anyone know of a way to render an animation clip with a transparent background?

thanx in advance

Render as single png frames and assemble to a clip in a video editor. Easy!

yeah i was aware one could do that in a stop motion way. however i was refering more to an avi with a tranparent back.

btw saying "easy" to a frame by frame render then taking each picture together in secession in a video editing program is a bit misleading to some.

granted overall there is not a large level of difficulty- it is in no way easy- very time consuming. at any rate i had thought of that option but it is not the effect i was looking for.

thanx anyway

putting all frames together is not as hard as it sounds.

For example , virtual dub, ju only need to open first picrure and the rest will be done automaicaly (assuming rest of the pictures have some pattern in the name: 001, 002, 003 ...)

Quote - an avi with a tranparent back

Yeah, I don't think that's possible.

Quote - yeah i was aware one could do that in a stop motion way. however i was refering more to an avi with a tranparent back.

btw saying "easy" to a frame by frame render then taking each picture together in secession in a video editing program is a bit misleading to some.

granted overall there is not a large level of difficulty- it is in no way easy- very time consuming. at any rate i had thought of that option but it is not the effect i was looking for.

thanx anyway

No way easy? Time consuming?

As Adom said, you import one frame, and your editor does the rest. Adom does it in Virtual Dub, I do it in Vegas. I believe most video editors have this feature.

And I find rendering the video as a series of pngs with the Queue Manager to be quite a lot faster than rendering an avi.

So I don't see what the problem is with this method.

What program are you trying to import this AVI into?  As the others have said it is best to render as single frames and assemble in a Video Editor, mine is Magix.  However if you want to render as AVI change the background to Green or Blue or some other color that your program will be able to use as Chroma Key (green screen).  Load and select your chroma key and new background.  Not the best since you will end up with little bits of artifacts around the edges.

I just wanted to chime and and agree with all who voted that rendering to image file as a .png and then using video editing is really simple.

Not only that, but you get a much better result. Poser tends to pixilate the video when it renders to .avi, and makes a mess of things.

Rendering to .png allows you to post work the images.

And I have owned all 3 of the video editors mentioned. Currently I have VirtualDub and Magix Movie Edit Pro 16.

I started out with Sony Vegas in 2001.

I often render to uncompressed avi. When I bring it into an editor it has transparency. I think the problems some have with avi is that they are using some compression algorithm. Be aware that uncompressed avi creates huge files so you need a lot of free disk space.

really it has a transparency in avi format? i have not tried it- i was just wondering because i know stills can. are you using the default grey bg color? i too render an uncompressed avi, which as you say it kind of large.

as for editing it use premiere and ae.

to the point of pngs- so if i label the files correctly the proggie will just take the rest and line them up chronologically? or am i missunderstanding and it is how i thought actually loading each picture indiviually? i like the idea of the option of postwork. am going to try it. never a bad thing to have more ways to accomplish a task.

in the end what matters most is what you want your end result to look like.

thank you all for the input

" are you using the default grey bg color?"

In your Render settings, make sure that it is set to "Use current background shader" so long as you have not applied anything to the background in the materials room you will get transparency with png sequences. I have not tried uncompressed avi.

In Premiere and ae, File>Import Folder will bring in all the renders, open the folder in the project window, select all and drag into the timeline on the appropriate layer. I've read somewhere(?) about exporting clips with Alpha channels, which allows for superimposition but because it suits my uses I often export clips of single figures on a black background and a second silhouette version (Old fashioned Track Matte) in Premiere duplicate the sequence and use Video Fillters>Keying>Alpha Adjust set to mask only.

The vimeo clip is a multimulti figure video made with layered pngs then the clips were remixed with track mattes. the youtube one is another essay in compositing techniques

https://vimeo.com/13362943

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTcSPde_1qs&list=UUEcKgtoS0Z6ryqTwgcioX9w&index=16&feature=plcp

OK, this is based on a vague memory of someone asking this before and some quick google research so take it for what it's worth as they say.

