How do you get an SWF to export at a large resolution?
Moderators: Víctor Paredes, Belgarath, slowtiger
How do you get an SWF to export at a large resolution?
I'm using Anime Studio Pro version 6. I'm doing a bitmap layer animation. Been trying to export an SWF for After Effects at a large resolution. Somewhere in the area of 5000 x 5000 pixels. Even though I set the project preferences to 5000 x 5000 when I export, the stage stays at 1024 x 1024. As with most SWF the whole picture is rendered but when I bring it into After Effects it only recognizes the stage area. Does anybody have a solution or know a work around to this problem? Thanks.
Well one of the main reasons we use SWF's is how quickly you can output them and then, if needed, alter the animation and re-output them with instant change in After Effects. PNG sequences take too long to render especially at the resolutions we work at. 5000 x 5000 is just a ballpark number. We need to get an output at the original photo resolution which is usually around 12 megapixels or 4000 x 3000. We are using boned bitmap characters, think Terry Gilliam, and want to have the full resolution in order to have some play with cameras in After Effects. We have been using Flash to this point and our system works great but they have a 2880 x 2880 pixel output limit plus are very limited in their bone implementation at this point. We're loving what Anime Studio brings to the table but just need to find a work around for this issue.
Then you haven't delved into what After Effects can actually do. You should check out some of the tutorials on videocopilot.net. AS is great for the character puppetry but when it comes to building environments and environmental effects it isn't yet on After Effects level. Specially if you're trying to add 2D animated characters to a real world environment via hi-res video or Photograph. Anyways, back to my question. Is there anyone out there who knows how to get high resolution SWF's out of Anime Studio pro 6? I know there has to be a way. It just seems silly to put that kind of limitation on a method of exporting.
Get Weird
First of, slowtiger is one of the most respected member of this forum, so he deserved respect, which I feel you do not give him.
I used to be a Flame Artist, which put afx to shame a thousand fold, so when I tell you you are out of your track, that means you are.
Why do you need 5000 X 5000, even IMAX does not use that much resolution.
As for SWF, it is a vecor format, so it does not matter if you render it at 1024X1024 or 5000X5000, unles you intend to put bitmap graphic in it, if so, then just use bitmap render, which allows for better render quality.
If you think so high of afx and if you are so good at it, then you should know that there is a puppet fuction in it that allows to animate alot the way you can in AS Pro, might as well use that.
At work I used AFX for many years and now I use Combustion and other highend fx tools and all of them kicks AFX in the nutts at many levels.
As for putting animation into real world video, well, AS Pro has a decent tracking system just for that(just watch some of the videos on the subject), and though it is not as sofisticated as AFX build in tracking it does a good job if used properly, but then again, AFX tracking is not at the level of many other tracking tools on the market.
Please do ne be condescendant to members of this forum, some have made a living of AS Pro and other softwares for a long long time, slowtiger is one of them, respect will open every doors for you!
G
First of, slowtiger is one of the most respected member of this forum, so he deserved respect, which I feel you do not give him.
I used to be a Flame Artist, which put afx to shame a thousand fold, so when I tell you you are out of your track, that means you are.
Why do you need 5000 X 5000, even IMAX does not use that much resolution.
As for SWF, it is a vecor format, so it does not matter if you render it at 1024X1024 or 5000X5000, unles you intend to put bitmap graphic in it, if so, then just use bitmap render, which allows for better render quality.
If you think so high of afx and if you are so good at it, then you should know that there is a puppet fuction in it that allows to animate alot the way you can in AS Pro, might as well use that.
At work I used AFX for many years and now I use Combustion and other highend fx tools and all of them kicks AFX in the nutts at many levels.
As for putting animation into real world video, well, AS Pro has a decent tracking system just for that(just watch some of the videos on the subject), and though it is not as sofisticated as AFX build in tracking it does a good job if used properly, but then again, AFX tracking is not at the level of many other tracking tools on the market.
Please do ne be condescendant to members of this forum, some have made a living of AS Pro and other softwares for a long long time, slowtiger is one of them, respect will open every doors for you!
G
Damn I didn't expect this forum to be filled with elitist middle schoolers. 
Well if you people make your living with Anime Studio then someone must know a good trick for getting SWF's out with a higher resolution then 1024 x 1024. I found a work around that can bring it into FLASH where I can get it to 2880 x 2880. Which is where I was at with my last cartoon but I'm trying to progress and push technology a bit. For anyone actually following this strange conversation someday I would like to see this in an iMax and in 3D too. But right now I'm focusing on trying to get a SWF at a high resolution. Come on people we can do this. Help a brother out. 
Well if you people make your living with Anime Studio then someone must know a good trick for getting SWF's out with a higher resolution then 1024 x 1024. I found a work around that can bring it into FLASH where I can get it to 2880 x 2880. Which is where I was at with my last cartoon but I'm trying to progress and push technology a bit. For anyone actually following this strange conversation someday I would like to see this in an iMax and in 3D too. But right now I'm focusing on trying to get a SWF at a high resolution. Come on people we can do this. Help a brother out. odd:
IMO shouldn't animation art or any art be expressionism and not pixelism?
google the term; ass.
