Compositing logic for multiple scenes

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Compositing logic for multiple scenes

by Kari Pieskä

on Jan 28, 2013 at 11:26:33 am

Hello. I have a logical problem that I can't figure out.

I have a rigged character. Then I made a precomp from his head. Inside this precomp I am going to control the mouth shapes, so the project stays clean. Simple.

Here is the problem:
If I make a scene 1, I copy the rigged character (f.ex. Rig_base) into it with a different name (Rig_sc1). So the original rigged character stays intact and I can keep on copying "Rig_base" into scene 2, 3, 4...

But now I seem to have a need to make a copy out from the "head" compostion aswell (f.ex. "head_sc1"). Because if I make changes for the mouth shapes in scene 1, those changes will be also in the "Rig_base".

This logic can't be right? If I have multiple compositions inside the rig, I feel that I have to make a copy out from all these compositions in order to always have a clean "Rig_base".

I feel very lightheaded on this one, and there must be something I just don't get.

I think there has to be a way just to copy the "Rig_base" with a different name and keep on making new scenes. But I just dont... see it.

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Re: Compositing logic for multiple scenes

by Angelo Lorenzo

on Jan 28, 2013 at 6:24:24 pm

So the hierarchy is:



Head (rigged for mouth)_______

||          ||              ||

Rig_base    Rig_Base_src2   Rig_base_src3

||          ||              ||

Comp 1      Comp 2          Comp 3

You can see that even though you're copying the rig base, that every copy is still referencing one copy of the "Head" comp. Duplicating the "Rig_Base" comp does not create duplicates of the comps it's dependent on.

With that logic in mind, the "rig_base" is not the true base. Perhaps "head" needs to be expanded back into "rig_base" for proper usage and full duplication.

It's a bit hard to find these issues using AE's flowchart (I don't know if there is a trick to see more than one comp at a time) but it's just something you have to be aware of. You can test for dependencies by sticking suspected comps into a single comp to inspect it with the flowchart.

--------------------
Angelo Lorenzo

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Re: Compositing logic for multiple scenes

by Kari Pieskä

on Jan 30, 2013 at 12:25:13 pm

Thank you for making that clearer.

I did some more searching, trying and erroring and found out this solution for my actual problem:

If I use time remap on the "head" comp, it cracks this case. Then the time remap function is not inside the "head" comp and the comp stays as a base, intact. Then I can control the mouth shapes with the time remap and can copy this comp to as many scenes I want.

After this comes another question. I added a slider effect to the time-remap. It gave out this code effect("mouthshapes")("Slider")
It didn't make the slider work. Then I remembered I saw somebody had added /25 in the end of the code, and that suddenly worked. Why is this?
I work with 24 fps, has it something to do with the framerate? I divides the slider effect, but don't understand how.

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