Help with my Mac Pro Set-up for 3D Rendering in After Effects

[caberman]

I would really love some help trying to get AE to run a lot better working on simple 3D projects. It's really slow to render and a lot of the Ray-Traced 3D functions are disabled.

Is there anything I can do to improve my situation with the hardware I have or is it time for a new machine altogether?

I have a:

Mac Pro

High Sierra 10.13.6

2.7 GHx 12 Core Intel Xeon E5

32 GB 1866 MHz DDR3

AMD FirePro D700 6144 MB

Your help is much appreciated!

Craig

[OussK]

What is your AE version?

[caberman]

After Effects CC 2019

[Dave_LaRonde]

You should be made aware that Adobe hasn't done a single, solitary thing with ray-tracing for many years.  It's basically obsolete.  If you run anything more recent than AE CC 2012 (aka Version 12), you shouldn't use ray tracing.

[caberman]

I chose ray-tracing because I have transparencies to worry about and Cinema 4d Renderer with AE doesn't work. Does anyone have any ideas about creating a simple bar graph animation using transparencies? At work, we only have Adobe CC.

Thanks

[Dave_LaRonde]

Perhaps you're not aware that AE automatically has transparency if there is nothing blocking the background.  2-D, 3-D, doesn't matter -- no background?  You've got transparency.  Ray tracing has nothing to do with.

You simply have to render in a video codec that supports alpha channels, and tell AE to create video with alpha channels in the Render Queue's Output Module settings.

[caberman]

Excuse my ignorance, I am not seeing how to create the results I want without picking Ray-Traced. I am sure I am doing something wrong in how I am going about this, but I just don't know another way. Would you be able to direct me to some sort of tutorial?

As you can see, I am getting very different results depending on my Render Setting I use. Only Ray-Trace is giving me the desired result.

[OussK]

Really you can achieve this kind of look without using the ray trace or the cinema 4d just the classic 3D,

check this small demo to see a example what you can do Dropbox - graph.aep

this is not the best thing you can do but just a quick demo

[caberman]

Hey thanks, OussK !

This is great.

So, even though using the extrusion is easy, it's just not practical since ray-tracing is obsolete.

I am trying to learn more expressions also and this demo is really helpful for that too.

I do like how you used a slider to control the red area. I have been trying to figure it out on my own, How does the slider know to just change the scale in Y and have it affect everything within the comp?

Thanks again!

I checked out your page on Video Hive, so many great project files that will save me time in the future.

[OussK]

really this graph build from simple path and stroke (repeated to create the 4 sides of graph) and i creat one dynamic slider the Red Comp and other static the Grey comp. so i set a trim effects for each stroke in the Red comp and i link all this trim to a main slider controller so when you change the value of the slider it will change the value of trim path and since it's all linked together so you will get the animation effects, and finally i link the slider control that include in the Red composition with another slider set on the final composition.

Really the expression in this demo is very very basic and with more experience you can do a lot more special with graph and charts so you can create something like auto in and out without any keyframes and lot of powerful thing.

[Mo Moolla]

Nice simple example with an elegant expression. Nice one buddy

[OussK]

Thanks Mo Moolla​ Yes it's a very basic example and sure you can do a lot more tuning and controller

[Mo Moolla]

OussK​ keep up the great work buddy. Lots of newcomers to AE will enjoy these simple breakdowns

Mo

[caberman]

Thanks!

This is really really helpful! I am trying to learn this stuff as fast as possible on the job with some tight deadlines and my render times were really making things rough. I wasn't even thinking about going to route at all, but it is so much more efficient.

[OussK]

what @Dave LaRonde Say's 100% correct. anyway can you share some screenshoot to see what is the type of infographic that need to be use the ray traced 3D.

[Mo Moolla]

Classic 3D will manage just fine. No need for Ray Tracing at all.

Recommended workflow is model in C4D and bring into AE (don't use C4D Lite)

Oussk's example is a simple one but very effective as a start point.

Expression controls are meant for a different thread as we are still trying to understand what it is you are trying to accomplish

Mo

[caberman]

Thanks! Will have to get work to pay for C4D!