I'm sorry all but i'm all about the simple content and not about HD 5000 what ever this guy is looking for.
this guy would prolly be more happy if he/she would just draw some toons and post the samples and be happy with animating it like the rest of us...
IMO shouldn't animation art or any art be expressionism and not pixelism?
google the term; ass.
I'm sorry all but i'm all about the simple content and not about HD 5000 what ever this guy is looking for.
this guy would prolly be more happy if he/she would just draw some toons and post the samples and be happy with animating it like the rest of us...
I'm doing a bitmap layer animation. Been trying to export an SWF for After Effects at a large resolution. Somewhere in the area of 5000 x 5000 pixels
As I can understand by your comments it is a bitmap work at all. So swf or png sequence output, the information of a 4000x3000 photo must be in the output material and in the input for AFX. So I conclude some things:Well one of the main reasons we use SWF's is how quickly you can output them and then, if needed, alter the animation and re-output them with instant change in After Effects. PNG sequences take too long to render especially at the resolutions we work at. 5000 x 5000 is just a ballpark number. We need to get an output at the original photo resolution which is usually around 12 megapixels or 4000 x 3000. We are using boned bitmap characters, think Terry Gilliam, and want to have the full resolution in order to have some play with cameras in After Effects.
1) Anime Studio will do its master output render with the same difficulty regadrless if it renders to swf or to png sequence. The information it will process is the same: a huge set of raster files.
2) Master render from AS is much more secure being done in a png sequence than in a swf file. If the power electricity goes down in the middle, ,the png sequence is a saved work meanwhile swf is not.
3) I don't know AFX at all but I guess that if it is good with image handling it will be good with it, regardless the input format it has (swf or png seuquence)
so why to choose swf if you don't need its scale independence given by vector stuff?
-G
I haven't touched AfterFX after version 5.5, so it might have some new functions. But I wonder how their SWF import actually works.
SWF is vector, so any "resolution" is arbitrary. Since AFX is mainly bitmap based, with a fixed project size right from the start, it should behave somehow like in Photoshop when opening a pure vector EPS file: it should ask in which size this gets rendered. Even when AFX can hold vector information now, as I just read on its product page, there must be at least an initial size for import. (Adobe's product page is a laugh. In former years you could get real information from that, like maximum project dimensions and such. Now all I get is testimonials and performance boastings. Meh.)
I did some tests with what programs I have at hand. I created an AS project in HD 1920 x 1080 and imported a bitmap of that size into it. This project I exported as SWF and imported to Flash. It opened at 1024 px width.
Then I created a similar project in Flash, with the same bitmap, created an SWF and imported again (into a new file). This SWF was opened in 1920 px width. So there's a difference in the files created by Flash and AS. But it's not a hard limit since the same files could be opened in a web browser in original size.
The AS created SWF I could resize in Flash without trouble, and all information of the original image was there - I used a bitmap where I could easily see single pixels.
I reckon you could use the same workflow in AFX: import, and then resize with a fixed ratio. No information should get lost.
Still I think that 5k is complete overkill. Or do you produce for 4k output? As a rule I don't recommend more oversampling than 1.5 of the final size in the artwork, especially not for video files. Singe bitmaps may be OK with that, but still you have to watch which price you pay in terms of work speed and file size.
As an aside, I saw a presentation of a really big project last week by Maarten Isaak de Heer from Holland who made a 4K animation in Flash. He explained that he had to break up the screen into several parts because of a maximum export size limit of Flash. So you may run into a limit at around 2048 px anyway - but then, that's in the Flash SWF file format, it's not AS' fault. (http://www.heerenmeester.net/nl/m/hnd/handelingen.html)
SWF is vector, so any "resolution" is arbitrary. Since AFX is mainly bitmap based, with a fixed project size right from the start, it should behave somehow like in Photoshop when opening a pure vector EPS file: it should ask in which size this gets rendered. Even when AFX can hold vector information now, as I just read on its product page, there must be at least an initial size for import. (Adobe's product page is a laugh. In former years you could get real information from that, like maximum project dimensions and such. Now all I get is testimonials and performance boastings. Meh.)
I did some tests with what programs I have at hand. I created an AS project in HD 1920 x 1080 and imported a bitmap of that size into it. This project I exported as SWF and imported to Flash. It opened at 1024 px width.
Then I created a similar project in Flash, with the same bitmap, created an SWF and imported again (into a new file). This SWF was opened in 1920 px width. So there's a difference in the files created by Flash and AS. But it's not a hard limit since the same files could be opened in a web browser in original size.
The AS created SWF I could resize in Flash without trouble, and all information of the original image was there - I used a bitmap where I could easily see single pixels.
I reckon you could use the same workflow in AFX: import, and then resize with a fixed ratio. No information should get lost.
