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Multiple Glow Passes From Carrara (Tutorial)

Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
edited January 2014 in Carrara Discussion

The tutorials only show screenshots of Adobe After Effects, however the Glow passes were generated from Carrara.

I consider this a strongly related Carrara Tutorial (due to the way I split out the models for the multiple passes), but if people don't want me to show tutorials using After Effects I won't show them.

PART 1 - Applying Glow to After Effects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XkM3s90how

PART 2 - Multiple Glow passes (generated from Carrara) in After Effects.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJh_rt27QE

Cheers!

Post edited by Sci Fi Funk on

Comments

  • DartanbeckDartanbeck Posts: 21,522
    edited December 1969

    Cool!
    I go through all manner of steps in multiplying my glow within the shaders, to individualize how much presence the glow has, and here you're just doing it all in AE! I don't have AE, but the same principles apply to Howler as well. Very cool, Steve... very cool!

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    Dartanbeck said:
    Cool!
    I go through all manner of steps in multiplying my glow within the shaders, to individualize how much presence the glow has, and here you're just doing it all in AE! I don't have AE, but the same principles apply to Howler as well. Very cool, Steve... very cool!

    Hi Dartan,

    Thanks man.

    I wish to level with you here. Given a choice I'll do it all in Carrara. Honesty. The reason is (and I know you are a fan of avoiding post if possible as well), you get more control WITHIN the 3d Package - and you don't risk a mistake (how can a post processing package which doesn't have access to your 3d data do such a good job - It can't - check out the ailising on DOF for example)

    I am aware that these issues can be compensated for, but still - it's not as smooth. Having said that I'm getting into the ADDITIONAL look you can achieve with AE. Very nice.

    However when the workload is too much to do it in Carrara (like faking the camera white blur on over exposure to streetlights per light) I'll use AE in a heart beat.

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited December 1969

    Are compositing glows, or anything with some transparency, limited in in any way by using 8 bits per channel color?

    Or do you run Carrara's ouput through some kind of interpolating filter so you get 16 (or more) bits per channel, or perhaps it does not matter for what you are doing?

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    cdordoni said:
    Are compositing glows, or anything with some transparency, limited in in any way by using 8 bits per channel color?

    Or do you run Carrara's ouput through some kind of interpolating filter so you get 16 (or more) bits per channel, or perhaps it does not matter for what you are doing?

    That's a good question. I'm afraid you've gone beyond where I am at in this. I stick to the default (8 bit).

    Perhaps I get away with it as I am producing for screen only and maybe the 8 bit range condenses into highlighting colours? I'm guessing here. Either way my eyes are not noticing any kind of colour ailising. It looks good to me.

    Can anyone shed some light on this? (no pun intended - lol).

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited December 1969

    Sci Fi Funk said:
    I'm afraid you've gone beyond where I am at in this. I stick to the default (8 bit).

    Actually, I don't have any compositing experience. I am interested in this for potential future work with match moving, so I have been getting some info on various related topics.

    I would love to stay with Carrara because I find it to be very effective for many things. When I realized a few years back that 16-bit/channel output does not work (it only saves 8-bits in a 16-bit "wrapper") I have been wondering how effective compositing is done with transparency, glow, DOF, or anything else that really needs more than the 8 bit (256 levels) limitation so any aliasing is minimized.

    Maybe its a perceived limitation only. It seems many people are compositing using Carrara's output without any issue. I have heard from very few people that are running into some "quality" issues but expected there would be many more.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    cdordoni said:
    Sci Fi Funk said:
    I'm afraid you've gone beyond where I am at in this. I stick to the default (8 bit).

    Actually, I don't have any compositing experience. I am interested in this for potential future work with match moving, so I have been getting some info on various related topics.

    I would love to stay with Carrara because I find it to be very effective for many things. When I realized a few years back that 16-bit/channel output does not work (it only saves 8-bits in a 16-bit "wrapper") I have been wondering how effective compositing is done with transparency, glow, DOF, or anything else that really needs more than the 8 bit (256 levels) limitation so any aliasing is minimized.

    Maybe its a perceived limitation only. It seems many people are compositing using Carrara's output without any issue. I have heard from very few people that are running into some "quality" issues but expected there would be many more.

    As to compositing some of the effects, this video composites a few elements, including a volumetric cloud. I didn't really notice any artifacts in the raw video.
    http://youtu.be/79fyKOSUTsg

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    cdordoni,

    imho the expression "whatever works" comes to mind again. If after using 8bit output you are satisfied with the results then it doesn't matter.

