Need help with resolutions, 2K vs 4K

[Wunderlich]

Hello TVPaint community!

First time poster and TVPaint user here so be gentle
I have a few questions about which recommended resolutions we should work in and how will it effect the output down the production line.
I am new to TVPaint and have worked previously with Toon Boom and other vector based software.

The situation is as follows:
We are about to start production on a feature film and we are currently trying to figure out if we should work in a 2K or 4K.
We have some people in our team saying that 4K is a waste of time and resources and that we should just focus on working in 2K.
I personally feel that it would be shame not to have the source project in 4K and export it to to 2K.
I am confident our systems will handle it, 16gb of RAM, i5 processors and a 1TB drive @ 7200 RPM and 15TB of server storage, and working with proxy's.

Now I have been reading up on the whole 2K vs 4k Digital Cinema debate and I know people wont see the difference after a certain amount of distance, etc, etc and that the whole 4K resolution is marketing sham and its about frame rate and bitrate rate, etc etc...

But it still somehow bothers me knowing that the industry is now pushing for this whole 4K Home Cinema experience, and when the film will be done in 2 years that we wont be able to experience the movie natively in 4K on home screens and displays some time down the line.
The 2K camp believes that it wont matter because up-scaling will solve this problem or that we just render the 2K source at twice the size.
Now correct me if i'm wrong but up-scaling bitmaps from 2K to 4K will cause artifacts, jaggies or other distortions to the animators lines and background artist's scenes? Isnt the 'rule' working with bitmaps always to go from large resolutions down to smaller ones?

So in summary what would be a better situation:
Have all source material (animation & backgrounds) in resolutions 4K and up?
Or just have all our source in 2K and believe in up-scaling and that we can re-export the 2K frames from TVPaint to 4K?

Thank you for your time and look forward to hearing from you!
W.

Work Environment:
Windows 7 64bit
TVPaint 10 Pro 64 bit

Workstations:
Core-i5-3570-3.4GHz,
16gb DDR3 1333Mhz RAM,
GT 640 video card 2GB
1TB drive

[ZigOtto]

welcome Wund,

in my opinion, it depends on your graphic style, (tiny details, textures, ...),
but in 2D art, I think 2K is fully satisfying in 99% of the cases.

can you post a sample of the design of your feature film, so we can have a better idea ?

[Wunderlich]

Hiya ZigOtto,

Thanks for your response. At this point we are still working on pre-production, hammering out model sheets, and we are going to start doing some animation test the coming weeks. So i don't have any final frames to show atm. I am also at this point not ready to reveal the project but I will do later down the line.

What I can tell you is that we will be going for a 'rough line' and hopefully end with something that looks like the old Disney Xerox style.
All the animation drawings and backgrounds will be done on Cintiq's and not scanned from paper.

W.

[Paul Fierlinger]

While I was reading your post I was already thinking of my response, which turned out to be exactly what ZigO wrote. My additional suggestion is to make a comparison test, which any decent finishing lab should help you with for free, if there is genuine probability that they would be awarded the final job.

My personal opinion is that for 2D, by which I mean flat art and not 2&1/2 D, it will make little difference, whereas 3D productions can get pretty close to live action film (isn't that what they want after all?) and there you might see a benefit from 4K.

TVP can perhaps handle 4K in pencil test stage but again, I think you should conduct a few tests; simulate a scene about 30 seconds long with many color layers and a camera move (and sound, of course, perhaps 2 or 3 layers) and see how the opaquing goes -- I doubt anything will run in real time and I believe colorists should be able to playback their work in real time too.

For editing I think you will always need to down res to 720p, otherwise you could go through hell within your NLE and why put yourself through that? Now if converting a scene from 4k to 720p or 2K is going to make a big difference in rendering time. Make some tests and see if it's worth it (using 4K). The same goes for KeyFraming and rendering other effects, you should test if there will be a difference between 2K and 4K.

I've made a feature film with TVP and Vegas Pro as my NLE and once I saw it projected on an iMAX screen at the DigiPen school in Seattle and was stunned at how pure my 1080p lines looked even standing close to the screen. I saw no change from what I saw on my computer.

I hope you are not planning on 35 mm filmout -- it's expensive and not worth a dime.

[slowtiger]

I think 2K is a good choice for the style you described - it's my preferred style as well. Have a look at the attached image, perhaps zoom in and see how broad the line is - it covers up to 9 pixels. Put this line on a BG and nobody will ever complain about not enough sharpness.

