To render, save, store animation as png images & export them into rendering engine like After Effect

chriswongbiz

Hi,

I am going to animate with layers.  One layer is the forest scene background. One layer is the foreground in which the character moving around with a transparent background. I am going render these 2 layers and seperately then put them together each as an individual layer in Adobe After Effect.

I render the forest as a 2D picture.  I can transport it into anywhere with no problem naturally.  But I have some questions about rendering the moving character animation.  Should I render in "movie" format or png "image sequence" in order to preserve the transparency in the back?

I first tried rendering in movie format, but in the result there is a color in the background I doubt it would be transparent when I put it as a movie file in e.g. After Effect.

As for the png files, first of all it is just messy to have 500 individual frames scattering on my desktop.  If I put them together in the folder, I cannot import a whole folder into After Effect as it won't accept "Folder".  Sure I can import one png frame at a time, yet it is just as messy as dealing with 500 individual frames scattering on my desktop.

So I really want some experienced animator to tell me how they do with a layer of frames in png, including saving, storing, and uploading into another render engine.

Much appreciated.

BeeMKay

Not an experienced animator here, just some amateurish things.

Image sequence and PNG. The movie format is not good for postwork.

I don't have After Effect, but use Sony Movie Studio, which has no problem importin from a folder.

I googled and found this, not sure  if it would help you: https://www.mediacollege.com/adobe/after-effects/workflow/import/

 

Richard Haseltine

Yes, an image sequence would be the way to go. I'm surprised After Effects can't assemble them, but if not there are numerous tools which can.

owen_5403b1898d

After Effects can import an image sequence. In the "Import" window dialog box, there is an option to choose an image sequence. this can be a png, jpg or even a psd sequence.

If you were to render your animation as a movie, you would just need to save it as a Quicktime mov so as to be able to include an Alpha Channel. Select the correct codec ("Animation" codec is what I use mostly). Then make sure that the movie includes the alpha channel. I have never tried to export a movie file from DAZ Studio, but you should look for options that include "RGB + alpha" or "Millions of colours +" .

I prefer exporting an image sequence because if anything goes wrong during the render, you can always just start from where the render failed and only have to render the remaining frames. With a movie render, you have to start from the begining again.

chriswongbiz

HI,

I imported a folder of png image sequence into After Effect.  Thank you.

But it has the white background attached to it just as it was in DS, I am not able to preview what the final would look like.

Even so I moved on to render it as a quicktime movie with a "Beautiful Winter" picture as the background, I tried the options for "Alpha" or "RGB+alpha" with "millions of colours" in the render queue, then I hit render.  As you see the result is that still it has a white background attached to it.

What was I missing?

Richard Haseltine

Please don't post images of nude figures. You will get better images, with clothed figures, using the Snipping Tool in Windows, rather than trying to take a photo of the screen.

The alpha in the PNG will hide areas that had no geometry and for which there was no backdrop image - if you hae a rendering backdrop or a floor plane it will be part of the image, not masked.

chriswongbiz

Sorry about the nude picture.  I never thought of that, was just trying to speed up rendering as it is just a test.  I actually has a hidden plane that caught the shadow on the ground. But the point was to make transparency so it only show the character and his shadow alone. hmm...  still have no clue.