The still image option is probably best, especially for longer projects. If you want to output to video then as fivecat says, you can use no compression and get huge files or there are supposedly codecs which support transparency - e.g. reference AVI Export With Alpha Channel

Huffyuv is what I remember someone discussing using with Poser. I think that the Indeo codec may be a part of the standard Windows install.

The HuffyUV 2.1.1 codec is available here 

and the Lagarith codec is here

You're on your own with setting things up in Poser :-)

You might also look at CorePNG which is supposed to be good for CGI.

The best, safest way it to render out as separate frames and then assemble in a video editor. The first reason to do so is safety. If rendering to frames, and your system crashes, Poser locks up, your power goes out, etc; then all you have to do is check the folder where you were storing the frames, restart and reload Poser, advance to the frame just after the last good frame, and restart the rendering from there. If you are rendering to codec and things bomb out, you have to start rendering from the very beginning.

Then there is safety point 2. Once you have those uncompressed frames, save them to a backup drive or burn them to a DVD or BRD (or all the above; no such thing as too much redundant backup), then you are effectively bullet proof. Leave those original frames unmodified, and no matter what happens or what you or someone else did to the final output, you have the originals and can repair things without having to re-render the scene.

Next is the incredible amount of control that video editor gives you. There are freeware open source editors out there. I started with Magix and moved up to Adobe Premiere, but Magix is a good, basic editor. By doing the assembling in a video editor, you get nearly an unlimited pallette of options on final output. You avoid compression artifacts that can occur due to your render app fighting with the compressor over the memory pool. If you do your compression in an editor, then you only compress things -once-; that avoids the pixellation and matrix artifacts that you get when you compress an already compressed image. If you use singles you can do avi, mpeg, and a few dozen other video out formats, and still have your original frames safely stored away (converting between formats is a coin toss at best, a disaster at worst). Frames give you a more rigid timeline to work with for adding things like scoring and sound effects, instead of using the 'By God and Guess' method of adding audio to a compressed video stream (plus say someone likes your work, but would really prefer an MP4 to an AVI. All you have to do is reload the frames, select the MP4 codec, an regenerate the video Said person is happy, you haven't damaged your originals, and you -look- a bit more professional in your workflow).

Then there are the postwork options. Say you finished your render and discovered that you messed up your color balance. With frames, you can simply take the first one into a photo editor like Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, GimP, Paint, etc, adjust the balance, then batch process the lot of them and save with a different name. Or you could decide that a certain element isn't needed, and mask and batch process it away (at least as long as it isn't moving; you'd need After Effects, Afterburner, or one of the other effects software packages....all of which takes frames as well). Plus the fact that a lot of video effects simply can not be added to a compressed video stream without some very, very expensive hardware, and even then there are limits.

Using uncompressed frames adds one or two software packages to your pipeline, and adds some extra time to the process.....but the amount of control, and the open ended nature of your output more than offsets that. For one project it may not matter; if you intend to animate with any significant frequency, it is worth its weight in gold, platinum, and plutonium.

Try JPGToVideo. It's free and with one button joins together a sequence of JPG's into an AVI. Great for timelapses. It doesn't add an audio track, but your video editor will do that. Though if it must be video, consider chromakeying. Make the background of the poser animation bright green. To avoid extreme fringing on the animation, turn off anti-aliasing and render at "full frame uncompressed". You'll still get some fringing, especially on hair it's unavoidable, but some video editors have a tolerance or feathering option that will reduce that. Same applies when using videos created from stills.

Dale B, great post with a lot of good advice.

And nearly all of it learned the hard way, fivecat. Few things beats the agony of rendering an 800-900 frame clip, with 20-40 minutes per frame average into 'an easy video format' only to have the thing bomb out at frame 798. Or worse, have one of your ancillary programs take a wild hair and decide you need to know about the newest version Right Now. I don't want to remember how many times I had render crashes in my newbie days until I found out the root of the issue was the bloody Quicktime updater yanking the processor away juuuuuuuust long enough for the animation to go crunch..... Blocking those updater ports sure does save one from that nightmare...

