kingeldar

with a general question
should interest all non animators...

what software do u use in ur anim workflow?

(i mean after rendering in max or lw or whatever...)

do you post process, edit? do you add ewtra stuff in movies like text logos or whatever?
i'm mostly curious
as i said archi anim viz market's very very small in france....

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Ken Walton

My background was originally in more of a post environment than 3d, so I might be able to offer a little bit more here than in other sections on this site...

When I started doing this stuff, I was a very "Adobe" person. This is back when Discreet was still Discreet Logic, and Edit was the thing to have. (No Combustion at that time) But, building a good NLE (non-linear editing) machine was enough of a chunk out of the wallet ($24,000 with a Digisuite) to bypass Edit (I think it alone was around $12K) and look at Premeire and After Effects. So I had an Adobe "suite". I'm still running After Effects but I haven't had to do anything in Premiere for over a year. Most of my animations aren't any longer than 3 minutes total, so doing all of the "editing" in AE isn't that much of a hassle. If I were back into editing 30-60 minute pieces with tons of footage to go through - I would insist on having a NLE program. I haven't been really up-to-date on a lot of the new stuff out there, but I'm under the impression that Combustion can really take care of all that I may need to do in this field. It's an added bonus that I use Max, because the two go hand-in-hand nowadays.

As far as the process goes, what you render and how you render it determines the extent of your post work. With a little experience in compositing and rendering different passes (with Render Elements and Render to Combustion it's kind of a no-brainer now) you can save yourself A LOT of manhours that would otherwise be spent re-rendering over and over to get the results right. Typically, if the project is "storyboarded" or you've got a solid idea of how you want it to end up it's not that bad - and, in my opinion post is MUCH MORE FUN. You might have to do a little color correction/stabilization, and in my case there's always been some kind of overlay - a logo, a floor plan's name/specs, etc.

This is a pretty broad question, so I wasn't really sure where to get specific. If there's anything else I might be able to help with, let me know.

PS. Christopher Nichols (I think) works at Digital Domain, and there are a ton of other people here that have produced some outstanding animations. I'm interested in seeing what they have to say...

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"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

C.Vestal

We use Premiere Pro for adding logos and cross fades between sequences. 90% of our projects are transported to DVD. Premiere Pro has some great new settings for exporting to .m2v Once we have all our mpeg2 sequences we use Adobe Encore to author the DVD's. For the quick ones we can export directly for a non menu DVD from the Premiere timeline. I am very happy with all Adobe products now.

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Chris Vestal
Concept Vision LLC

kingeldar

yes cause i really don't know anything about that part of cgart....
(started 3d last year, first 3d render sept2003... i'm a newbie... so much to learn...)
i guess i should have a serious look at Adobesoftware and combustion if i want to understand a few thinks... will check there websites and maybe try to find some webpages talkin about that
if u know some genreal links about animation art , video post process and so on i'm interested in
...
thx

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Ken Walton

The DVD authoring process is a good subject to bring up. When I first started in post, the only real "professional" option for outputting an animation was to output it to Beta, which was expensive, tedious, and time-consuming as hell. Last year I got my first DVD burner (when they were around $400) because most of my projects were ultimately headed for DVD. My problem arose in determining the encoders and authoring software to use. I had bought Discreet Cleaner for encoding when I originally bought Max, but I really wasn't too happy with the speed, performance or results. Switched to Tsunami MPEG encoder ($40 - can't beat it in my opinion) and was EXTREMELY pleased with the encoding. (A good site for this info is www.vcdhelp.com) As for the authoring software, I didn't really feel like there were many options at that time. I tried a couple (Ulead DVD Workshop was okay, but not as "high-end" as I was hoping for) but ended up with Pinnacle Impression DVD Pro. It worked quite well, but the interface was a little quirky and not that friendly. I'm very interested in checking out what's out there now - especially from Adobe. I was seriously considering switching to Combustion from After Effects, but it would be nice if you could use one vendor's products for the whole post process because integration is, in my experience, always better. Does anyone know if Discreet offers anything like this now?

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"Under certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." - Mark Twain (1835-1910)

Jim Mann

Ken

I couldn't agree more. DVD is great for two reasons; your animations look great on a TV and the actual animation is locked up on the DVD so clients don't try use the wrong player or attempt to play enormous animations on a steam powered laptop then blame you for the stutter and pause.

In terms of workflow, my route is Max > combustion > premiere pro > Encore. I was hoping that Encore might be able to import a premiere project file instead of having to create an AVI first. Maybe you can do this and I have missed it in the manual - anybody out there know if this can be done?

Definitely have a look at Combustion if you are using Max as the integration between the two is really good.

Jim

rgedney

I am an architect wanting to take my presentations to another level and one aspect is more user friendly animations. like previously mentioned, being able to throw a DVD into a player without player software and computer power being an issue is the base need. I currently am a heavy user of Photoshop, Illustrator, Viz and Sketch-Up. I would like to get to a point where i could create a basic DVD interface where the client could pick and choose elements of a design presentation -similar to any movie DVD you might rent today. Text elements and audio commentary would be nice as well.

Our current dilema is that we are in need of several software upgrades. Viz 5, Photoshop CS, Illustrator, In Design, Sketch-Up 4 and new CAD software are all in line for beefing up. As well as any potiential useful software tools we don't have. what would be a good recommendation for softwares to purchase considering the previously mentioned interactive presentation needs?


Also, what are some of the key rendering settings to take into consideration when making an animation that is bound for a television? letterbox considerations? widescreen format? resolution? frames per second, etc....