Integrating 3D models with photography
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# 1 14-06-2009 , 03:46 AM
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Maya animation to After Effects

I'm the rookie here, trying to load animation files made in Maya into Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. Sorry, never done thisbefore. Like a rookie, I tried avi files, won't do that again, lol. I tried TGA, no good. Now i'm re-rendering the animation, only 150 frames as tiff files. Just can't seem to open anything in after effects. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance. I'll do my best to follow you, but remember, this is my first time around. Thanks in advance you guys are awesome.

# 2 14-06-2009 , 05:03 AM
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Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 3 14-06-2009 , 05:42 AM
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Sounds good, I'll try it asap and post back, and thanks !

# 4 14-06-2009 , 02:40 PM
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Ok, tried that, but the tick box for Image Sequence isn't availible, ( as in won'y high;ight when I click the tiff file). I think my problem is in the file extenions. I've read a little @ it, but it seems confusing. The "files" I'm using, are being saved as
" Good Intro.tiff.1 - then Good Intro.tiff.2 - then Good Ontro.tiff.3 etc.
Seems to me it should be ending in tiff instead of a number. Prob. some bone head error on my part right, lol.
Btw, thanks for the help !

# 5 14-06-2009 , 09:40 PM
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yeah it is :p
nah, it's all good

in your render settings you need to change it from your current file extension format to something more like "Good Intro0001.tiff"

the file extension is meant to be at the end, not the frame number (don't have maya on this mac but i think the format is something like name#frameNumber.#fileExtension, i probably got that totally wrong because i've never actually paid attention to it, i just scroll through until i get the right one)

you also need to have frame padding (usually 4 works), this will insert leading 0's in front of the frame number, it'll allow AE to recognize all the frames in the sequence

you can see what your files are going to be called in the render settings where you make your adjustments to the file name

take a look at the maya help files too, one of the tutorials explains this (it was to do with rendering an apple)




that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

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# 6 14-06-2009 , 11:48 PM
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Ok, boneheead move on my part ( leaving file extention as a number). Fixed that, now all of my tiff files are black, nothing else, just black screens. If I render one image, it renders just fine, when I open the batch rendered tiff files (150 total), they're black. Any idea? Thanks again.

# 7 14-06-2009 , 11:50 PM
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Btw, I do have the alpha channel mask clicked. I've never messed with alpha channels so not sure if it's an issue or not.

# 8 15-06-2009 , 01:12 AM
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Make sure it's rendering out of the right camera in the render globals.


Imagination is more important than knowledge.
# 9 15-06-2009 , 04:46 AM
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Checked that, finally getting my images to batch render. Still having one issue, and that's not being able to render fluids. I have a logo and am using flames in front of it. I'll pull out the Maya text I have, but any advice would help. Here's a list of warnings that pop up when I run the render diagnostics.
Warnings
--------
- RisingHeat_fluidShape1SG has no port connected. This can be dangerous for rendering.
- polySurfaceShape24 has no shading group associated with it. This
means that it will not be rendered. Please assign it to a shading group.
- polySurfaceShape27 has no shading group associated with it. This
means that it will not be rendered. Please assign it to a shading group.
Really have appreciated your jelp, won't quit no matter how long this takes to get, lol.

# 10 15-06-2009 , 04:53 AM
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i haven't had much to do with fluids before, but whenever i used them i never did change them too much and they always showed up

things to check:
(just saw your edit while typing this reply)
check that the fluids have a material attached to them (i've never assigned new materials to fluids, but i assume it's the same as assigning materials to geometry)

also which renderer are you using?
Mental Ray? Software renderer? or Hardware renderer? or another one?
i've seen fluids show up when using mental ray, never tried with the others

if that fails then...

check if you are using render layers, if so then check that the fluids are in the render layers that are being rendered

if you aren't using render layers then check the render stats of the fluids

in the attributes panel somewhere in there is a tab for render stats, make sure that Primary Visiblity (or visible, can't remember which one) is checked on.

if all else fails... then maybe someone knows something i haven't mentioned...




that's a "Ch" pronounced as a "K"

Computer skills I should have:
Objective C, C#, Java, MEL. Python, C++, XML, JavaScript, XSLT, HTML, SQL, CSS, FXScript, Clips, SOAR, ActionScript, OpenGL, DirectX
Maya, XSI, Photoshop, AfterEffects, Motion, Illustrator, Flash, Swift3D
# 11 15-06-2009 , 04:55 AM
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I'll go through your list first, then let you know if any of that helps. At this rate you'll have to add babtsitting to your list of computer skills, lol. Obsessed with figuring this out now, no sleep until it's done.

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