By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Saturday, December 21, 2002 - 08:27 pm:

I posted a similar message in the support section which went unanswered, so I'll try again here:

Is it possible to transfer 16-bit (per channel) animations from Lightwave into Adobe After Effects for compositing?

While it would be ideal to composit your Lightwave animations in a higher end package like Shake in full 32-bit-per-channel HDRI glory, the best that After Effects can manage is 16-bits-per-channel.

Can Lightwave output 16-bit-p-c images? On the menu you can select 24/32 bit images (these are really 8-bit-p-c) and you can also output HDR images, but what about 16-bit?

Using standard 8-bit-per-channel images isn't really good enough these days, often resulting in artifacts and 'banding'. Does anyone know how to create a 16-bit workflow between Lightwave and After Effects?

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 12:43 am:

I'm a bit surprised that there isn't much interest in this topic.

How many Lightwave users also use After Effects to composit their animations? How many people just output their animations as a plain old TIFF, Targa or PSD sequence? These standard file formats are 8 bit per channel formats.

If you render something in one of these 8-bit formats you're running the risk of creating banding in your images. It usually happens in soft gradients or shadows, or may be seen on glow effects. Dithering can help disguise it by adding noise around these areas.

An extreme example of how banding can ruin what should be a soft gradient:


However when you bring your stuff into After Effects you're going to want to adjust the brightness, levels, or color grade. This will amplify the banding effect. When you transfer your animation to video, the banding gets amplified even more.

The solution is to increase the gradations of color available in your images, by moving from 8-bit to 16-bit or 32-bit (HDR) images. Many high-end feature film effects are composited in Shake using 32-bit images. Lightwave can output these images.

It's the intermediate 16-bit mode that has me stumped. After Effects 5.5 can operate in 16-bit mode. It increases your file sizes, but gets rid of all the horrible banding and artifacts from your images. It allows you the room to color grade or add effects without degrading the quality.

It would be handy to be able to output 16-bit images straight out of Lightwave to use in After Effects. Alternatively it may be necessary to render from Lightwave in 32-bit images, then downconvert them to 16-bit in some intermediate application before passing them on to After Effects.

It's hard to believe that 99.999% of Lightwave users are rendering from Lightwave with standard 8-bit images. These are not good enough quality for print, film, or broadcast.

By Dmitry Savinoff (Deemon) (80.252.129.41) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 06:19 am:

You can use Photoshop PSD Saver image filter to save 16 bit per channel PSD files, AfterFX will read them just fine. Just check "16-bit component output" and uncheck "Depth". Also you may want to turn "Dither Intensity" off in the Effect panel.

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Monday, December 23, 2002 - 02:35 pm:

Thanks, Dmitry. I didn't know that. I'll give it a go. I also notice that in Lightwave's render options there is a 64-bit SGI format listed, though I'm not familiar with this file type. It is also listed on the import list on AE5.5, so I must investigate further.

For the majority of Lightwave users who feel that 8-bit images are just fine, try this experiment. Create a room scene, or maybe just a box with inward facing walls. Shine a soft-edged spotlight onto one of the walls, with lots of fall-off so the light gradually fades away. See if you get banding artifacts in your image!

By arthur argote (Archiea) (66.32.16.152) on Wednesday, December 25, 2002 - 03:20 am:

Beam,

if you're feeling courageous, output cineons from LW. Keep them logged in After effects and use an adjustemnt layer on top of your layers to delog them to view them in linear space. Deactivate the adjsutment layer before your render. This way you keep ALL of your data within the cineon curve. this would be your best solution if you were going to film and need to maintain as much data while using AE.

BTW, if you render Cineons, remember to save out the alpha channels separately in LW as cineons don't hold alphas (Unless they are DFX flavored). This would double the amount of layers you'd be working with in AE, but hey, memory is cheap!

By Beam Tracer (Beamtracer) (203.109.241.109) on Wednesday, December 25, 2002 - 06:22 am:

Hi Arthur. I'm always outputting to video, not having had the pleasure of working with film. I haven't used the Cineon 10-bit file format, but I don't think I'd do it for video. I have a hunch that After Effects may de-log the Cineon file into an 8-bit linear file, rather than a 16-bit one.

I tried Dmitry's suggestion about the PSD saver plug-in. Works great! I don't think there is an option regarding the Alpha channel though (whether a straight 'fader alpha' or a premultiplied one). Despite this I'll be using this method to output all my Lightwave stuff in future.

I'd really like to also take advantage of the 'Microcosm' 64-bit Quicktime codec, however Lightwave currently does not support 64-bit Quicktimes, although After Effects does.

By kenneth woodruff (Kenneth) (64.129.197.193) on Friday, January 03, 2003 - 12:18 pm:

Beam, the "Cineon Converter" filter used is 16-bit-savvy.