Rendering to targas??

[Iain McFadzen]

Rendering straight to a movie format is a bad idea because if anything goes wrong with the render, or if you have to change some small part of it, you have to re-render the whole thing from the beginning. Also, if you render straight to AVI or MOV you can't produce another version of the same movie in a different format (using another codec for example) without re-rendering.

So you should render to sequencial files, which leaves you with a choice of formats

.tga is a lossless file format, meaning each file is not compressed as it is with j-peg. Furthermore the targa format can contain an alpha channel, which other formats don't.

So there :)

[Velocamonkey]

Thanks matey that makes sense. I feel enlightened.

[Avatar]

you should also consider rla and rpf file formats if you want to do some polishing with your shots with AfterFX, Combustion, Shake or whatever compositing program you have. It`s a good thing to render rpfs with z channel and then apply depth of field in combustion instead of doing it the slow way with max`s depth of field... and thats only one example of the many things you are able to do with rpf/rla files.

[jonaz.dk]

yup.. but only when you really need to.. rla/rpf can be quite HD space consuming... vs. TGA's with compression enabled.

and post DOF is fairly low quality. but fast.. so it really depends on the task and required visual output you want.

[ME3D]

Had to pipe in.... A real plus for the idea of rendering in the discreet (rla/rpf) format is in cases such as film renders or projects with inevitable client changes Combustion intakes these formats and can actually hold 3d object information from max. This enables you to retexture in post with no render costs! Also just the fact that you can interactively change colors, lights, and specular aspects per object in post has increased our productivity in multiples.
This isnt meant to tell you how to, but just point you in the direction. If youd like more info contact me. I demo for Discreet occasionally so I'll pass on what little I know. lol

[ShwayMan]

Ok, if I'm rendering out an animation that I'm not going to do any postproduction acrobatics with, should I render to targas? Is it faster than avi? Can I put all the files together with MAX alone?

[jadedchron]

also i may be mistaken but you really shouldn't/cant render to avi especially if you're doing some network rendering.

[mouj]

Howdy !

I don't think that tga are faster than any avi, i would actually say that if specified output format changes render times (which i doubt, but i may be wrong ??), tga would take longer than avi.

I think that you could use the Vpost in Max to attach all frames into a single movie ? Probably other progs will do it better or faster.

now my question : )

What about rendering to tiff ? this format can also hold alpha channel, and is uncompressed (unless specified) right ?

mouj

[Signal2Noise]

ShwayMan,

Yes, even if you don't plan to do any post-production work it is still a good idea to render out tga stills (or any still) and then create the AVI.

The reason is, as mentioned before, is the tga file gives you an uncompressed lossless image which means the end result will be a much cleaner, crisper, more vivid image. Going straight to video usually ends in a grainier less quality image.

As for is it faster than outputting to AVI? In my opinion I say yes. There's two rendering steps to perform in this case but the extra work is worth it. Especially the fact that later on you may want to change some aspect of the AVI, you can quickly re-render out specific tga's and replace them with the old ones.

Yes, you can use max alone to do it all. You render as you would for an AVI except you'll render to a file using tga extensions. This will create a series of stills called (or something similar):

[filename]01.tga
[filename]02.tga
[filename]03.tga
etc.

Then in VideoPost you would simply create an Output Event using these tgas to create the final AVI or Quicktime or whatever you want. Very slick.

[ShwayMan]

Wow thanks for the info! I just tested some targa renders and to my amazement, when I opened them in photoshop the background was transparent! I've been wondering how to do that for a while, if I wanted to do effects for a short film superimposed into live action. Targas rock!

[MFreywald]

Aside from using the video post to stitch together the files (unless you need to add more post effects). You can also use the RAM Player to save out the animation. Assuming you have enough ram to hold the whole animation of course.

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