CompuServe Messages

Can anyone tell me why the following is happening? 1. I have rendered sections of animations separately in 3ds and then joined them in ani pro. The problem is that when I play the joined FLC, a very brief shift in palette occurs before the first frame of the second section. – Both sections were rendered with the same meshes and the same materials. If the palettes change throughout the combined (joined) flicks, you'll get the scatter. One way to curb this is to do some palette fitting. You can refer to what this is all about in the ANI telecourse files in ACAD forum section 7. The basic gist of palette fitting is this; Take a census of the most popular colors used in each individual FLC, and free up a portion of each flic's palette to accomodate each other. ANI has 256 colors, so 126 colors per flic would be a straightforward 50/50 approach for two flics. 50/50 isn't always the best ratio… it depends on how many colors each flic uses. Using the SQUEEZE and UNUSED COLORS options in PALETTE panel, you can find out how many colors the flic needs and uses, and how much each can sacrifice for a reasonable composite. Palette control in 3DS is very powerful for continuous renderings, but the palettes of seperate renderings are typically calculated on a per-rendering basis. There are ways to use custom palettes in 3DS, once you've taken the palette file from one animation in ANI (it can create palette files) and used it for future renderings. This has been my experience. You might also pass this question on to MARK McGRAW (faculty for ANI1 telecourse. I think Palette fitting was discussed in ANI1-B or ANI1-C. Good luck. -dave