Camera Information Into Ae (noob)

[wisof]

Hello,

I have gone through a tutorial that explained how to import Maya camera and null_object information to AE. That worked out well. Now I want to apply this to some animations I am working on. In these animations I have a moving camera passing by a bunch of residential towers. In after effects, I want to put little lights on top of these towers ala airplane warning lights, little red blinking lights . . . I have rendered the frames in maya, then cleaned the file of any objects exept the camera and the locators. I bake the camera information and bring the ma file into after effects.

I also import the frames of the corresponding animation. So now I have a layer with the rendered frames and a layer of the maya camera/locator information with small images replacing the null_objects.

The problem is that these two layers do not fall on top of each other . . . the camera info and the rendered frames do not sync up. Framerates are all the same, but the stuff is not compositing right. One thing I noticed is that when I brought my camera info, the comp was 12:14seconds, but my rendered frames were 10seconds. I stretched the rendered frames to 12:14seconds, a bit better, but still not perfectly on top of each other. Any suggestions?

[user_deleted]

hmm, have you checked the ranges rendered from maya? there could be a keyframe before or after your render range that is confusing afx. in stead of retiming yous animation try sliding it forward or backwards.

[wisof]

thanks, I think I figure it out. My camera in maya was set to use a Film Back attribute that AE does not like. Under FilmFit, my camera was set to Fill, I switched to "horizontal" and rerendered frames, exported camera/nullobject info and brought back into AE. Works so far . . . will need to try it out with a more complex scene, but now things seem to fall right on top of each other.

Essentially, the issue is that the camera and the render settings aspect ratios are not the same. When a new camera is made, I believe the default aspect ratio is 1.5:1, where the render globals defaults are 1.333:1. Therefore the footage will not line up with the camera. By setting the aspect rations equal (either by actually doing so or by fitting the camera to the resolution gate aspect ratio) will make the rendered output from maya and the maya camera/null_onject info fit perfectly onto each other.

Also, I changed my AE import settings to bring things in at 24fps. Before, my 300 frames were being imported at 30fps, or 10seconds, where my camera was coming in with the maya settings at 24fps, changing the AE defailt import options to 24fps noy the 300 frame animation and the camera data are the same duration.

[y030052]

I may be missing the point here, and this doesn't reply to your question, but it sounds like you're making life more difficult for yourself than you need to.

If you're going to create a flashing effect in AE, why not simply render out a matte pass from Maya and use that as an alpha channel for your blinking layer? A simple white surface shader on the surfaces you want to blink, against a completely black background should do it.

[wisof]

you are correct, that would be easier, but it was still helpful to figure out the process to bring in 3d cameras and nulls into AE . . . if the task calls for it, it might be useful.