Are there any tutorials out there that show integration between Houdini and After Effects (or any other compositing software)? I'm wanting to integrate 3d with realtime footage.

Personally, other than keying etc .. I think Houdini's native compositor is way better than AE (but I'm biased against AE having taught it for a year or so).

I would think the best way to go about integration would be to get started using “takes.” There should be some tutorials on those.

Hello,


you can not generate for example a QuickTime movie file with COPs , I believe….

Maybe I'm wrong?




thanks



bern

Bernard
Hello,

you can not generate for example a QuickTime movie file with COPs , I believe….

Maybe I'm wrong?

thanks
bern

You can …but this is the worst thing you can do in “integration business” (ok, not the worst, some things can be even worse).

Houdini renders by default to 16bit float what gives you a nice base for color correction and integration with a background. It's much easer to match your render (lights balance, color balance, contrast range) with a footage in post than with shaders and setup in 3d.

There is no Houdini's specific issues about 3D integration with life action footage. Any decent tutorial you'll find on this topic applies to Houdini.

As Andrew mentioned, COP in Houdini gives you many advantages, but I think Afx, Shake, Nuke are probably better place to start with.

If you have any specific question ask here or on odforce. net which has God-forsaken composting corner.

cheers,
sy.

Yeah, what Symek said. It's not really about *integration*, it's about path. You need to be aware of bit depth, file formats and compatibility. If you can get OExr support, along with support for channels apart from RGBA, that's the best IMHO. I think there's a free plugin you can get for AE that lets you import OExr with multiple channel support. The builtin OExr support for AE sucks hard, apparently. Does the typical Apple approach of deciding for you how to deal with alpha…and only supports RGBA…:roll:

COPs offers about the only example of integration directly with 3D(Houdini obviously, and no other 2D/3D package out there has that degree of integration), but the Houdini compositor isn't in direct competition with final online suite compositing tools such nuke/shake/discreet/fusion. You can do a helluva lot with COPs, but if you need to get into tracking, paint tools, serious keying and colour correction, you'll get better tools elsewhere. AE wouldn't be my first choice for serious compositing. It has it's fans, but I ain't one of ‘em. I’m a big Nuke fan - (/sidebar ON)

which btw has *just* released v5 which appears to rock…and…well…how can I put this? Seems to have ‘borrowed’ some of the better GUI ideas from a 3D app we all know. They have ‘panes’, which can be split horizontally and vertically, torn off as floaters, and can contain ‘tabs’…sound familiar?

Now if a little bit of that luvvin' and appreciation could flow the other way…

(/sidebar OFF)

Anyway, Dlugo, once you get your images rendered, the real work is in the compositing end. I'd be looking more at compositing training over some sort of integration. Just try to find a package and training that works in float space - compositing in 8 bit is dying fast.

Cheers,

J.C.

Hello,



So Nuke is good for compositing , but is it also possible to make Quicktime movies?

If not , how can I do it then?




thanks



bernard

Nuke will make quicktimes

but if you're just interested in making mov files buy Quicktime Pro ($30?)

or Vegas … for full featured editing … not that much more

Well I wasn't necessarily pointing out AE specifically. Any compositing software would work. I wanna be able to use the models that I have and integrate them with the footage I have.

ok, no one has said it … I'll say it …

Sorry if everyone in the thread knew this already and it is too obvious but, the best format to use with compositing is IMAGE SEQUENCES.

Meaning, image_01.png / image_02.png / .tga / .pic etc. Those are the most universal and hassle-free way to work with compositing and layering etc. If you have footage I would convert them to image sequences for a shot also.

Only the final result should be rendered as a “movie” or previews etc.

Yah, I think the whole quicktime mindset is from the apple/AE users. The Mac users at our place have difficulties with still sequences and like to get quicktimes. They deal with it(we can't be bothered ), but the problem is Apple tries(once again) to impose their mindset of how images are supposed to work. They tend to see sequences of stills as Photoshop files, therefore you'll find some apps automatically multiplying the RGB by the alpha of the images so that great sequence you just sent to be posted suddenly appears as a CG element over black…:evil: They see clips as quicktimes, and that's how they'd prefer it. The editing packages won't even deal with sequences - it *must* import them as quicktimes. We just get them to encode our stuff into quicktimes for us(faster, less hassle), but unfortunately thats another thing Apple has done in trying to make things ‘easier’ - impose paradigms that don't exist anywhere else.

Cheers,

J.C.

Hello,


with ‘making a quicktime movie file’, I mean if you got the rendered images from let's say Houdini Mantra and everything is composed (Nuke)….then how can I make a playable movie file from these final image sequences?



thanks,


bern

That's why I suggested Vegas. It can read most common image sequence types.

Great at writing quicktime movies as well. Quicktime pro is ok for bare bones stuff like replacing a raw audio track with an .mp3 audio track, but the second you get into editing or compositing q-pro is no good.

JColdrick
YThey tend to see sequences of stills as Photoshop files, therefore you'll find some apps automatically multiplying the RGB by the alpha of the images so that great sequence you just sent to be posted suddenly appears as a CG element over black…:evil:

J.C.

HA! You won't believe and perhaps I shouldn't post it here because of career can brake down immediately but this was happened for me once.

11.00 PM - a telephone. Client calls -> Agency calls -> post house calls -> me. There is a black screen on air in commercial! Black screen with teeny sparks flying around - packshot is missing (almost). First, I didn't believe. That's not possible I said. Not possible?! Turn on the TV and than say us what is and what is not possible - they say to me…

This was a shorten (8 sec.) version of a full commercial made in hurry, the guy who made a types used QT Animation codec with alpha, which Apple software apparently premultiplied without asking for permission.

Fortunately the only thing stayed in frame (in packshot) were reflections of fireworks flying around the bottle. It looked almost as intended…

Don't leave your alpha alone with QT…

Sy.

yuck. Not me. I did once see someone actually rendering qt's outta Maya. wow.

s

I have used AE and Houdini together very successfully recently. Just render out Targa sequences from Houdini or convert your .pic files to Targas using mplay (Houdini's image viewer). This way you will retain the alpha channel from your renders. You can then import this sequence into AE and comp it over any footage you like e.g. Quicktime movies, AVI files, other image sequences. You can then render a final Quicktime of your composited footage right out of After Effects, or render an AVI from AE and then create a Quicktime from the AVI using Quicktime Pro and you will get a better result.

As a side note: Make sure you premultiply your image sequences with black (or whatever the background color is in your sequence). AE will ask you this any time you import footage.