Using External

Compositing Tools

After you’ve completed your scene and rendered it, you’re done, right? Well, not exactly. You still have post-production to com-

plete — that’s where you work with the final rendered images to add some additional effects. This phase of production typically takes place in another package, such as Photoshop, Discreet’s Combustion, or Adobe’s After Effects, and understanding how to interact with these packages can be a lifesaver when your client wants some lastminute changes (and they always do).

Compositing with Photoshop

Perhaps the most common tool for compositing images is Photoshop. Photoshop can bring multiple images together in a single file and position them relative to one another. Working with layers makes applying simple filters and effects to the various element pieces easy.

Figure 46-1 shows Photoshop with several separate pieces, each on a different layer.

To composite images in Photoshop, you need to load all the separate images into Photoshop and then select the portions of the images that you want to combine. When saving image files in Max, be sure to include an alpha channel. You can see the alpha channel in the Rendered Frame Window if you click the Display Alpha Channel button, as shown in Figure 46-2.

In Photoshop, you can see an image’s alpha channel if you select the Channels panel in the Layers palette. Selecting the alpha channel and using the Magic Wand tool make selecting the rendered object easy.

After it’s selected, you can copy and paste the rendered image onto your background image as a new layer.

Note	Not all image file formats support an alpha channel. When render-
	ing images to be composited, but sure to use an alpha channel
	format such as RLA, RPF, PNG, or TGA.

46C H A P T E R

In This Chapter

Compositing with

Photoshop

Using Premiere and

After Effects

Introducing Combustion

After all your images have been positioned on the background image, you can apply a Filter, such as a Gaussian Blur, to smooth the edges between the composite images.

1084 Part XI Compositing and Post-Production

Figure 46-1: Photoshop is an important compositing tool for static images.

Figure 46-2: The Rendered Frame window can display an image’s alpha channel.

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Video Editing with Premiere

Photoshop works with still images, but if you work with animations, then Adobe has Premiere to help with your video editing needs. The editing that Premiere makes possible includes patching several animation clips together, adding sound, color correcting the frames, and adding transitions between animation clips.

Within Premiere, various animation clips can be imported (or dragged directly from Windows Explorer) into the Project panel. From here the clips can be dropped onto the Timeline in the desired order. The Monitor panel shows the current animation or individual animation clips.

Sound clips can be dropped in the Timeline in the Audio track. The Title menu can also be used to add text to the animation. Another common activity in Premiere is to add transition effects between clips. This is done by clicking the Effects tab in the Project panel, selecting a transition effect, dragging the effect to the Timeline, and dropping it between two animation clips.

When the entire sequence is completed, you can render it using the Sequence Render Work Area menu command. The completed animation file can then be saved using the File Export command.

Tutorial: Creating a montage of

Space Warp animations

In this example, we combine several animations into a single animation sequence.

To create a montage of several animations using Premiere, follow these steps:

1.Open Premiere and drag the five Space Warp animations from the Chap 38 directory on the CD-ROM to the Project panel.

2.Select all five animation clips and drag them to the Video 1 row in the Timeline panel. Select Sequence Zoom In four times to space the animations out in the Timeline panel so they are visible.

3.If you want to change the order of the animation clips, just drag them to the desired position in the Timeline panel. Make sure they run consecutively.

4.Click the Effects tab in the Project panel and open the Video Transitions folder. Select one of the transition effects and drag and drop it from the Project panel to the Timeline panel. You can drop a different effect where each animation clip meets its neighbor.

5.Click the Play button in the Monitor panel to see the resulting animation sequence. If you’re comfortable with it, select Sequence Render Work Area to render the final sequence.

6.When the rendering completes, save the animation using the File Export Movie menu command.

Figure 46-3 shows the Premiere interface with the animation clips loaded and positioned in the Timeline panel.

1086 Part XI Compositing and Post-Production

Figure 46-3: Premiere can be used to combine several animation sequences together.

Video Compositing with After Effects

If you need to add a little more to your animations than just transitions, then you should look into Adobe’s After Effects. After Effects lets you composite 2D and 3D clips into a single image or animation. You can paint directly on the animation frames, add additional lights and cameras, and create visual effects such as Distort, Shatter, and Warp.

After Effects includes a library of resources much like Premiere. These resources can be positioned on a Composition pane. Effects applied to the loaded animation clip are listed in the Effects panel along with all the effect settings.

After Effects includes many of the same tools used in Photoshop and Illustrator. These tools let you paint and select portions of the animation clip as if it were a still image, but the results can be added or removed over time.

Tutorial: Adding Animation Effects

Using After Effects

Some effects are much easier to add using a package like After Effects than to create in Max. A good example is adding a blurry look and the waves coming from a heat source to the melting snowman animation.

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To add video effects using After Effects, follow these steps:

1.Open After Effects and drag the Melting Snowman.avi file from the Chap 46 directory to the Project panel.

2.Select Composition New Composition, select the NTSC, 640×480 option from the Preset list, and click Ok.

3.Drag the Melting snowman.avi file from the Project panel and drop it on the Composition pane.

4.With the animation selected in the Composition pane, select Effect Distort Wave Warp. The Wave Warp effect appears in a panel. Set the Wave Height to 4, the Wave Width to 30, the Direction to Vertical, and the Wave Speed to 1. This adds a heat wave effect to the entire animation.

5.Select Effect Blur & Sharpen Gaussian Blur and set the Blurriness value to 3.0.

6.In the Timeline panel, drag the Work Area End icon so it coincides with the end of the animation.

7.Select Composition Make Movie. In the Render Queue dialog box that opens, click the Render button to render the animation with its effects.

Figure 46-4 shows the After Effects interface with the animation clip loaded.

Figure 46-4: After Effects can add special effects to an animation sequence.