Vector Sized for Zoom

Report · Feb 15, 2022

Hey,

I'm currently putting together a large scene with multiple characters and a detailed background all created in AI and put together in CH (I'm not sure if this is the best way, or if I should really animate each character separately and then bring them one by one into AE, but that's a separate question.) I want to be able to zoom in on the characters' faces when they talk, etc.(i.e. filling a 1920x1080 screen) with the scene showing in the background, so I've sized my scene background vector files as large as they can possibly go and set the raster effect to 300 dpi, but understandably, this is slowing things down drastically. How large does a vector file actually need to be to retain sharpness when zoomed in? I saw an option somewhere about importing the file at 400%, but I can't seem to find it again and I'm not even sure that that's applicable in my case. This seems like a simple question, but I haven't found it yet on the forum, so I apologize if it's been asked before.

I plan on using the camera to zoom so that the characters stay at the same size/position relative to the scene and each other. I don't know if that affects my question.

Thanks for any help!

Report · Feb 15, 2022

I don't "know" the exact rules, but I often create 6000x6000 illustrator files. I don't use 400% or anything like that. I just assume CH will be smart enough to render the vector artwork into pixel artwork at the resolution of the screen. When using Transform to zoom in, I never had any problems. It is an interesting question whether camera zoom re-renders the artwork from vector to pixels based on the current camera distance? Do you need 400% because you want to do a camera zoom of 400%? Does CH work it out automatically? And then what about a panning zoom in? Does it rerender at every distance? I doubt it!

You can of course experiment (fastest way to get an answer I suspect - try a few different files and different transforms and different camera zooms). It would be great to know the answer. I certainly don't!

Personally, I usually compose scenes completely in CH with multiple characters because I can pose characters with respect to the scene more easily. But I know other people use After Effects for that. I saw some recent work that did things like background blurs and glow that was much easier doing it outside CH by having separate layers (they blurred the background layer to add a feeling of depth). It looked really good! They also added color adjustments to the character to match the location background closer. I think it depends on the overall effects you want to achieve.

Report · Feb 15, 2022

Thanks! I guess I'll continue to experiment. I'd really love to size this down because it's crashing my computer at the moment. If I see a downgrade in quality using the camera zoom, I'll update here (and vice versa).

Report · Feb 16, 2022

@alank99101739 I just found this under the how-to section dealing with importing from Adobe Animate:

Illustrator (vector artwork) rasterization

Use the Resolution property in the Puppet section of the Properties panel to control the maximum quality of the vector artwork when it is rasterized. The default is set to 200%. It can be increased to up to 400%. Reduce it to a draft (50%) or low (100%) resolution if scaling down and to preserve more memory.

Note:

Scenes sent through Dynamic Link to After Effects, Premiere Pro, or Adobe Media Encoder are rasterized. If you want to scale up the footage in those other applications, use a larger scene size in Character Animator to retain details.