finalizing

[ranma_saotome20]

I hope this isn't a repeat thread. And if it is feel free to hit me over the head. I need to know how to do final rendering and how to stitch the segments together. I haven't the foggiest idea how to do it.

[ThetaDot]

I don't know exactly what the situation is. Do you have different scene files and just need to render them and connect them together?

Anyway to start rendering (and i'm assuming you're using max) You have to to just go into the render scene dialogue and select the bubble to render the entire time segment, and then down below that you have to click "FILE" (or something like that - you can find it) to specify how you will save it. You need to choose a movie file... you can either choose AVI or MOV, depending on what your editing software can handle.

If you have several different scenes, you need to render each out seperately and then import them all into an editing program (Windows Movie Maker, for example) and stitch them together. If you need a program I think you can download Windows Movie Maker from the microsoft website - you have to find it.

I have no idea if I just helped at all. I get home at 4:00pm EST (noon your time I think) and if nobody else has helped or you are still having trouble than post here or message me (aim = clcThetaDot)

word

[rowe]

Originally Posted by ThetaDot

You need to choose a movie file... you can either choose AVI or MOV, depending on what your editing software can handle.

ive found that rendering a targa sequence where each frame is saved as a picture, as part of a movie (test0000.tga, test0001.tga, etc) works well because you can easily edit a single frame if need be, and it is lossless in terms of quality. u will still need to peice the scenes together in another program.

[ThetaDot]

I couldn't imagine importing hundreds and hundreds of individual picture files into a program. I sure don't have the program to do something like that.

[rowe]

i know for a fact that both adobe after effects and premier can import them because thats how we did this years video. ive also read that you can render a targa sequence and then using 3ds max, assemble a movie from that without actually rendering. this is useful if you want to put together a movie in different formats, but dont have an ouside program. it does take a fair amount of harddrive space (2-3 gigs for 30 secs) but so does rendering a movie uncompressed.

[Matt Hallock]

Why would you abuse size and render to targa? JPG would do just fine, and you don't need .PNG unless you feel like editing 200 frames of alpha channels.

[rrockafellow]

Originally Posted by ThetaDot

I couldn't imagine importing hundreds and hundreds of individual picture files into a program. I sure don't have the program to do something like that.

If your going to do any network rendering you have to render as hundreds of sequential images. It certainly is the preferred method of rendering out animations. You can start and stop your renderings and not have to rerender all of the frames over again. Also Really useful when you start to create layered composites.

Importing sequential images is easy and not the loborious process that it sounds. Programs like Adobe Premiere and After effects are able to import a whole image sequence at once.

3ds max's video Post would be another way of putting clips, multiple camera sequences or seqential images together if you were real desperate. Its not a user interface friendly editing environment and not really able to mix in audio.

[ranma_saotome20]

Thanks guys (or girls as the case might be). I'll try that next week. I won't have a chance this week. I'll get back letting you know if it works. <crossses fingers>

[ranma_saotome20]

Ok, I was able to work on it today. But now I'm having troubles with something about an output device. Do you know what the h*ll it's talking about? Reply when you can. Thanks.

[rowe]

yeah, i tried using video post the other day (im assuming thats what ur talkin bout) and you need to add an output device to ur queue (its a box wit the arrow pointing out of it and down) name the file, set up the parameters (codec, etc) an then hit the execute sequece button to finish it. im pretty sure thats how its done, but ive only done it once, so i might b wrong or forgetting a step.

[ranma_saotome20]

I tried that. It said there were no output devices. I have no idea what is going on.

[ranma_saotome20]

Ok, this is just an update. I figured it out. Thank you to all that helped.

[Brian(1)]

Its pretty easy to use a series of tga files, even in max..
Theres a Utility called IFI Manager.. or something similar in the utilites area of 3ds max.. What it does is create a textfile with the names of all the tga files in that sequence.. Meaning you can do some cool effects by editing the file.
But you make that list, and you can use that as an input file in Video Post, which you can then choose to output to whatever format you want.