Image post-production for all needs and budgets

Within image post-production, an area that evolves very quickly, several important elements must be taken into account such as 3D programs, digital animation cards, painting programs, effect generators, and without a doubt the most significant complement of the last two years, non-linear editing. This article aims to show the most recognized options in the market, either for their quality, cost or simply for their versatility in any post-production room.

Given the wide range of 3D programs, we will only limit ourselves to talking about the most popular ones. Before choosing the most convenient program it is necessary to identify certain important parameters: how much volume of animation we are going to handle, what is the quality that is going to be offered, what platform is used and finally and what hurts the most, what would be the range to invest.

All programs in essence allow you to model 3D objects, texture them, move them, deform them, make them a complete metamorphosis, disappear them, and so on. However, some programs like Alias are distinguished by their friendly and practical modeler, since it uses splines instead of polygons, handles lights and certain organic effects with a crushing reality. It also has effects of explosions, atomization, dust and fog, among others, providing the possibility of recreating very organic scenes. If the kinematics inverse function is added to the above, the result of an animation is smooth and fluid. The handling of textures is excellent for its easy application and use, giving the opportunity to reflect the object anywhere in the scene creating great realism.

Other programs that are welcomed in the market and can become economical and, why not, competitive solutions at the production level are: Softimage, which has its platform on Mac, Power PC, DEC Alpha and Silicon; 3D Studio, which works on IBM PCs and Alpha Station; Wave-front, with its Silicon platform, and Ligtwave, which works on Amiga, Silicon, IBM PC, Alpha Station. The latter maintains platform crossing, which is ideal to enable the simultaneous work of many stations, sharing texture and graphic files. Additionally you could have slow stations for modeling and fast stations such as alpha for rendering. With this philosophy, companies such as Amblin Images, producer of the North American program SEA QUEST, and Foundation Images, producer of BABILONIA 5, demonstrate that Ligtwave is a versatile program with which quality results are achieved at a reasonable cost.

We could not downplay the importance of painting programs, which manage to fix a shot without having to redo it causing unnecessary delays and non-compliance. These programs really do magic, removing or putting details to a sequence of graphics, but despite their great versatility, they are slow and their handling is manual and wasteful. Each platform has its star program: in Silicon we could not fail to mention the Aurora Liberty, which has classic tools of any painting program and also includes 2D animation.

The Painter de la Fractal Desing is for PC and Mac platform, being a virtual painting program, very wide in its range of tools and digital effects such as oil and watercolor, with which any graphic artist is satisfied. It also has a 2D animation module.

It is also worth mentioning in Softimage the Toonz program, which is a novel program to generate traditional animation of acetates, but on the computer and, finally, the ImageFX on amiga platform, which is an excellent program to retouch and print digital effects to the graphic, but which lacks the 2D animation module.

As for non-linear systems for post-production, their greatest virtue is to allow the edition to be seen before printing on tape to fix any flaws in it; remove graphics, scenes, titles, with which the final result is very close to the satisfaction of the producer.

Before opting for any of these systems you have to define the budget, quality, format, compression, what complements it includes (character generator, painting program) or if it is only for post-production of commercials, models and / or programs for television. Already with this defined we go to the PC PLATFORMS IBM, MAC, Amiga, Silicon, DEC Alpha. Among the most accepted should include the Avid, which does not have much resolution because its compression is 12 to 1, although its software is quite intelligent and its hard drives are physically resistant – they can fall to the floor or extract in the middle of editing with the computer on without your data suffering any setback. It has databases for locating and selecting clips and is ideal for organizing commercial cakes.

The Media 100 improves in quality over the previous one, since its interface is good and the software handles layers of video, but as in the Avid, you have to configure the computer to the need you have: if you want to generate characters or work with a certain video format, etc. The Video Cube, from Imix, is one of the first options that were on sale and therefore may be one of the best known in Latin America. However, its aesthetic design outperforms its computing interface.

The Flyer, from Newtek, is very widespread and despite being one of the cheapest on the market is considered complete, since as it is another additional function of the Video Toaster, complemented with a character generator, a 3D program, painting program and a not so high compression, good quality results are achieved (2:1 compression equivalent to D1 format). In this system the most important thing is not the effects, but its ability to perform them in real time, which greatly speeds up editing. We can not leave aside the Adobe Premier, which has an unusual feature in this medium, works on several platforms (Windows, MAC OS) and accommodates the budget and quality desired by many. This freedom makes a user have one or more versions and, as all their files are compatible, you can make models of your edition in low quality and make your final product with a higher parameter, sharing graphics files or sequences of effects. The only drawback of Adobe Premier is the time it takes for the effects (difficulty related to the hardware that is used, since the higher the processor speed it will take less time to generate them for editing).

In relation to the cards for animation editing, the leadership in quality is the Diskus, 30 or 60 seconds without compression of Abekas, which, as its name says, has no compression. It is widely used for the download of Alias, it allows to select by order the inputs and outputs according to the needs of the user, but given its capacity, the largest attributable application is to download and assemble animated commercials.

In the PAR version of the Digital we already find 4:1 compression, but with greater capacity depending on the volume of the hard drive.

Digital effect generators are versatile, useful and above all fast when it comes to using them, because with them you can work animations with still titles, change background colors, unify backgrounds and generate movement, among others. One drawback: its high cost. The most recognized in this field are: the Ado, the Abekas, the Sony and the Grass Valley, which really improve a shot in a short time, giving the option to locate several video shots on the same screen, change background or video colors, correct the color, crop, compress, enlarge or use role-playing page effects in real-time video, without the image suffering any deformation Trinity is considered Cinderella when compared to the big ones. It consists of an IBM PC computer on which the software is installed, and a series of cards that generate the effects. It works with non-linear systems and with economic switchers, being a good alternative to complement a room at a low cost and with an acceptable performance.