file sizes, or is that dictated by how the frames are compressed at the end of post production?

[TomasEsperanza]

Hiya,

 

I've used the Max, AE, PP workflow a few times. Yup, if you do have a lot of frames each of which is lossless, then you're dealing with GBs of data as opposed to MBs, still you are correct that this all get's compressed at the end of post. I recommend 32bit floating point EXRs too. It's worth keeping the EXRs for a while just in case you wanna revisit the project. I know the FPS can be changed in post, but if you know before it's prob best to render for your target. Here in UK it's 25fps (PAL), US is 29.97fps (or something), I guess they render 30. Some like the look of less frames, and obviously this saves a little render time. I noticed some video is only 15fps!, so I guess in that case it'd be a waste to render too many. You really need lossless files for animation though, otherwise it all gets compressed twice and looks rough.

Edited February 11, 2014 by TomasEsperanza

[Jonathan]

Unless your producing for broadcast 30 fps is typical for animation, certainly not less. Many animation studios are now heading towards 60 fps. I wouldnt think about jpegs unless 'somehow' you wont need any post. While TIFF and TGA are quite acceptable EXR provides the most flexibility and control in post.