    (Apart from that little voice that keeps saying you've been ripped off or it's not perfect) - I've learned to move on once the essence of the thing is in place, and the remaining mistakes are trivial. Life is too short!

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited December 1969

    It is an issue that you would only notice with multiple layers that had some transparency. If you are compositing solid objects, without a lot of blur around the edges, I don't think anyone would ever notice.

    And certainly, why be concerned about something that would not be noticed?

    I guess if I heard of some kind of effective work around for this if it were to become an issue, I would feel a bit better.

    I have used the multipass output to get the depth information, and have been able to blur it into 16-bits for individual frames, and for some things this has worked for me.

    Perhaps I just need to spend some time learning After Effects to determine if there is some kind of processing for an animated sequence that essentially does the same thing.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    cdordoni said:
    It is an issue that you would only notice with multiple layers that had some transparency. If you are compositing solid objects, without a lot of blur around the edges, I don't think anyone would ever notice.

    And certainly, why be concerned about something that would not be noticed?

    I guess if I heard of some kind of effective work around for this if it were to become an issue, I would feel a bit better.

    I have used the multipass output to get the depth information, and have been able to blur it into 16-bits for individual frames, and for some things this has worked for me.

    Perhaps I just need to spend some time learning After Effects to determine if there is some kind of processing for an animated sequence that essentially does the same thing.

    Why work around? I think you're worrying about an issue that you really don't need to. Especially if you already own Carrara. ;-)


    This video uses multiple layers with different effects including the aura, light sphere, lens flares and translucency on alpha channels. I've posted some screen shots below. I used Final Cut Pro for the compositing.

    Picture_5.png
    1254 x 564 - 724K
    Picture_2.png
    1272 x 566 - 572K
    Picture_3.png
    1248 x 785 - 592K
    Picture_1.png
    1276 x 562 - 559K
  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    cdordoni said:
    It is an issue that you would only notice with multiple layers that had some transparency. If you are compositing solid objects, without a lot of blur around the edges, I don't think anyone would ever notice.

    And certainly, why be concerned about something that would not be noticed?

    I guess if I heard of some kind of effective work around for this if it were to become an issue, I would feel a bit better.

    On monday I'll show you my method for layering separate glow passes. Yes it is a manual effort but it solves 90% of the issues (I think).

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer - looking very good there my friend!

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    Part 2 - Multiple Glow Layers.

    Note the emphasis here is on how you split up your Carrara scene into layers (in my case this is done manually).

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJh_rt27QE

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    Sci Fi Funk said:
    evilproducer - looking very good there my friend!

    Yours too. Its scale is pretty impressive.

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited December 1969

    evilproducer said:

    This video uses multiple layers with different effects including the aura, light sphere, lens flares and translucency on alpha channels. I've posted some screen shots below. I used Final Cut Pro for the compositing.

    I watched this a few times when you first posted it. It did come out really well, and is a great indicator of what is possible with Carrara.

  • cdordonicdordoni Posts: 583
    edited December 1969

    Sci Fi Funk said:
    Part 2 - Multiple Glow Layers.

    Note the emphasis here is on how you split up your Carrara scene into layers (in my case this is done manually).

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpJh_rt27QE

    I watched part 1 and part 2, and I can see that After Effects gives you many of the same image processing tools that Photoshop does. It looks like you are working with individual frames, but I know you are doing animations.

    So do you have different folders with the frames of each pass, and After Effects loads them into the specific layers?

    The adjustments you were making in the video would be applied to a layer with ALL the frames of a specific pass?

  • Sci Fi FunkSci Fi Funk Posts: 1,198
    edited December 1969

    cdordoni said:
    [

    I watched part 1 and part 2, and I can see that After Effects gives you many of the same image processing tools that Photoshop does. It looks like you are working with individual frames, but I know you are doing animations.

    So do you have different folders with the frames of each pass, and After Effects loads them into the specific layers?

    The adjustments you were making in the video would be applied to a layer with ALL the frames of a specific pass?

    From what I can tell After Effects is Photoshop for moving images. i.e. You don't need photoshop. You can even output as a single image!

    For each pass you render out of Carrara as a set of sequenced jpg images (it's tidy to output them into a separate folder). You import as a sequence. Then AE applies these settings to all frames in the sequence.

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,050
    edited December 1969

    I prefer png to jpg as it is a lossless format and can support alpha channels.

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