Please answer this burning question of mine!

[mtbuck24]

I have tried over and over again using Anime Studio to try to use it like After Effects for Motion Graphics. Is there anyway to get Anime Studio to have the same type of motion blur as after effects? I love the way After Effects default motion blur looks, but I can't stand trying to animate in it when I have been using Anime Studio a lot longer.

Is my best option just to import the video to After Effects and make the changes there? Any response would be appreciated.

Thank you

[Lukas]

Short and simple: ASP can't do it, you should do it in post production in AE.

[mtbuck24]

Thanks Lukas for the response and I apologize for replying so late. But how? I have tried but I think the problem I am having is it is already in video format. How do you apply motion blur to something other than after effects own assets? Can you apply motion blur to videos as well and get the same result?

[jayfaker]

In AE you can use Timewarp at a 100 percent speed and jack up the motion blur amount. Or for a nicer effect you can buy Reelsmart Motion Blur.

For ASP there is a method here but I haven't tried it: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=16822&start=45

Or, for future reference if you really want awesome motion blur, you could jack up your project framerate to something absurd like 4x24 or 8x24, bring it into AE in a 24fps comp, time remap it to the correct length, and use CC Force Motion Blur. Not very efficient, but will produce a nice motion blur.

[Dodgy]

The one thing I would really like in the next version is a proper sub frame motion blur. Blurring over whole frames really isn't a good way to do it.

[hayasidist]

if you don't like AS's built-in motion blur, you could get towards achieving this using layer comps - render the part you want blurred separately, push that through your preferred tool and then composite.
e.g.:

layer comps for:
>> close foreground: render using AS depth of field to blur
>> mid fg: render normally
>> action: render normally; then use your preferred tool for motion blur
>> bg: render normally (DoF off)

composite:
>> close fg
>> mid fg
>> action (with motion blur)
>> bg


IMO what's missing is being able to save render settings for each layer comp (and that has been requested as an ehancement)

[mtbuck24]

Awesome thanks everyone for the replies. I am new to after effects so there is still a lot I don't know...but I will use the given info and figure it out!

Thanks again!

[Greenlaw]

What I've been doing is using ASP's Layer Comps to output my characters to layer passes separate from the BG and FG layers. Then in After Effects, I use Pixel Motion Blur to apply motion blur to each layer pass as needed--typically just the character passes, and sometimes the BG/FG if there's motion in those layers. PMB uses pixel tracking to determine motion vectors, and the result is a very convincing motion blur effect. (If you've ever used Re:Vision FX's ReelSmart Motion Blur, it's a very similar effect.)

Note: I say "as needed" in the above because PMB can be slow, especially if you have multiple instances in your comp. If there's nothing moving in a given layer, don't use it there! Optionally, you can keyframe the effect off and on if you really need to speed up your comp.

In fact, PMB can be a bit slower than RSMB but if you don't have RSMB, PMB is native to AE CC.

G.

[mtbuck24]

What I've been doing is using ASP's Layer Comps to output my characters to layer passes separate from the BG and FG layers. Then in After Effects, I use Pixel Motion Blur to apply motion blur to each layer pass as needed--typically just the character passes, and sometimes the BG/FG if there's motion in those layers. PMB uses pixel tracking to determine motion vectors, and the result is a very convincing motion blur effect. (If you've ever used Re:Vision FX's ReelSmart Motion Blur, it's a very similar effect.)

Note: I say "as needed" in the above because PMB can be slow, especially if you have multiple instances in your comp. If there's nothing moving in a given layer, don't use it there! Optionally, you can keyframe the effect off and on if you really need to speed up your comp.

In fact, PMB can be a bit slower than RSMB but if you don't have RSMB, PMB is native to AE CC.

G.

Awesome! I think that is the answer I need!

[mtbuck24]

Is there a way or setting to export video from ASP with a transparent BG?

[mtbuck24]

nm GreenLaw already answered that viewtopic.php?f=5&t=26705&p=150759&hili ... nd#p150759 lol

Thanks GreenLaw!

[Greenlaw]

Personally, I think if you're going to be compositing in After Effects, you're much better off rendering PNG image sequences with alpha. Rendering sequential frames requires fewer system resources than rendering an entire movie file and you'll gain more flexibility with what you can do with the resulting footage.

Also, if you're rendering a long animation and ASP crashes, your entire file gets hosed--but if you're rendering an image sequence, you can always pick up where you left off. Or, if you need to fix or otherwise re-render only a small segment of the animation, you can overwrite the frames you want to change--can't do that with a movie file, you'll need to re-render the whole thing.

For these and other reasons, it's far more common to render image sequences for animation compositing.

But if you really must composite with movie files, some codecs do support it. If you're on Mac, I believe you can select PNG for Quicktime movie, which should include an alpha channel. On Windows you may need to choose a third party codec for AVI. Lagarith, for example, supports RGBA. IMO, compositing with movie files is going to be more headache than simply rendering frames though.

Hope this helps.

G.

[mtbuck24]

So it is best to do frames/images and import that into after effects basically? All I am really trying to do is get that cool motion blur effect that Anime Studio lacks and if that is what I need to do, I will do it

[Greenlaw]

You can use the Pixel Motion Blur or RSMB effect with an image sequence or a movie in AE. AE doesn't care about that.

Regarding image sequences vs. movie files, I'm just saying that if you're going to composite animation layers in AE, it's better to render to image sequences. Rendering image sequences is easier for the computer because it uses fewer resources than when it's rendering a giant movie file--this means rendering can be faster and more reliable. The same holds true when compositing--the compositing program can run faster and more reliably when the computer doesn't have to hold entire movie files in memory, especially when we're talking about compositing layers. Also, because you have regular image files to work with, there's a lot more you can do with the frames in post, not just in AE but in any paint program too.

Now, for final video editing, I do prefer working with movie files. Movie files are much easier to work with in a video editor. Typically, I will output movie files from AE (or whatever compositing program I happen to be using,) to import to the timeline in Vegas or Premiere for finaling. One exception would be if I have a particularly heinous comp with many dozens of HD images, floating point data, other processor intensive stuff--then I will output frames, and then compile the frames to a movie file in a separate comp. Again, this is because it can go faster and more reliably, plus I gain the flexibility to interrupt and pick up the render as needed. Tip: if you're editing in HD, use proxy videos for editing and full res for the final render. I like to batch process my AE output to full res and half res movies before bringing it into Vegas. I'll use the half res stuff for editing and realtime playback, and when I'm ready to render a final edit, I'll swap the videos. But now we're getting into a whole other subject matter.

G.

[Greenlaw]

I think I should explain why we (LGD) render in multiple passes for motion blur. Actually, there are many reasons we break our scenes into multiple passes but getting accurate motion blur effects in post is a big one.

If you apply Pixel Motion Blur or ReelSmart Motion Blur on a 'flattened' image, there's a fair chance you're going to get some weird render artifacts. This is because plugins like PMB or RSMB try to track all the pixels in an image to figure out the vectors but they can get confused by conflicting elements in the image. By separating the characters from the background and/or foreground, it becomes much clearer to the plugin which vectors belongs to which moving element, and the result can be a cleaner and more accurate blurring effect.

G.