Render question....

[avkills]

Do most of you render at 60fps progressive from LW, and then convert using AfterEffects to 30fps (29.97) interlaced video formats. I ask because I almost always process animations in AE, and it sounds like a way to get much better quality from LW to video.

I was just reading some AE manual to past time waiting for a render (what good things they are) and it mentioned something about this, which is why I am asking, as I have never done this before.

I am planning on changing much of my render habits going forward. No more movies, TGA image sequences instead.

-mark

[jahn]

i render progressive but use 25fps(pal for me) unless i do something special.

[avkills]

i render progressive but use 25fps(pal for me) unless i do something special.

Doesn't that make quick movements appear jerky? Maybe PAL is different, but if you render to a NTSC codec directly without field rendering, quick movements will appear jerky and not smooth.

-mark

[WShawn]

Mark:

I used to field render almost everything I did in LW, probably because my background was TV production, and I was accustomed to the very smooth look of 59.94 fields per second. These days I render most of my LW animations at 30fps (or even 24fps if I'm matching the frame rate of a 24p camera.) The animations look a little more strobey (which is why it's important to have motion blur enabled in LW or added in AE), but I think it looks more cinematic.

At one point I did some tests comparing the time it took to progressively render an animation at 60fps versus field rendering it at 30fps, and I think field rendering was, in general, faster. If you're just bringing your render into AE to conform it to 29.97 fps and compress it with an NTSC codec I don't think you gain much by doing 60 progressive frames a second because half the resolution of those frames will be thrown out when you field render your final animation in AE. The exception to this would be if you plan to scale down or fly your 3D render around in AE. In that case having full frames to work with would probably give you sharper results.

Good luck with your projects.

Shawn Marshall
Marshall Arts Motion Graphics

[avkills]

(sorry if this is double posted)

Thanks for your input Shawn.

From what the manual for AE said, it sounds like AE would actually process a full progressive frame for each field resulting in a overall sharper image. I know for a fact that field rendered LW material that has stuff not in motion looks way sharper in the end if you do not interpret the fields in AE (say you have a logo fly in and stop, once it stops, if you are still interpreting the fields, the logo will not look as sharp than if you have a second instance loaded that is interpreted progressive and you cut to it right as the motion ends.)

It sounds to me on paper that progressive render at 60fps would solve this.

Has anyone also noticed that LW v7.5 renders fields backwards to what the dialog box says; I always have to interpret in AE opposite of what I did in LW otherwise it looks horrid on the NTSC monitor.

-mark

[toby]

I don't come from a tv background but I do work for a place that does nation-wide tv commercials, some of them award-winning, and I can tell you that no field or 60fps rendering ever takes place there. We render to 24 or 30fps progressive, and the interlacing is added in post.

I'd explain more if I could :D

Oh yea - bully for you rendering to frames! Right idea.

[avkills]

Thanks for the info Toby. I did in fact see AE do the interlacing on a 60fps render, but I plan to do some more tests. I will probably stick to the 30fps and 24fps depending on the end use.

The 60fps was just too painful time wise.

-mark

[toby]

Yea 60fps and field rendering are valid options, I'm sure some places do it, it's often made me wonder why we don't - this place will pretty much do anything that makes video look better, so it makes me think it's minor -

[avkills]

Ok I have done some more testing and I can verify that rendering 60fps progressive and processing in AfterEffects, AE will indeed include movement between fields which results in much smoother motion. Rendering 30fps progressive and AE will not render any movement between fields. The motion at 30fps is not that bad if you have rendered with motion blur and indeed gives a more "cinematic feel".

I have not done any tests with 24fps progressive. I wonder if the 3:2 pulldown does anything extra special?

Toby, I would not mind if you have time to test this and verify my results. Of course I don't need you to divulge any "secret sauce" you have in your workflow. ;)

Of course with the advent of progressive HD formats taking over this will pretty much be a moot point hopefully in the future. Why they even have interlaced HD formats is beyond me, just does not make sense. Oh well.

-mark

[toby]

I don't know of any 'secret sauce', but thanks for the consideration :)

My guess as to why major effects houses don't render 60fps is because of rendertime, which is doubled, half of which is thrown out by AE when you interlace ( but you could always render at half-height with half the apect ratio, 'squishing' the image sequence in half, stretching it back up in AE, then interlacing it, or so I've heard!) and that 24fps is the movie industy's standard for good reason, because it looks the best - as long as you have good motion blur. (of course it has to be 30 for tv) When you watch feature-film dvd's on your tv, it's 24fps with pull-down, and it still looks great. 60fps has a different look to it, and it's a 'video' look. Compare something like a soap opera to a feature film, it's just a guess but I think that's the look they're avoiding.

I'm on a nightmare show right now so I don't have time to play with it even though you've got me curious, but I have no doubt that you're getting that 60fps-smooth look. I rendered a quicktime at 60fps once and it had that smoothness too.

[Otso]

(say you have a logo fly in and stop, once it stops, if you are still interpreting the fields, the logo will not look as sharp than if you have a second instance loaded that is interpreted progressive and you cut to it right as the motion ends.)

It sounds to me on paper that progressive render at 60fps would solve this.

Has anyone also noticed that LW v7.5 renders fields backwards to what the dialog box says; I always have to interpret in AE opposite of what I did in LW otherwise it looks horrid on the NTSC monitor.

Yeah, for some reason Lightwave seems to use exactly the opposite terminology (upper=even) for field rendering than what I have used to (upper=odd).

As I'm in PAL land I usually render at 50 fps in LW and do the interlacing in AE if the animation is for TV, especially if it is for a commercial that has product logos etc that have to be readable in motion. Sometimes, if rendering times are an issue or the animation is to be mostly watched from a computer monitor or if I specifically like to have a more film-like look, I render in progressive 25 fps. I always use motion blur in final renders, whether in 25 fps or 50 fps.

I used to render in interlaced 25 but at some point (maybe it was when the new antialiasing/reconstruction filter options were introduced) I started to get ugly results that had mixed fields. Plus there is the extra hassle to deal with static frames in AE. And often I need to scale or even rotate the 3D animation in AE to fit in some 2D components, in which case the extra information in the 50 fps render is useful.

Otso

[avkills]

Thanks for the reply Toby, yes I know all about the nightmare show. ;)

Otso, thanks for re-assuring me that I was not on drugs with the lightwave field terminlogy being swapped. :D

-mark

[jludwig]

First time posting, although I've been using LW for several years now. I went to DAVE school, and one of the first things you learn is to ALWAYS render to frames. You can comp it together using plain old QT Pro, then bring it into your editor of choice, (at least on a Mac). I haven't seen a way to import frames into Final Cut Pro, so I use QT Pro first.

Frames are also the only way to go when you render on a farm. . .

Jim

[toby]

Yes we know, we're talking about rendering for interlacing, not straight to a video file.
In fact I wrote this a while ago to help convince people - and so I wouldn't have to type it over and over :)
http://tobygaines.com/render_to_frames.html