RxLaboratory Forum

Hello all!

I'm wondering if anyone can give me pointers on speeding up the performance of my rigs in After Effects. I've tried following general tips and guides for After Effects as a whole, but haven't managed to get the program to run any smoother. I'm willing to bet my main issue is the vast amount of controllers, IK's, and scripting going on all within one comp.

I'm happy to post a project file if that would help. I think my workflow could just use some general improvement. If anyone knows of any guides out there related to performance or workflow feel free to point me in the right direction.

Thanks for any help!

Hi,

Unfortunately, there are a lot of performance issues due to expressions, and there's nothing much which can be done... I know the AE team is working on the expression engine to make it faster, maybe it will be better in later AE updates.

All we can do for now is:
- Limit the definition of the characters, as much as possible.
- Use precomposition extensively, to be able to easily use proxies
- Convert expressions to keyframes once the animation has been made
- Set the display to "draft"....

Also, AE is really faster with pixel layers instead of vectors: try to avoid shape layers and masks, and avoid checking the "continuous rasterize" option on vectors like AI layers

Thanks for the tips, Duduf! I'll certainly give those a shot. I have a sneaking suspicion that my expressions and extensive parenting aren't the most resource efficient so I'll definitely have to find some help there.

Duduf wrote:Also, AE is really faster with pixel layers instead of vectors: try to avoid shape layers and masks, and avoid checking the "continuous rasterize" option on vectors like AI layers

I've been using shape layers as opposed to AI layers to be sure that I don't mess anything up in case I alter the original AI file. I'm a huge sucker for "continuous rasterize" too, so I know that can't be helping >_< If my goal is to preserve quality over performance, is using AI layers with continuous rasterization the best way to go? (I'm willing for it to run a little slower if it looks prettier in the end)

Just as an example, I made 3 rigs for each character in the short I'm creating - one for wide shots, one for mediums, and one for close ups - just so I don't have to precomp and then upscale a full-body rig, or downscale a simpler facial/torso rig.

Thanks again for the help! It's super cool that you're so involved in the community here.

Boffton wrote:If my goal is to preserve quality over performance, is using AI layers with continuous rasterization the best way to go? (I'm willing for it to run a little slower if it looks prettier in the end)

AI with continuous rasterization vs Shape layers: in terms of quality, it's exactly the same result. Anyway, with the scale at 100% or below, turning off continuous rasterization on AI layers will improve performance, without lowering the quality, continuous rasterization improves quality only when scaling up the layers (and maybe with rotations and scaling down, but I don't think it will be noticeable for the human eye )

Boffton wrote:Just as an example, I made 3 rigs for each character in the short I'm creating - one for wide shots, one for mediums, and one for close ups - just so I don't have to precomp and then upscale a full-body rig, or downscale a simpler facial/torso rig.

That's the way to go!