CGTalk - Is anyone else on the mac having trouble exporting zdepth info?

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bakkaboy

10-23-2002, 10:03 PM

Hi All -

Am I missing something? I'm trying to export rendered scene files out of maya 3.5.1 and into After Effects 5.5 pro bundle to access the zdepth info, so I can apply my DOF blur in AE.
Zdepth is checked on in my render globals and in my camera att ed.
In the online help (AE), it says to export as either a RLA or an RPF, NEITHER of which is supported as an output format on the mac.
In the Maya online help, it says that .sgi saves the depth into as a sep file in a sep folder (which it does just fine), except that AE can't read/import those files.
It also says that .iff stores the zdepth info w/in the file format, however, when i import the files & apply DOF blur to the layer, AE says that there's no depth info.

I'm applying the effect to the layer as a 2D layer, which the help says that i should do.

Any comments, suggestions, workarounds, solutions?

Thanks mucho

fred

10-24-2002, 02:09 AM

http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=18120

that´s how it works in combustion, and it´s also fully applicable to after effects. If you still got any questions just ask!

bakkaboy

10-24-2002, 02:57 AM

Hey Fred -

Thanks for responding.
The technique i can pretty much understand, however my problem lies in that i am unable to import the zdepth info from maya into AE because maya doesn't support exporting either RLA or RPF images. AE doesn't recognize the depth documents exported from maya. The rest of the post is very useful and helpful, however i need all of the data to apply it.

fred

10-25-2002, 01:50 AM

as far as i understand you you can render sgis with a seperate depth map image sequence? ae definitely can import sgis (it´s the same as tif basically). if it can´t there must the something really wrong with your render settings. import both the sgis and the depth map and apply the technique described in the combustion post. although this is darn tedious compared to using RLAs it´s a workaround at least!

i have absolutely no idea of maya, but have you upgraded to v4.5?
v4.0 an a pc is able to render RLAs i think, so why shouldn´t v4.5 on a mac?
have you posted this in the maya forum as well?

bakkaboy

10-25-2002, 03:38 AM

I have posted to the a|w forum for maya on the mac. Haven't heard anything from anyone @ a|w.
Yes, one would think that since you can render out RLA's on a pc, you could do it on a mac too. :D .
Yes, ae reads sgi's very easily, but not the associated depth map files(at least not in 3.5.1).
I have 4.5 on order & should be getting it early next week, so i'll see for myself if they've remedied that situation.

In the meantime, i learned a workaround from another maya forum which is working, so i'll use that & move on.

sahajyogi

12-05-2003, 04:22 AM

Hey, i've just run into the same problem, did you find a solution?

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