Film mask Plugin in FXTree... 2004-06-28 - By Luc-Eric Rousseau
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It's a good idea.
With regards to your workspace getting soiled with conversion nodes;
first a note of caution, I recommend using the 'swap component' node to swap
channels around. It's much faster than the Component Parser. It's also a good
node to use for a 'pass thru' as in the Color Correction example below, or in
senarios when you simply want to use the 'output' settings, because it is very
fast. Channel masking, by comparison, is much slower.
There isn't that much need to swap channels around in practice. One thing that
I notice people tend to do, is putting mattes and such in the alpha channel.
There is no need to do that, it's more elegant - and faster - to flow a gray
scale matte in the tree if you're doing processing on it.
Sometime there is just something wrong, sematically, in the compositing tree
that complicates the tree. One example is the depth pass, or an hold-out matte
that was rendered out. In that case, the image is usually RGBA, but really
there is only one channel that is of interest. If the alpha channel is not
needed, or redundant, it's better to discard it in the file input, or only
create a graycale image (also in the file input) from the RGB luminance. This
way, the image is ready to be used as a matte directly, with no additionnal
processing. It's much more efficient, but also semantically correct. If the a
file input is used both as an rgba and in several places as luminance matte, it
's a good idea to use the 'gray scale' node to get the grayscale creation matte
once, and cached. ('bitdepth' can also be used to extract the alpha channel,
only)
The obey matte input takes a gray scale image. If it gets an RGBA image, it
will take the alpha. If it gets an RGB image, it will create a gray scale
image from the RGB luminance. If in the tree an image is understood to be an
RGBA image, but really only RGB or alpha is ever used, one may tend to add
conversions nodes to work around the improper semantics at many places, and the
fxtree will be wasting processing time, and cache memory.
It's generally faster to apply a series of effect to an entier image, and then
recombine that result in the source image, rather than 'obey matte' every node.
If only local region of a large image needed that processing, a crop node
would used to limit the ROI.
With regards to your problem with 'film mask', as mentionned I can't reproduce
the problem. Note that this node ignores the size of the incoming image, it
produces an output that is using a ratio with the rectangle from 0,0 to the
"default image size". If this doesn't work you, try using two crop nodes in a
row.
-- --Original Message-- --
From: owner-xsi@(protected) [mailto:owner-xsi@(protected)]On Behalf
Of Dan Yargici
Posted At: Monday, June 28, 2004 4:48 AM
Posted To: xsi
Conversation: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
Subject: Re: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
For me, I can do it in any order at all and it still crops very top-heavy as if
it's expecting an
NTSC frame......
I really have tried every order... :-/
Also, I had an idea for a tiny workflow feature... Sometimes you have a huge
tree with one clip at
the top feeding many inputs accross this tree. Now suppose you want to
dissolve that top clip with
another and pump the result into all those same inputs, you have to zoom right
out until everything
is teeny-tiny, making hooking up nodes impossible...
So...
How about an easy way to substitute that fileinput node for a spacer that will
feed all the nodes in
your tree and move the fileinput above it... This would allow you to easily
make changes above that
point in the comp.... :)
...and the 'i' key icon building functionality of Eddie....
...and the 'o' key functionality of Eddie, especially for resize nodes....
...and the 'p' key functionality of Eddie for packing up large portions of the
tree....
...and an option to use a different channel for the obey matte so I don't have
to soil my workspace
with 100 component parsers.....
Otherwise, I'm loving it - honest! :)
DAN
-- -- Original Message -- --
From: "Luc-Eric Rousseau" <lucer@(protected)>
To: <XSI@(protected)>
Sent: Saturday, June 26, 2004 12:09 AM
Subject: RE: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
> You'll have to describe exactly your repro steps,
> the film mask will specifically go take the value
> in fxtree->File|Tree Properties prior to rendering,
> like all other effects that need reference default
> image size. It isn't assuming NTSC.
>
> -- --Original Message-- --
> From: owner-xsi@(protected) [mailto:owner-xsi@(protected)]On Behalf
> Of Dan Yargici
> Posted At: Friday, June 25, 2004 4:30 PM
> Posted To: xsi
> Conversation: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
> Subject: Re: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
>
>
> Hi Luc-Eric,
>
> I just tried, no change unfortunately...
>
> DAN
>
> -- -- Original Message -- --
> From: "Luc-Eric Rousseau" <lucer@(protected)>
> To: <XSI@(protected)>
> Sent: Friday, June 25, 2004 11:28 PM
> Subject: RE: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
>
>
> > afaik, it uses the fxtree 'default image size', but doesn't detect when it
changes.
> > Use 'Tool|Reload All Images' to clear the caches.
> >
> >
> > -- --Original Message-- --
> > From: owner-xsi@(protected) [mailto:owner-xsi@(protected)]On Behalf Of
Dan Yargici
> > Posted At: Friday, June 25, 2004 11:50 AM
> > Posted To: xsi
> > Conversation: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
> > Subject: Film mask Plugin in FXTree...
> >
> >
> > This looks like a handy little tool to save a few sums when letterboxing
stuff, but I just
noticed
> it doesn't seem to take the FXtree Default Image Size or source image size as
a source for it's
> effect. Looks like another case NTSC favouritism in XSI.......
> >
> > Just thought I'd point it out....
---
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