PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Lukas · Post by **Lukas** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 11:00 am

Does anyone know if there's a difference between using PSD or PNG files in rigs?

I'm currently experimenting with PSD files, as I've always used PNG.

I'm experiencing some slowdowns, but I'm not sure if it's because of this because I'm also using many (1000 frame) smart-bone actions and a few .aim/.trg bones.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 12:27 pm

I use PNG, and lots of them. In case of changes it's much easier to just change the one file I want, instead of opening, changing and saving a large PSD file. Plus, recently I experienced data loss with a large (>700 MB) PSD file, so I tend to be more careful.

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:22 pm

Hi Lukas, are you talking about importing images to work on in AS? is the question 1 PSD or lots of PNGs to import?

to my mind, the minus for PNGs is that you need to import each individually; the minus for PSD is that native AS does not use layer names, and so changing layer order etc means deleting and re-importing. (but / and see viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24909)...

... so the plus for PNGs is that they're named files; the plus for PSD is that it's just one file.

I've used "small" PSDs imported as individual layers (rather than composite image) - maybe only 20 layers or so - and didn't notice any slow down. but then I didn't make a comparison with the same images exported as PNG from PS then used as such. I guess that if you're importing a composite from PSD, my view is that it will likely to be much slower for AS than exporting a composite from PSD to PNG and then importing that (as AS will have to do the compositing whenever it loads the file).

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:41 pm

the minus for PNGs is that you need to import each individually

No, you can grab a bunch of them from your desktop or folder and drag them onto the AS project window.

hayasidist · Post by **hayasidist** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 2:19 pm

slowtiger wrote: No, you can grab a bunch of them from your desktop or folder and drag them onto the AS project window.

whoo! so you can!! every day you learn something new. Thanks!!

Lukas · Post by **Lukas** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 3:47 pm

Thanks guys. I'll probably use png files because it's easier to add stuff to a rig that way.

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 5:09 pm

I love the PSD feature. One of the features of the PSD import i really like is that you can create switches right in the PSD file with groups. I know you can drag the files in... but still... that's pretty cool.

I haven't seen any issues with it as mentioned by Slowtiger, but I am a bad example since I don't do a ton of image based characters in ASP and my files haven't gotten that big. It would probably be a good idea if I tested out performance. I never considered how ASP handles the "overhead" of linking and extracting layers from HUGE photoshop files compared to individual PNGs.

An awesome feature for PSD linking would be a way to "export" the image layers AFTER import.

So, let's say you prefer using individual PNG files, but using photoshop import with layers is a huge timesaver.
With an "image export" you could load the PSD, then export the layers to PNGS. Best of both worlds...

... hmm... wonder if this could be scripted... will have to check.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Wed Nov 06, 2013 5:24 pm

One reason for my preference for PNGs is that I prepare most of my animation in TVPaint, not PS. Since TVP uses a timeline, exporting PNGs is a logical thing. It would need additional work to collect all frames in one frame again just to be able to export as PSD (which indeed is possible).

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 3:52 am

Please SlowTiger
PNG works good, but if I put transparent background mov, will this increase effeciencey?

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 10:53 am

Sorry, I don't understand the question.

PNG and a Quicktime with PNG codec set to millions+ of colours will both have an alpha channel = transparency.

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 3:34 pm

Thanks slowtiger for taking interest.

Rendered with AS Background + 3 transparent Mov
Each mov has 200 frames ( Loop activated for Image layer)
10 Seconds animation with 30 FPS
640 x 390 xivd -MP4( Avi Quality 3 )Render size 3.71 MB Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOs0MVDNoJ0
( blurry on youtube )
640 x 390 Movmp4 Render Size 28.5 mb
640 x 390 mov(Animation) Render Size 63.1 mb
( Nice on youtube but takes too much time in loading)
640 x 390 avi microsoft video 100% 100% Render Size 50.026 mb
640 x 390 avi full frame tooo large
640 x 390 mov ( png) 60.5 MB Youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1eAQKseJZoI
( nice on youtube )

640 x 390 mov ( Animation ( Thousand color) ) 46.0
640 x 390 mov ( H4) Render size 22.8 mb But colors are lights
640 x 390 xivd+mp4 ( Configure quality 1 ) 16.0 render size mb

Should I render on Mov ( Png) its oK?
are these size oK? ( sound is not added yet )

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 3:59 pm

Yes, uncompressed movies with alpha get large very fast. That's normal. I have clips between 0,5 and 3 GB file size. But since this is the only way to preserve quality during production, I have to live with it.

I have noticed that AS may choke on video clips when they are too long, so you should avoid anything longer than 30 sec. Also more than about 5 video clips in the same frame may cause trouble, so I use a kind of "mixdown" technique: I render several videos into one and re-import this.

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 5:00 pm

Thanks SlowTiger for the clarifications.
It means you render small-small movies with ASP and then mix all of them to create a Big Movie with some other
package?
Which one?
I have sony vega movie studio. Will this do?

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 5:37 pm

Again I refer to my last project. Here you see all 18 characters, each of it is composed of 2 QT videos of about 2000 x 2000px size or larger. So at any given moment there are 36 QT movies for AS to be loaded and rendered! Of course that's a bit too much.

What I did: I switched off temporarily everything I didn't want to render in that pass. I rendered characters 1 and 2 into 1 QT video, all 1500 frames of it. Then I rendered characters 3 to 18 into 1 QT video.

Then I rendered the background into 1 QT video, and finally the screen became 1 video as well. Plus there was another video from TVPaint which came on top of that all.

I created a new project in AS and imported all 5 videos into this:
- top layer (text)
- characters 1 + 2
- charactes 3 to 18
- screen
- background.

From this I made the final rendereing, which went into FinalCut for adding sound.

patricia3d · Post by **patricia3d** » Fri Nov 08, 2013 1:23 pm

Thanks Slowtiger.
I have created source PNG 640x480 (transparent mov ), Its necessary to create 2000x2000 larger?

PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)

Re: PSD or PNG files? (What is faster while animating?)