Best Format For Compositing?

[Aneks]

there is so much ground to cover with this question.

PSD is a very poor format for compositin gunless you are doing it in Photoshop.

openEXR is great, if you need floating point bit depth and you paln to take advantage of things like multi-channel renders.

Ask yourself a few questions :
What 3d app are you using ? What can it output ?
What bit depth are you working ?
What formats can you compositing app read ?
When you say HD do you mean the final output is HDCam or .....?
How much are compositing in terms of footage? How much storage space do you have ?
Do you any sort of pipeline in place ? what formats are already using ?
on and on and on ..............

if you can know the answer to these questions then it is much easier to give advice.

[srproductions]

OK.

My understanding was that it worked well in compositing. But...

I use Lightwave 3D 8.5.
I can output oepnEXR, PSD, TGA, TIFF, PNG, Cineon, DPX, etc.
I am planning on rendering at 16 bit depth.
I use combustion 3.
It supports everything. (I think)
I'm shooting on a Sony HDR-FX1. (1920x1080)
I will be outputing to DVD and HD DVD.

Hope that helps.

[Aneks]

good answers. No psd sucks.

I don't think Combustsion 3 supports .exr ?

the fx1 is HDV. and produces a 4:1:1 (i think) 8bit image so 16bit may be serious overkill. But it will give you some latitude when grading.

any lossless compressed image sequence will be best for your needs. I would go with TIFF just because it is small and I like it. it will support 16bit if you go that wat. but how is Combsution 3 with 16bit tiff's ?

[srproductions]

Yeah, just noticed that after I posted. (I am going to be renting that camera for my shoot)

Could you explain why PSD sucks?

[srproductions]

And yes, combustion supports openEXR.

(I figured out - with help - how to get multipass renders to work in C3)

[Aneks]

I am amazed that you could get multipass .exr to work in Comb3, would you mind eloborating on the porcess?

psd files are huge and most apps only read them via an import photoshop file options. They cant hold zDepth or any other channel. Have annoying embeded gamma managment and, prior to CS2, have a limited but depth .

[srproductions]

In Lightwave - to render openEXR files - you use a plugin called exrTrader. When you are choosing which buffers you would like to save, you choose to save each buffer as a seperate EXR file. Then, you import each buffer into C3. It works nicely.

With this said, would you recommend openEXR as a filetype for me to use. 8 bit depth of course, now.

Thanks!

[Aneks]

it seems like a lot of work to use exr in this way. it main advantage being a hi-bitdepth and multiple channel container, with a gamma of 1 for scanned film. Basically you are not using any of the features which make it superior to anyhting else. Baring that in mind could you use this buffer writer to write to anything else ?

That might be a better way to go !

[boboroshi]

I agree with Aneks on this. If you're not using the benefits of a specialized format, drop it down to something simple. Most of my work I'm using IFFs or TGAs out of Maya into Shake. The tools have different names, but it's the same idea.

Less is more.
But that implies that at some point more was better.
So... less.

:)

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