Intro to 32bpc in After Effects
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Loading ...Posted on: October 5, 2009
Posted in: After Effects, Video Tutorials
A quick overview of some of the basics of working in 32 bit float (32bpc) inside of After Effects
32bit float | Zero to One, and Beyond | All the range you need
In this tutorial we take a look at a few concepts you should understand when working with 32bit float images in 32bpc mode in After Effects. We take a look at things like dynamic range, colour fidelity, motion blur, and realistic compositing.
If you have any comments or questions, please, feel free to ask!
Thanks!
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November 12th, 2009 at 4:51 pm
Hi,
this is a nice introduction to the 32-bit Mode in Ae. Thanks man. What I would like to now is what you think about a linearized working space and to enable linear blending in the projectsettings? I use it very often but somehow I only have good results with this when I turn colormanagement off inside AE…Is there something to take care of?
November 13th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
Hi there,
I generally don’t work in linearized space in AE, even though, that’s technically the more correct way of working… The only time I work in a fully linearized workflow is when I’m working with film scans, and then, I’m generally working in Fusion.
If you’re doing broadcast, and are not working with a team of 20 people, it’s probably ok to just work normally. The advantage to working in a linear colour space in a group setting is you know that everyone is working the same, so you can retain some consistency.
November 28th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I just added a link to this tutorial in a comment on this page of After Effects Help:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS81984DEB-D195-4822-9A06-EA0D00A0ECC7.html
I think that people reading that page will benefit from coming to this tutorial of yours to see the visual examples that you provide, which do a good job of showing the differences between the various color depths.
December 12th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
wow, I’ve been using 8 bit mode for years. I never knew what I was missing. Great tutorial.
May 1st, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Great tutorial!
But i have a question.
You show these examples of using 32 bits in images that provides 14 bits? Or how much?
Also if I have a footage which has 8 bpc (the most common) does it change anything if I color correct it in 32 bits?
It won’t provide so much information as your example because it doesn’t have so much information
And finally, if I work in 32 bpc how should i export it?
Thank you for reply and for tutorial, really helpful!
June 6th, 2010 at 5:53 pm
conr4d – I wanna know the exact same thing(s) as you – have you found answers yet?
June 6th, 2010 at 9:07 pm
Hey Alek and Con4d,
If you’re doing some serious colour correction and manipulations of 8bit images in a 32 bit colour space, you will definately see advantages to working in 32 bits. The main advantage you get is that you won’t clip whites or blacks, if you happen to push colours over those values. You’re not going to have any magical new range in the image, but at least your manipulations will have more headroom to work with.
If you’re going to export a 32bit image, the best way to do that is with a .exr file. Some TIFF formats also support 32bits, but it’s just safer to stick with EXR since it’s a standard file format that pretty much every application supports.
Hope this helps!
June 7th, 2010 at 3:03 am
Hi Kert,
thanks very much for your quick reply – it really helped!
You mention exporting to EXR – what about if you’re exporting video?
June 7th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Hey Alek,
There’s no video format out there that supports 32bit floating point. The moment you want to compress to a quicktime, or some other AVI format, you’re going to clipping the data usually to 8-bit in the end. There are some codecs that support 10bit quicktimes, but I think they require special hardware (like blackmagic cards etc.)
June 7th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Thanks Kert – u da man!
September 22nd, 2010 at 2:59 pm
Thanks for the tutorial! My question is actually from a different persepctive: I use 32 bits a lot in Nuke and Shake, but in After Effects I often find that many effects do not support 32bpc. I know there are workarounds (some are mentioned in the book “After Effects Studio Techniques”, but It’d be great to see as clear an explanation as the one you gave here.
September 22nd, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Hey Daniel,
I agree. There are a ton of filters in AE that don’t support 32bit, and it’s really a shame. Depending on the workflow of whatever project i’m working on, sometimes i’ll just render 16bit elements out of AE and comp them in Fusion, so I can work with them in 32 bit mode. Other times, the filters available in AE are enough to do the project. Most of the time, when you’re doing heavy composting work anyways, you’re not using too much more than simple tools, and the really fancy plugins don’t really come into play, so it’s not that big of a deal.
October 21st, 2010 at 10:16 am
Kert, thank you for this tutorial, there isn’t too much info out there about this that presents it as clearly as you do.
I’m going to check out your other tutorials!
January 26th, 2011 at 9:56 pm
Nice Tut! I been currently working a lot in 32 bit mode and had a question in regards to the info palette/colors. Dont know if I read or heard it somewhere, but I thought while making color corrections and everything, that you should stay between the 0-1 range? Is that wrong? Can you go outside those ranges?
January 27th, 2011 at 10:32 am
Hi Michael, By all means, you’re allowed to go outside the 0-1 range, but anything above 1.0 will be overbright, and you won’t be able to “see” it. All of the information will still be there, so no information gets clipped when it hits white, like it does when in 8 or 16 bit mode.
October 15th, 2011 at 10:27 am
Hi Kert!! Thanks for all the great tutorials!! I have one question about 32 bit depth in Cinema 4d.. I render an 32 bit .exr image in Cinema 4d (13) , import it to after effects, but I don’t have the same result about the white and black color like in your video. Cinema 4d has a “fake” 32 bit depth?? I would really appreciate if you could help me with this.. Thanks!
October 15th, 2011 at 11:18 am
Hum, i’m not sure what exactly could be going on there without looking at the files that C4D rendered. Did you make sure to change your AE project to 32 bit after importing the EXRs? Maybe there’s no overbright regions in your C4D render?
October 15th, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Hi! thanks for the fast answer! Yes, AE is on 32 bit…yes, it has bright areas, it’s the depth pass… I have an .exr file prom Maya, with depth pass (32 bit), I import it to AE and modify it with levels because of the outside 0-1 range… I’m trying to do this with Cinema 4d but I can’t achieve the outside 0-1 range… Thanks!