Hello,
I am running into some low res problem of precomp in final render.
To give you context, this is how it is structured:
Master Comp (sequence)
This contains a precomp, that is causing the problem
Thie final intended look is like this, with sharp pixelated edge around the characters and its background.
(I have turned off the scale sampling, as original pixel art was scaled up to 300%)
However, what I am getting is this. Blurred and low res quality. It is behaving asif scale sampling is turned on.
In side the problemetic precomp, everything looks like this. Note that its the 4 precomps that is causing the problem, as the texts are still clear.
Inside each of these 4 precomps, looks like this. I think this is closer to the root of the problem, as everything from this comp gets blurred. (despite turning off the sampling, and turning on the "continuously rasterize"). The pngs and gifs are the pixel arts, scaled upto 300%. The other two precomps are the composite of other pixel arts, also scaled up to 300%. (following screenshot)
I have set all the scale sampling to draft to preserve the pixelated look. I think it has something to do with this.
Now in preview, everything is clean & clear. If I use the dynamic link to bring the master comp into the premiere (the final video timeline) it still retains that sharp look.
However, I always try to render alpha prores clip (Prores 4444) out of AE comps once I am set, and this is where that problem comes up.
Things I've tried
1. Turning on "continuous rasterize" to every precomp and the chain. DID NOT HELP.
2. I made sure all resoultions are set to full, both in render and preview.
3. When I try "Save Frame As" a PNG file, it is sharp. So I tried pre-rendering in PNG sequence. DID NOT HELP.
What did "work" -> I skip rendering in prores and just using that dynamic link in PP to render the final output. It is sharp. So this "resolved" my issue for now for this particular project, but now I want to understand the problem and try to avoid this for future reference, as I try to avoid dynamic link embeded into PP timeline one the compositing is done. Logically it just doesn't make sense to me and I am not sure what is causing the issue, and how to resolve it.
If anyone has any insight in this, please help!
Thank you!
1 Correct answer
SOLUTION: Quck follow up, and thanks to Andrew.
The correct setting seems to be setting the render quality to "Current' as oppose to "Best". It seems if set to "Best", it overwrites all layers' "Quality and Sampling" settings to bicubic or bilinear.
Another workaround was found was when moving the render to Media Encoder using "Queue in AME", and not directly exporting from AE.
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Replies
Hi Ian!
The frame size is 1920x1080 (60p).
I am only seeing this in export, and the settings are:
As I mentioned above, I've also tried exporting in h.264 and PNG sequence, and the problem remains same.
The source files are PNG sprites and animated GIFs, various in sizes (32x32, 48x48, etc). They are scaled up to 300%, and composited to create "in-game-like" scene.
Thanks!
The blurriness you're seeing is normal antialiasing when you scale elements above 100%. In your case, you're scaling the background elements 300%, precomping and then another 200%, so thats equivalent to a scale level of 600%, which is huge.
You've cropped all your screengrabs so it's not clear how you're previewing your work. But my guess is that this may be as simple as the render quality setting.
Try rendering from the Render Queue with the Render Settings > Quality set to "Draft" rather than "Best" quality. This prevents any antialising, causing blocky hard edges. Which in most cases is not desirable, but might be what you're after for your 8-bit-gamer style graphics.
If that's not what you're after, please post again with a bit more explanation and all your preview and render settings.
Here's a sample of precomped text scaled to 600% (and rotated 3 degrees to create more diagonal edges). The upper is Best quality (antialiased) and the lower is Draft quality (not antialiased.). You can see the same thing in your samples - in the first version your text is aliasing, but in the rendered (blurry) version the text is clean and smooth.
Hey Andrew!
Setting the render quality to "Draft" rather than "Best" indeed fixed the blurriness. However, the problem is that as this turns off antialising, it creates blocky hard edges to other graphic elements as well, like texts and vector images that are not intended to be. As you see, I've set "Quality and Sampling" to draft to all those in-game elements to be blocky, while keeping others with antialising. However for some reason exporting it somehow disregards all these settings.
What is also interesting is that if I import the composition in Premiere Pro (using dynamic link), and then export it, it is fine. But if I export it directly from AE, that's where I'm having the issue.
I'm uploading 3 screenshot samples. Please see click to see in full resolution!
1. Exported from PP through dynamic link. This is the intended look - the game elements are pixelated, hard edges and blocky. However, other graphic elements are clean and smooth.
2. Exported from AE. You can see the game elements are blurry, as if the "Quality and Sampling" setting is overruled.
3. Exported from AE with "Draft" setting. Although this restores hard edges to the game graphics, it also takes away anti alising to the other elements, like the black borders around each windows or the texts, which is not ideal. (It looks worse with animation).
Again, I was able to deliver the final render with the method #1 to the client. But really, I should be able to do same from AE. I am trying to understand because swapping changing dynaimc link clips with prerendered prores clips is big part of my workflow, as keeping dynamic link active in the timeline can be reallly slow down the previewing in PP.
Thanks!
Correct answer by
RoyLee9066
AUTHOR
SOLUTION: Quck follow up, and thanks to Andrew.
The correct setting seems to be setting the render quality to "Current' as oppose to "Best". It seems if set to "Best", it overwrites all layers' "Quality and Sampling" settings to bicubic or bilinear.
Another workaround was found was when moving the render to Media Encoder using "Queue in AME", and not directly exporting from AE.
Hi Andrew!
I did feel I left all relevent info in the screenshot and texts, though I understand it can be bit hard to grasp what is going on at first sight. There are tons of parameters that I touched, it would have been too long of thread to cover them all 😅 And I was 99.99% certain it has to do with scaling, sampling, method of rendering, or maybe something to do with track matte and precomp structure, which I included.
I like to mention though, by setting "Current Settings" it was not related to any preview settings. Despite putting the screen size to 10%, and resolution to "Quarter", which make it look really bad in preview, I confirm that at render everything comes out in full resolution. So my only explanation is that the "Quality" setting directly impacts "Quality and Sampling" settings for every layers.
Mosaic effect is useful, but it is only viable when making high-res graphics look pixelated.
I 100% agree that in normal cases scaling up bitmap images 600% is dumb. However, when it comes to pixel art, not really. These assets are directly from the game (this is a game trailer), and all its game elements are pixel arts. They are meant to be in low-res and scaled up to gamers' viewing resolution, without any anti-alising or sampling, which I was trying to re-create in AE. (Hence using "Draf" in Quality and Sample settings. ) Yeah you can make them all vectors but really not much benefit, and there are hundreds graphic elements I was working with. Turning them all into vectors would be a lot of unnecessary work, and won't be perfect. Just my 2 cents.
Leaving this incase somebody in similar situation might find this helpful.
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