CompuServe Messages

Mike, here is a simple illustration of Frame vs. Field rendering. Let assume that we are rendering a quare of the size 5 pixel that moves from left to right at the rate of 20 pixel per frame. Frame Rendering: Frame 1 Frame 2 00000 00000 11111 11111 00000 00000 11111 11111 00000 00000 Field Rendering: Frame 1 Frame 2 00000 00000 11111 11111 00000 00000 11111 11111 00000 00000 The 0's are pixels on the odd field and 1's are pixels on the even fields. As you can see in the case of frame rendering you will get a "squared" square for each frame but in the latter your square is no longer a square but it has even fields line shifted ten pixels to the right (20 pixel/frame = 10 pixel/field.) After you render in field mode your TGA (or TIFF or any image format) will look just like that and you won't miss anything wherether you render to file or directly to VTR. If you try to display this image as a still frame it will blink like crazy due to the interlace scanning of your video monitor but not to worry, it will look real good after you record all of your frames to tape and play it back at 30 frame/sec. When should we turn on the field rendering? Almost always, if you are rendering anything with motion (no matter how fast or slow) this option should be on for the final rendering. Because of the interlace scanning on the video monitor, frame rendering will introduce a probing effect no matter how slow to motion is ( unless it is less than or equal to 1 pixel per frame!!!) Our eyes are much more sensitive than we thought. Try to render the simple BOUNCE.3DS example file that comes with 3DS both in FRAME and FIELD mode and record both of them back to back you will see the FIELD rendering animation is much smoother. Have fun!!! Tien Nguyen.