The thing with 4K is that people will not have a TV set of double width. Instead their view will cover the same angle as before. This diagram nicely demonstrates the viewing distance which would be necessary to really spot a difference between 2K and 4K: http://www.hartware.de/media/reviews/14 ... rt_big.png - you'd have to be so close that the screen exceeds your field of vision.

So even when a 2K film is shown on 4K eqipment only somebody with his nose touching the screen would notice - and I doubt even that, because this is animation, drawn images, not live action.

(BTW nive avatar. Not many people remember Klaus Wunderlich!)

[Wunderlich]

Hiya Paul & Slowtiger,

Thanks a lot for you responses. Its put some fears of quality loss into perspective.
It was something I was always worried about, coming from a 3D and gamer generation that's been obsessed with pixels.

That was also another question I had about TVPaint, how heavy the files would get with multiple layers and hogg resources. I have heard you can link to certain files outside of TVPaint (audio, storyboards in avi? ) to lighten the load?

As for editing we would still need to have the sequences go through compositing first and see how that handles at 2K. Or at least proxy the sequences and background art. Would you still recommend having the background art at least at higher resolutions than the output, in case we decide to do small zoom ins or have layers move towards the camera?

The film out will be most likely be a DCP, and I don't think we will print it in 35mm anymore. The company here just went belly up a few months ago.

@Tiger
Cheers for the sample, our lines will look a bit like yours, probably a bit rougher depending on the style we go for with minimum to no cleanup.

I just hope that a few years down the line from now, when I'm sitting in front of my 4K Ultra HD screen (yes I still believe the hype) wondering how our film would have looked at native 4K resolution......

BTW Klaus is the man! I only discovered the genius a few years ago

[Paul Fierlinger]

I work on projects set to 1080p but this means when I start a new project I choose to open the TAB "Project with Camera" and add 50% to the format for extra space to tilt the camera without running out of canvas, which comes to 2889 x 1620.
But I export my AVIs for editing purposes at 720p.

Using these sizes I have never had any problems. On the rare occasions when I need to make a long zoom into a small area and want to have good resolution to animate down there, I might add 300% or 400% for a camera move, but I still think of my project as 1080p and maintain a 1080p view in my camera's viewfinder (aka Passepartout). There is no need to have all my scenes set to these extremes just because I will use it once or twice.

Will you have someone on your team with TVPaint experience or will everyone have to start off by learning on the go with no one available within earshot for guidance?

[slowtiger]

BG art should be planned in storyboard so it isn't created in too large dimensions. However, doing it at about 125% doesn't hurt and still allows for zooms if the director changes her mind later. You can keep a large dimension file with just the BG separately and work with a scaled-down version in the scenes in TVP easily. This is definitely recommended for a larger project, because you will need separate servers and a good backup solution.

TVP is able to handle really large files. In the beginning I was doing things not really in the best way, so I ended up with a file of nearly 10 GB! However, TVP was still able to open it, although I only had 1,5 GB RAM at hat time, and I could animate as usual in it. Only opening and saving took more than 10 minutes (depends on drive speed).

I'm one of those who usually does camera work outside of TVP, so I rarely work in project files larger than 2K. I recommend to keep the number of camera files to a minimum, and also limit the number of layers in each file especially when you hand them out to animators. You will want to keep line art and coloring separately, both for animation and BG art, but it's not necessary to really do all the work in only one file which travels between departments. For animators, a layout or a baked version of the BG (merged into one layer) will suffice. It's easy enough to combine assets later, either in TVP or any compositing software.

********
If you already like my line, please keep me informed about job opportunities! Is there a studio or project webpage where I can look up more info?

[Wunderlich]

@Paul
We wil be doing most of the camera work in AE so I dont think we will be using the Project With Camera setting.
Our senior animators have some experience with TVPAint and TVPaint has promised us a 2 day introduction course which we will do when the rest of our team is assembled.

@Slowtiger
Your solution of working with a file 125% of the native resolution sounds like a good solution. We will have moments when we do decide to zoom in.
We want to go for a 16:9 aspect ratio so our final render wil be at 2048 x 1152.
And (if my math serves me right) we should have all our source material and sequences to be at least 2560x1440?

Does this sound like a good plan?


-------------------------
As for job opportunity we don't have a page up yet, ill have to talk to our producers to see how they want to handle that. Will keep you posted.

[slowtiger]

No, it's not necessary to do that with all material - only with stuff which might get zoomed in later, although the storyboard says different. (An animation director should not waste ressources.)