Flythrough Resolution is terrible

[Anonymous]

I am trying to get a fly through of a project to play clearly. It seems like whatever I do, the 3d animation is blurry. I add a ton of frames between cameras, adjust the frame rate, change the size of the 3D window, etc. Nothing I change seems to make the animation video any clearer. I have some screen shots of the video attached.

Any help with this issue would be greatly appreciated.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Clarity is a combination of enough pixels, and not too much compression. The images you posted look insanely compressed. What video format did you save with and with what quality setting?

[Anonymous]

I saved this using Document>Creative Imaging>Create Fly-Through and saving it as an .mp4 file. I do not know where the settings for compression and quality settings are for output through ArchiCAD. There are only two formats for video .mp4 and .wmv but no compression settings or anything else that I can find through the Create Fly-Through dialog or the camera settings. Are the settings for video output somewhere else? I also tried adjusting some of the settings in the PhotoRendering Settings, but those don't seem to have any affect either.

Thanks,

[Karl Ottenstein]

You're right. I can't see any compression options, even when choosing the option to save individual frames as JPEG. This dialog doesn't look like it has been updated in many years, the last time I looked at it...

Try saving the individual frames as PNG or TIFF files - and while testing, don't save "All Frames" but rather a frame range - enough to generate a second or two of final video. Open a few frames to confirm that they are crisp. Depending on your platform and the software you have available - use whatever video editor you have (old QuickTime Pro, iMovie/Final Cut, Microsoft's current thing, shareware, etc) to convert the frames into a video file. In your video program, you can then have control over the compression level.

[Anonymous]

Thanks Karl,

I used to save the individual frames from Artlantis as you described, but that was some time ago at a different firm that was on Macs. That method worked fairly simply with Quicktime Pro to make the animation. The firm I am at now works solely with windows machines, and I have not found a good solution for stitching together the individual frames yet, but I'll continue to look because the individual frames are clear. I think Graphisoft has moved away from developing the fly-through because BIMx has all but replaced it but I find BIMx very time consuming to work with BIMx to get the materials to look just right, so it was easier to just create the fly-through with the finishes looking close in openGL.

Thanks for taking the time to look at this issue and for your comments. I'll keep searching for a good video editor in the meantime.

Thanks,

[Lingwisyer]

Do you have access to the Adobe Suite? You can use AfterEffects and/or Premier to compile the frames. If your office does lots of flythroughs, AfterEffects might be moreuseful as you can use it to "photoshop" your video.



Ling.