The only time I've rendered to avi is when I'm doing a quick seconds per frame video, and I usually don't render more than about 300 frames at a time. If I'm doing anything more render intensive, I definitely use tif or png.

I wouldn't argue with any of the arguments for rendering image sequences - they make excellent sense.

My first guess was that the option to render to video was only there because it was a more straight forward process for casual users, without involving the need for a second application. OTOH, as far as I can tell, every major application, Max, Maya, Cinema 4D Vue etc. all offer direct video output - so I assume it must have some utility for someone.

And nearly all of it learned the hard way, fivecat. Yea know that feeling:) for the last few months I've been working with MPG2 based media players. In effect a dvd player without a disc-drive, MPG 2 should be standard, but is it b*gger! Chuck in conversions from MP4 or AVCHD. Poser video exports which by default has no audio track. Players that need more than 5 seconds of file to work. You've got a interesting learning curve. Though as Dale B knows that kinda knowledge, while hard earned is solid knowledge. It allows us to work quicker, more efficiently and create better quality videos. So it's well worth giving it a try. Doesn't have to cost much either. I use an old version of Studio 9 and loads of freeware apps. Even one video camera was cheap, flip ultra HD from one of those 2nd hand electronics places.

ok so this is of great interest to me- and again thank you all for the advise. i do want to try this technique out however i am not 100 percent sure how to go about it.

as far as i am understanding- one creates an animated "scene" of x amount of frames, then render each frame individually? or is there a way to tell poser render this clip in pngs? that is where i am a bit confused - all the other stuff... well is completely understandable.

 i luckily have never had poser crash during an animation render. but then again i render in various settings and drag the raw footage to premiere or ae, clip and tweak. however this png thing seems like it could great some interesting editing possiblites.

thanx again

I read your article about those players MrSparky - very interesting. Love your free models - great quality and a unique whimsical sensibility.  Thanks very much.

Quote - ok so this is of great interest to me- and again thank you all for the advise. i do want to try this technique out however i am not 100 percent sure how to go about it.

as far as i am understanding- one creates an animated "scene" of x amount of frames, then render each frame individually? or is there a way to tell poser render this clip in pngs? that is where i am a bit confused - all the other stuff... well is completely understandable.

 i luckily have never had poser crash during an animation render. but then again i render in various settings and drag the raw footage to premiere or ae, clip and tweak. however this png thing seems like it could great some interesting editing possiblites.

thanx again

Heh.

It isn't really made clear, but it is easy.

Click on 'make movie'

click the format option and select 'image files' 

Make any other render option selections you want.

Hit the 'Make Movie' button at the bottom of the panel.

This brings up an OS native save screen: so you choose where the frames go, you name the what the frames will be, and then select what file type you want. If you choose a compression capable format like jpg, then you get another window that lets you set the compression ratio. (Set it to 100 and you should be getting uncompressed frames). Hit Ok and the render starts. A bit kludgy, but that's how it works.

Poser steps through the scene as set up for animation and renders each frame; if you choose a movie format it then passes that frame to a temp folder and compresses and strings them together with a codec at the end. The .tmp files aren't really useable for anything else. If you choose the frames option, then the rendered frame is simply saved as an image file before Poser advances the frame counter and renders the next frame sequence. All you are doing is choosing between acumulating temp files to be compressed, or saving them out as fixed format image files.

The final output will look like this: image name 00000.extension, image name 00001.extension, etc. Poser always starts with 0000, not 0001. So to get the whole sequence, you start with 0000 (But as another example, say you are running cloth sims, and the setup draping ran into the first few frames of your sequence. You have the choice of including them in the editor and removing them after you have digital footage, or stepping through the file and starting with the first settled frame. But be aware that the cheaper and simpler video editors might not like it; they are hard-coded to accept only a 0000.ext file as the valid beginning of a video frame set). 

ty dale that is exactly the info i was looking for regarding this (to me) new technique. i have c&p this to a doc so i have it as a quick reference.

not worried about "cheap" editors, i am using premiere or AE

thanx again i am looking forward to seeing what sort of results i can get.