Rendering Widescreen in Lightwave - How?

[Bytehawk]

in camera properties
select the widescreen preset according to your flavour ntsc or pal

[Faeroon]

I've done that (written above) but after rendering in 720x576
the whole image is much to high and the things shown
are stretched :hmm:

Isn't there a way to render the picture so it isnt streched
and the black bars can easily applied via PS or something like
that?

But if i render now - everything is on the picture but it's stretched
and needs to be squeezed back in height, so the things look right again.

[Bytehawk]

it looks stretched on a monitor, yes

but play it on a widescreen TV and it'll look ok

this is all about pixel aspect ratio

If you only want to be able to play it on a monitor, then adjust the vertical resolution and leave the aspect ratio alone

[polarman3d]

I'm not positive, but I think it may be an issue of frame aspect ratio. I found a really good website that will tell you what aspect ratios to use. The only thing is that you will just have to do the math. So, if you want the screen to be 480 high and you're using a common aspect ratio like 2.35:1, then just multiply 480 x 2.35 for the width and use 480 for the height.

Check it out (http://www.film-center.com/fformats.html)

Also, there's a cool website with some good information on widescreen stuff.

Here it is (http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/aspectratios/widescreenorama.html)

Anyone correct me if I'm wrong...Hope this helps!

[LyonHaert]

it gets squeezed because of the Pixel Aspect Ratio. the D1 (NTSC Widescreen) preset sets it to 1.2.

[Faeroon]

After reading several posts and your sites polarman, I'm
feeling strange:surprised *headaches coming*

After all I dont know how to calculate the black bars - because
that's the certain look I want to acchieve for my pictures.
I got the right resolution now (i think), rendering at 1.85x1 and
pixel ration of 1 but how
shall I put the bars onto it... but maybe its to late and
i'm a bit sleepy....:scream: *yawn*

[polarman3d]

I know how you feel Faeroon...

To get the black bars, I think importing the movie into something like After FX would do the trick. I think that if you set the size of the comp to be whatever resolution you are going to (like 720x576), and you just import the movie and scale it down to fit, it should leave the spaces above and below the actual movie. Of course that's assuming you're rendering out to a resolution that is at least 576 px high (which at 1.85 ratio would make the width 1066)...

Sorry about all the numbers...I may be talking out my butt on all this...I'm thinking that it should work though...

Hope I'm not confusing things further...

[kretin]

You can easily "fake" the widescreen look by rendering to D1, and including a camera mask (in camera properties) to give it the black bars at top and bottom of the image. That's what we're doing for a TVC we're working on at the moment.

Just work out what size you want the visible area to be and put the values in the mask. The other great feature of this is that LW doesn't render what's outside the mask area, so you also save some render time.

[LyonHaert]

why the devil do you want to put the letterboxing in your render??

[Yiorgz]

The real differences between widescreen and normal are not just in pixel aspects and stretching ...

You should actually see more scenery with widescreen than you would with normal video.

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=15619

[kretin]

Well it started out as a way to provide the client with test renders, cause the video codecs were having big troubles with making avis or movs at that ratio.

Then nince there's gonne be very little comping done I thought we might as well continue with the method for the final output.

Am I missing something?

[Valkyrien]

I just render in 1280x720. Looks good enough to me!:)

[Faeroon]

Mornin' everybody :bounce:

Kretin - I gonna test that one out right now :)
I faked the black-bar look in PS with just putting ~40 pixel black
above and ~40 below the rendering and it looks fine to me *G*
Would be great if this camera mask thing works too, but otherwise I stick with the fake look :p

Thx again for the nice help, from all of you! :applause: :thumbsup: :applause:

[Bytehawk]

unless this has changed recently, if you use a camera mask, what LW does is superimpose the mask on the final render, meaning it renders the unseen geometry first and the puts the black bars on top. Not very economical regarding rendertime...

I could be wrong but last time I checked I needed to render at the correct aspect ratio and then import into dfx onto a normal canvas to check the render without stretching.

[Fasty]

If you are only going to be watching the animation on your computer, render it out at 1024x576 using square pixels (pixel aspect ratio = 1.0). I'm pretty sure this would be acceptable if you were burning it to DVD too, as the software should be able to reformat to TV pixel aspect ratio.

If it's going to be broadcast, render it out using the widescreen presets in the camera properties. It will look squished in Lightwave, but when it is broadcast it will look fine. Adobe AfterEffects can show you roughly how it will look on TV by clicking the "Toggle pixel aspect ratio correction" button at the bottom of the preview monitor.

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