looking for an old post

[bighop]

Hey,

 

I know I've read about this somewhere in here but I can't find it.

 

Am I better off rendering each part of a project separately then compositing it in AE or AM? For example, if it is a small video (under a minute) is this worth the trouble?

 

For example, Jeff Lew's "Killer Bean" (the party) was each shot created in the Chor, or layered and composited together.

 

Thanks,

 

Andy

[HomeSlice]

Well ... that depends on a whole bunch of things.

If you render in passes, you have more flexibility, but you have to be more organized.

 

If you don't have a render farm available, and if your frames take more than a couple minutes each to render, you better do a whole bunch of test frames to make sure your final render is not only timed the way you want, but that dynamics, hair, lights etc are acting like you want them too. Those re-renders can be frustrating.

 

A very simple way to divide your passes is to render a separate pass for the background - middle ground - and foreground. This way, if a serious problem shows up in your render, you only have to re-render part of the scene instead of the whole scene.

There are many other ways to set up passes. Some of them are very elaborate.

 

You might want to render at least one project in multiple passes just so you have an idea of what is involved and what the benefits and drawbacks are.

 

Render the background with no alpha.

Render the middle ground *with alpha*.

Render the foreground *with alpha*.

Make a new project in AM.

Import your rendered frames (Render to TGA sequences, not Quicktime or AVI movies).

Import your audio files.

Delete all lights and models out of the default chor.

Drag the background renders onto the choreography camera as a rotoscope.

Drag the middle-ground renders onto the camera as a rotoscope. Make sure this rotoscope in below the first one in the PWS. (if it is below the first rotoscope in the PWS, it will show up on top of the first rotoscope in the render)

Drag the foreground renders onto the camera as a rotoscope and set the "ON TOP" property to ON.

 

If you plan to break up your renders this way, avoid placing any lights in the model files. The lighting in all three passes should be consistent and if you turn off a model that has a light in it, then the whole choreography lighting will be different.

[bighop]

Thanks for the reply, that is some good information.

 

It sort of reminds me of the Sam Buntrock CD's (Live action in AM) He placed files as decals on a model, and layered each sequence.

 

As for the lights, would you make a like model separate too? Or would you have the lights if the first pass?

 

I'm going to make a simple project to try this.

 

Thanks

[HomeSlice]

As far as lighting, different people have different approaches. You'll have to decide which one works best for you.

Here's what I do.

I make sure my base landscape/set model is centered at 0,0 in the Model window.

I make a new Action with my landscape/set as the base model and save it as "My_Set_Lighting.act".

In this action I add all my lights for the set.

If I need other lights, for example, some spot lights to follow characters around or whatever, I add those in the choreography.

----------------

If I plan to render in passes, I create a new empty model and save this empty model as "light_proxy.mdl".

I add this empty model to my choreography and drag the "My_Set_Lighting.act" action onto it. This should light your set just like if you had dragged the action onto the landscape/set model in the chor.

Now you can turn the set model off, if you need to for one of your passes, and you will still have your lighting intact.

[robcat2075]

I'll just interject that rendering to OpenEXR format enables all sorts of layers, like color, specular, shadows, separate lights... Fucher put up a tut on it somehere.

 

It's a bit involved but it's powerful stuff.

[bighop]

These are all good points....just when you think you have a handle on this stuff....there is more to learn!