Hello World,

can any one help me in how i should prepare rendering my animation in houdini to export it to After Effect in order to continue working on my movie clip.
Now, I am working on matching my character to the music i imported using chops (w/o procedural method). it is quite difficult. I need help in this as well.

I'd appreciate it if any one can advise me.

Steve

you are not being very specific

export animation to AE? do you need to export nulls and cameras to AE 3d space or are you talking just about rendering some layers?
what do you need to do in AE with it?

also some more info to your second problem would help us. You can't get specific answer to this kind of question

Thank you.
That's the problem. I do not know the specifics of the direction.
I do not know the directions to complete my short movie.
So far, I am trying to match the motions of my animated obj to the music.
And i believe i need to bring the rendered obj or some types of my rendered animated obj to AE in order to work on the background of the obj.

I do know very little about AE and need to learn it soon.
And after that I believe I also nee to use Final Cut Pro or (Converstion ?)
to complete my movie. My goal is launching it in my website or distribute it through internet. Can you advice me the directions ?
Thank you.

Steve

you'll need to render out 1 or several layers from houdini
but that really depends on the project
sometimes dividing whole objects into different layers/takes is enough
sometimes you need to export some channels like diffuse, reflection, shadow, … as well

best format for export is probably .exr since it is 32bit float it can contain multiple channels and compression is very good
i have no experience with EXR format and AE but i think that it can be imported (but maybe some plugin is needed)
i usually use PNG sequence with AE they are small loseless and can be 16bit int

for Final Cut you probably need to export png or targa sequence then import to quicktime and make reference MOV, which you can then import to Finalcut
or you can directly export some MOV but be aware of the codec so you don't lose quality

oh, and probably you don't need to use Finalcut because a lot can be done directly in AE
and probably you don't need to use (or learn) AE since Houdini has it's own compositor (but then you probably need some editing tool also)

it can help to export camera and nulls to AE (http://www.sidefx.com/exchange/info.php?fileid=498&versionid=498) [sidefx.com] if you want to match some AE layers with your scene

Thank you for your detailed and thoughtful advice.
To me, as a beginner, it sounds very complicated.
Are there any video tutorial available for this area ?
Thank you so much again.
I will study more and would like to get back to you with some more specific questions if you don't mind.

By the way, Compositoring in Houdini is as good as AE which has variety of ways and special effects to manipulate animation?

Thank you very much again.

Steve