General workflow with big projects?

[mackdadd]

is there no way to group layers into folders on the timeline?

nope, but that's kind of what precomping is, except you can't see the contents of the precomp in the current comp. I remember reading on some forum a big discussion about this, Mylenium was involved... everyone was arguing whether it would be useful or not. It's personal preference, but, it's currently moot because the option doesn't even exist.

My only advice for large projects would be using proxies and working with the comp viewer at half res or less. Especially the proxies, that'll really speed things up.

[everlite]

Cheers Sean, Yeh that's what i was thinking, thing with pre-comping, you can't get access to the 3d move of the orginial comp (if you have a camera moving around) it effectively flattens the comp into a new layer, is this right? or am i missing something?

Thanks again - Dave.

[mackdadd]

i believe you can, there's a little switch on the timeline, i think, that enables it.
I learned it here:

http://www.trapcode.com/products_echospace.html

watch the example MOV called "echo_kaleid", he does it in there.

I could be wrong, I've never done it, but I think this is what you're looking for.

[scrimski]

i believe you can, there's a little switch on the timeline, i think, that enables it.
Positive.
I use that shy layer option(hope I got the name right) when dealing with a large amount of layers I need to hide quickly in my time line, but groups or selection sets like in 3dMax would be great.

[mackdadd]

right you are, scrimski, but there's another switch on the panel that lets a 3D precomp come through into another comp while retaining it's 3D-ness. :)

[Mylenium]

Cheers Sean, Yeh that's what i was thinking, thing with pre-comping, you can't get access to the 3d move of the orginial comp (if you have a camera moving around) it effectively flattens the comp into a new layer, is this right? or am i missing something?

As the others said, use the collapse transformations/ continuously rasterize switch. Be aware, though, that it will really only maintain the layers' 3D-ishness and disable all lights and cameras in the sub-comp. If you're on CS3, take care not to use any layer styles. They break 3D rendering. If you need them, do a 2D-pre-compose of the layer in question.

Mylenium

[scrimski]

right you are, scrimski, but there's another switch on the panel that lets a 3D precomp come through into another comp while retaining it's 3D-ness.
I know, that's why my remark.. Nonetheless I use that shy layer stuff which has nothing to do with the rasterize thing at all.

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