Still I think that 5k is complete overkill. Or do you produce for 4k output? As a rule I don't recommend more oversampling than 1.5 of the final size in the artwork, especially not for video files. Singe bitmaps may be OK with that, but still you have to watch which price you pay in terms of work speed and file size.
As an aside, I saw a presentation of a really big project last week by Maarten Isaak de Heer from Holland who made a 4K animation in Flash. He explained that he had to break up the screen into several parts because of a maximum export size limit of Flash. So you may run into a limit at around 2048 px anyway - but then, that's in the Flash SWF file format, it's not AS' fault. (http://www.heerenmeester.net/nl/m/hnd/handelingen.html)
Thanks Slowtiger. I'm really digging what AS has to offer but am still working around the little inconveniences that straying from an all Adobe work flow are causing. That being said the advantages definitely out weigh these little inconveniences. I agree with you that 5k is a bit of overkill but like I said we like to push programs to there limits whilst testing and then scale everything back for final productions. I think I'll lead our investigation in the direction you suggested trying to get After Effects to recognize the SWF with out it's limitations. I appreciate the help and enjoyed the video link to 4k.
http://www.youtube.com/user/GuysBlues001?feature=mhw4
http://www.youtube.com/user/GuysBlues001?feature=mhw4
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SpaceBoy64
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I still dont get why someone would render swf files at 5k.
Seems like a huge waist of render quality to me since swf does not render many of the quality features AS Pro has to offer, swf was designed for web, which does not run at 5k as we all know.
To render at such resolution and then scale down is also a huge waste of ressources, especialy if the work is done in a studio, where things are usually done in the most efficient way.
Flash files have a 2880 X 2880 limitation, so what is the point of trying to render larger then that since I doubt AS Pro was designed to overcome these limitations.
I am not saying it cannot be done, as tiger showed, but can AS Pro render larger then the limits imposed by Flash format, maybe it can, but I doubt it was ment for that, so chances are it just goes with Flash limitations.
Maybe someone at Smith Micro could answer that one.
Btw, I am no ellitist, I use the tools I get paid to use, so I would apreciate if you could refrein calling me that in the future.
G
Seems like a huge waist of render quality to me since swf does not render many of the quality features AS Pro has to offer, swf was designed for web, which does not run at 5k as we all know.
To render at such resolution and then scale down is also a huge waste of ressources, especialy if the work is done in a studio, where things are usually done in the most efficient way.
Flash files have a 2880 X 2880 limitation, so what is the point of trying to render larger then that since I doubt AS Pro was designed to overcome these limitations.
I am not saying it cannot be done, as tiger showed, but can AS Pro render larger then the limits imposed by Flash format, maybe it can, but I doubt it was ment for that, so chances are it just goes with Flash limitations.
Maybe someone at Smith Micro could answer that one.
Btw, I am no ellitist, I use the tools I get paid to use, so I would apreciate if you could refrein calling me that in the future.
G
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SpaceBoy64
- Posts: 321
- Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 8:54 pm
- Location: Columbus
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Okay, so you aren't exporting vector animation?Get Weird wrote:We need to get an output at the original photo resolution which is usually around 12 megapixels or 4000 x 3000. We are using boned bitmap characters, think Terry Gilliam, and want to have the full resolution in order to have some play with cameras in After Effects.
Then I'm as confused as the other guys here about why you are using the Flash SWF format, especially if Flash's own limitation is 2800 x 2800. That's probably a format limitation, after all, Flash was designed to do web animation, not feature films, so why would it need to be any larger?
If you are doing Terry Gilliam style animation with bitmap characters and you want extra high resolution, your best choice is to use a different format like PNG. I can't believe that SWF would render any faster. Why would it? Is this true? I've only tried SWF once or twice before and found that it usually didn't export correctly from AS. Anime Studio's support of the SWF format is minimal. Most of the cool stuff you can do in AS just doesn't translate well.
If you import an SWF from Anime Studio into Flash, are you able to edit vector animations? I am curious to know about this since I was considering collaborating with someone who is doing a Flash project.
Hello again.
I found my link to the Flash format limitation whitepaper, that is directlly from Adobe's site.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/144/tn_14437.html
Chances are that this limitation is also part of the sdk, so it makes sense to believe that AS Pro will not render swf files larger then the format limitation since Flash CS4 Pro itself does not.
Quote from the paper
"2880 x 2880 px canvas size: A Flash movie cannot be larger than 2880 px wide or 2880 px tall."
Hope this answer's the question.
G
I found my link to the Flash format limitation whitepaper, that is directlly from Adobe's site.
http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/144/tn_14437.html
Chances are that this limitation is also part of the sdk, so it makes sense to believe that AS Pro will not render swf files larger then the format limitation since Flash CS4 Pro itself does not.
Quote from the paper
"2880 x 2880 px canvas size: A Flash movie cannot be larger than 2880 px wide or 2880 px tall."
Hope this answer's the question.
G