VFX Conflicting tips

[Morne]

Hi all

Some things that confuse me and I hope you can shed some light on for me.
From this forum I gather that for animation it is best to use a non sharpening AA filter like Area. This pruduces less flicker apparently. I get the less flicker but I always thought of doing things as crisp and clear as possible. 3D World Mag issue 104 has some VFX tips and there they mention that you should render as crisp and clean as possible, then grade back to match your backplate with your compositor. I tend to rely on Chaosgroup forum since I bought VRay and here are a number of smart people here. However the magazine tip on the issue makes more sense to me in this case. So then why is it that Area filter produces smoother less flicker anims than a sharpening filter like VRaySincFilter?

Also apparently you should output to non-compressed files and thus avoid output to jpg. I've always used jpg or tga. So then what is the typical output type for animation nowdays? TIF? EXR?

All comments welcome

[Neilg]

I dont use any AA filters and I dont particularly like the look of them. If my render needs to be blurry i'll do it in post.

The flicker is on the edges of objects with sub-par AA, the jagged lines shimmer as they move across the frame. It's just a blur to hide the defects, and sharpening brings them out more.

i use .tga for small jobs, and .exr for major things. Although the last big one i just used .tga.
So long as it doesnt use a lossy compression youre fine - .exr is just for more colours and extra information from the render.

[tricky]

For the last couple of animations, and also for high-res stills, I have also just turned off the AA filters. The compression added when creating your DVD should irradicate the need for any AA filters at render time.

Never save to jpeg.

[Morne]

1. does turning off the AA filter make it more crisp?
2. does it make a difference in render time?

[tricky]

As I understand it, if you turn the AA filter off, the crispness of your render is determined by the rQMC parameters.

[Morne]

....
i use .tga for small jobs, and .exr for major things. Although the last big one i just used .tga.
So long as it doesnt use a lossy compression youre fine - .exr is just for more colours and extra information from the render.

So for most things I'll probably use tga sequense then. Can I use default settings but then just untick "Compress" correct? this will make it un(lossy compression)?
Bits-per-pixel = 32 ticked
Compress = UNticked
Alpha Split = UNticked
Pre-Multiplied Alpha - Ticked

Is this correct?

[trixian]

Tga's are compressed with lossless RLE encoding.
(Can save quite a bit of space for passes where there are large areas of one colour. Useless if your images have tonns of detail and noise).

[Morne]

huh?

so except for the space saving, should I have compress ticked or not?

[rivoli]

if you don't mind bigger size files, than leave compression alone
tgas at ntsc resolution shouldn't be much of a trouble anyway.

[Morne]

so then for bigger resolution should I tick compress or use exr rather? (exr as I understand is a WAY BIGGER file size)

[rivoli]

it depends, even at bigger res than ntsc, a single tga with rgba channels has very modest size. but as trixian pointed out, if you make use of loads of elements, than saving space may become a concern.

exrs are a totally different story, unless you really need a full float and linear workflow, I'd leave them alone.

[mike_kennedy]

If you don't need to open the file in PS very often, (Photoshop hates PNG files for some reason).... PNG's are way more space saving then TGA's....and Work fine in After Effects and most other composting solutions. Just make sure to check off "interlaced" to save space"..
You can also go 48 bit with PNG and they have alphas.
We used to use TGA files but they were way too large when we made the shift to HD.

[Morne]

Thanks Mike_Kennedy I'll give png a try. I problems in the past with using png textures in my materials, the colours come out funny even though they are rgb and not cmyk. But I'll try rendering to it to see...