I'm not sure if this could be done in Poser 5, but in the Make Movie box of Poser 6 besides making AVI and Flash files another option is Image Files. What this does is render each frame of the animation as an individual jpeg. So if you have a 30 frame animation, you end up with 30 jpegs. These can then be stitched together to form a movie. The advantage of doing it this way is you get nice, clear images to work with instead of the graining looking AVI files. Now here is the neat part. If you need to stop, hit cancel. Then when you want to continue, in the Make Movie dialogue box go to the upper right and in Time Span, just change Start from 1 to the next frame you want to render. Say you stopped at 14, just enter 15.

Yep, this is a cool feature, but rather save your image files a .bmp files, as you lose less quality due to compression when converting to video. And another thing, your .avi files should not be grainy. Individual .avi frames have a better texture resolution than .jpg files, so if you have grainy .avi files there is another problem.

I'd never do a final render of an animation without rendering to image files. It's absolutely a must.

P5 is capable of doing this too, and I think P4/Propack can as well.

If you're doing a composite (ie., 3D animation that will be composited with live action), then save to .tiff format, which retains the alpha channel. It's much more convenient than having to mask out later in a video editor.

Ideally, I'd like to see Poser support .tga output for image files, since that format not only contains the alpha channel, but can also seperate it for you automatically, which is nice. It also seems to be supported by more video editors than .tiff, although both work equally well.

Message edited on: 04/27/2005 01:40

another nice thing....part way into an animation you can steal a copy of the destination folder and load the images in...view the partial work....all while the render continues. I use Quicktime Pro ($29.99) for this work (it's not a full-blown video editor.) ::::: Opera :::::

Good point about saving it in a lossless format. Maxx, does a .png also contain an alpha channel or just what is it? If I look at a .png in Paint Shop Pro, the background is missing.

Yes, .png contains an alpha channel and is fine for the individual frame files. Sadly, rendering to Quicktime doesn't retain the alpha channel, and the default Grey seems to comprises of 2 shades of grey so using it as a mask gives screened results. I haven't tried another "Green Screen" type colour yet, but there's no reason it shouldn't work. I use the Open Image Sequence of Quicktime Pro all the time, it's great for comparing subtle lighting changes across a range of renders. In P6, I find the slider in the render panel frightfully slow.

png contains an alpha channel... I do either png's or tiffs and load them into VirtualDub and VOILA!! Load them into MAinConcept MPG encoder and they're dvd compliant in no time!

cross post... sorry!

Using PNG is not advisable at this stage. There are currently different specs for PNG files. Some programs save them as 32 bit, some save them as 24 bit, and some programs swap the order of the alpha channel. I am not an expert on this, but I have tried using PNG across different editors and graphics programs, and the results always vary. CorelDraw, Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro all treat PNG's differently, and EditStudio and Adobe Premiere also treat PNG's differently. PS This is from own experience, and not the authoritive final word on PNG's.

"If I look at a .png in Paint Shop Pro, the background is missing." That's because a PNG always assumes the color was pre-multiplied if an alpha is present. If there's no color correction involved, pre-multiplied images comp faster.

I've had to render mine to image files. Movie Edit Pro 2004(29.99) doesn't like Poser's AVIs. but if i render to image then assemble it in Jasc Animation shop, and save it to AVI then MEP will read it. thus far i have been rendering to jpg at max quality, but they have been almost all preview renders so its no big deal.

kaveman, agree QuicktimePro does nothing with Alpha Chanel...it is not on that level of masking, composting, etc. I LOVE the slider in P6 and it works okay for me. I can select any two renders and the scrubber moves back and forth with not the slightest hesitation. GREAT for (as you said) comparing tiny differences in render settings. I happened to have an intense vid card in my poser rig, stollen from my son's gaming computer! ::::: Opera :::::

I have an Nvidia GeForce 5200 and haven't noticed any problem with the slider bar either. It does the wipe as fast as I can move the mouse.

Everything you mentioned above has been available since at least Poser 4. You could always save out to image files, and you could always start your animation at a chosen frame instead of at the beginning. I've been saving out to tiffs and joining them in Adobe Premiere 6.5 (it's very simple in Premiere -- you select the first frame and check the box indicating that it's the first in a sequence of frames and Premiere handles it as a full motion clip, ready to be instantly viewed as a movie).