After Effects-Frame Blending Pixel Motion?

[dlparisi]

If been experimenting with AE7 while I'm trying to decide between purchasing Combustion and AE and I came across Pixel Motion in AE. I'm wondering if anyone out ther is using AE and had any experience using frame blending or Timewarp with Pixel Motion. If you don't know, Pixel Motion (formely from the Foundry) calculates the new position of a pixel based on the motion in the image rather than just blending two frames over each other. In my tests, the ability to slow down portions of the animation have been pretty nice. Granted there have been a few artifacts in some spots but overall it is generating in-between frames that are almost spot on. I'm think for typical archviz stuff no one would probably notice a difference and I get to render around half the number of frames I normally would as long as there isn't too much motion.

Can anyone weigh in on this? It seems too good to be true.

David

P.S. I don't want to get into this about combustion vs. AE but are there any other decent compositing programs sub $1000??

[vance3d]

well Apple just cut the price on shake from $2999 to $500 but also plans to discontinue it.

I've used AE for a while now and I think its a great program. it works well with adobes other software and there are many plugin developers for it plus it is widely used. go for the production bundle if you can.

V Miller

[dlparisi]

$500 is a great deal for shake, too bad it's Mac only (+ linux). I've been looking at the Production Studio Upgrade which seems like a great deal too-Premiere Pro, After effects, Illustrator, Photoshop, Encore, and Audition for about $1200US.

[cpnichols]

Personally I would avoid buying Shake... it is a dead product. No more updates or support. Look at things like DF or Nuke or even Combustion.

[Giovanni]

I did some experimenting, with different products that "claimed" to do a clean frames interpolation. None really worked in real life.

All of them will introduce some artifacts, from crowling textures on large planes to objects "boiling" uncontrollably.

I thought too that for architecture we could render half frames and interpolate. Not so.

Also, last time I checked, my AE7 PRO does not do pixel interpolation or pixel motion blur...Is it a feature I am missing?

Good luck

regards

gio

[percydaman]

I only render half the frames usually. for arch vis, using twixtor or the time warp plugin in ae7 usually works really well.

[dlparisi]

I only render half the frames usually. for arch vis, using twixtor or the time warp plugin in ae7 usually works really well.

My thoughts exactly, but Giovanni seems to differ. Developers and especially architects really like to have the animations move through the scenes very slowly and Timewarp (with Pixel Motion) seems like an easy way to have it go even slower with virtually no hit to the render times. Granted it might not work for all frames or camera moves but it seems like it'll work for most.

GIOAVANNI: "Pixel Motion" is most definitely in AE 7 Pro. Available in either the Timewarp effect or via Time Stretching. For either you have the option of either the traditional frame blending or pixel motion .