Open a project inside a 2nd one or merge 2?

[cynthia]

I am making an animation with 2 scenes in two different AS files. Now I wish I had made them both inside the same AS project. can I insert one project inside another so I can have scene 1 and scene 2 in the same project file? Or do i have to redo one of them , or edit them together in imovie or premiere pro? Thanks very much for your thoughts.

[AmigaMan]

You can import elements of another scene by going to File/Import/Anime Studio Object. Browse to a previous scene you did and import the elements you want. That will bring in your character's etc complete with animation.
However, almost everyone will tell you to do each scene separately in AS and compile and edit in your chosen editing software. I would agree with that and that's how I work. Think of AS as the animation software only. It's not editing software. Animate each shot separately. You can always reload (for example) shot_053 in AS and save it out as shot_054 so you have everything in place as the starting point for the following shot.

[cynthia]

Thanks for that advice, AmigaMan. That is really helpful. although I see the sense of editing scenes together in another software, my animated trailer is moving across one long continuous background with characters and dancing text synced to rhythmic music. So it would actually be nice to have it all together. i will test bringing in the the character and animation from the other project file in the way you described. Again, thanks very much for taking the time to reply.

[slowtiger]

A word of advice here: don't overload it. A continuous shot of a minute or more must be carefully planned. If possible, identify cuts and divide your project in several pieces. Depending on the complexity of your animation it might be usefull to render out parts as movies and import those into other scenes. This keeps rendering times shorter.

[hayasidist]

agreeing with the others on this - not only can you segment in time you can do foreground and background separately. You could consider having 3 files: the background (rendered out as, say, a 4:1 aspect ratio to allow a pan - either static image or sequence as necessary) and then 2 separate fg action files against transparent bg; then doing the motion in the video editing software. IOW animate the foreground actions "on the spot" then in the video editor move the bg relative to the fgs to give the fgs motion across the bg and screen...

[cynthia]

thanks Hayasidist. You must be working in After Effects to be able to layer parts of the video like that? It sounds like a really good method.

[cynthia]

Slow Tiger, Are you saying something similar as Hayasidist? That you place an animated character onto a background in after effects or that you make consecutive short videos to edit together?
"it might be usefull to render out parts as movies and import those into other scenes"

I am making a trailer of under one minute with actions synced to music. I'll post it when it's a little closer to completion. It would be great to get your technical comments.

[hayasidist]

actually adobe premiere.. but the principle is the same. and I also do what SlowTiger is suggesting - 1 AS file is typically short duration, and the outputs from all the AS animations (along with material from other programs - such as other images and audio...) get assembled in a video editor. I also go one step further where, for example, I want a close-up of characters talking and well as a long shot: I have one AS file, and I replace the camera track/zoom.. so 1 AS animation can be used to create multiple output renders.

so into the compositor goes: the (whole) music track; other audio; stills (from Photoshop or whatever); AS outputs (vision only). If sync might be hard then I'll also have AS generate a sync track (video and/or audio) to help line things up (switching on/off the "don't render this layer" as necessary) and/or having "spare" frames at start and end - the sync stuff, of course, just ends up "on the cutting room floor"!

Sometimes it's easier to do a first pass "consolidation" - for example someone waving a phone around - and there's a moving image on the phone... and I think that's what ST is saying about importing a movie created by AS into AS. (I personally do that in premiere: AS output etc gets fed into premiere and that "intermediate" output gets fed into "final version" premiere... but do it wherever it's easiest to achieve the desired result)

[slowtiger]

Actually I do a lot of compositing in AS. Often I render out characters as videos with transparency, then import them into another AS project with BG and props, because this way rendering is much faster. I even use AS for basic colour tweaking.

As I wrote about my last project (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=24904), I ended up with 5 layers of video:
- text layer
- first 2 characters
- all other characters
- the screen
- background
which I imported into a new AS project again. There I put the 2 character layers into a group and added a vector layer with just a yellow rectangle, using the character videos as masks, set the transfer method to colour, to give the characters that yellowish tint.

From this I render a video which goes into FinalCut for assembling scenes and adding sound.

(BTW; I made a longer dance mix of the trailer's music: http://slowtiger.de/soundshow/interfilm2013_ext.mp3)

[cynthia]

this is a fascinating conversation. I had no idea all this layering in AS and premier (final cut) were possible. I'm definitey going to get up to speed with Premier now that I know about its use in animation editing and compositing ( I have a cloud subscription to Adobe so am doing a lot of tutorial watching). Thanks very much to both Slow Tiger and Hayasidist for your detailed process descriptions. I will be revisiting these posts often.