Supported File Formats

Extensions Image Format Notes
iff, or no extension Nothing Real native No *
nri Nothing Real icon (icons for the 2.X GUI) No  
iff Alias/Wavefront Maya (licensed from Nothing Real) No *
als, alias, pix Alias/Wavefront Alias Yes  
alsz Alias/Wavefront Alias Z buffer Yes  
avi Microsoft's video file format.   *
bmp,dib BMP Yes  
ct, ct16, mray Mental Ray No  
cin Kodak Cineon Yes *
dpx (read only) DPX reader courtesy of Michael Jonas, Das Werk Gmbh. No  
.gif (read only) GIF No  
jpeg, jpg jfif JPEG Yes *
pbm, ppm, pnm, pgm PBM Yes  
pic Softimage Yes  
png PNG No  
QuickTime Apple's video file format   *
rgb, sgi, bw, raw, sgiraw SGI No *
rla Alias/Wavefront RLA (supports Z buffer) No *
rpf RLA Rich Pixel Format. Use this type when saving rla files with Z depth to be read into After Effects. Make sure the file extension is still .rla, but set the format to .rpf. No *
sfx, sidefx, prism Side Effects Yes  
tdi Alias/Wavefront Explore format (identical to .iff) No  
tdx Alias/Wavefront Explore Tiled Texture Map No  
tga Targa Yes  
tif, tiff TIFF Yes *
xpm XPM    
yuv,qnt, qtl, pal YUV/Abekas/Quantel Yes *

 

Extensions Notes
iff The Nothing Real .iff format is not the same as the Amiga format with the same extension, although they share certain structural similarities. The NR .iff format is licensed to Alias/Wavefront for use in their Maya product, which means Shake is ideally suited to work with Maya. Since Shake deals with this format internally, you will get the best performance by maintaining your intermediate images in this format as well. It can be 8-, 16, or 32-bits per channel, as well as maintain logarithmic information, alpha, and Z channels. Currently, not many packages support this format explicitly, but if the package supports the old TDI (.tdi) format, it will work with .iff as well, as, for example, is the case with Interactive Effect's Amazon 3D Paint.

There is also a free plugin for Photoshop and GIMP for .iff files. It can be found on Alias/Wavefront's site:

http://www.aliaswavefront.com/assistant_online/entertain/maya/library/plug_ins/index.html


cin
Shake works with images bottomup, meaning 0,0 is at the bottom left corner. The Cineon and Tif formats allow you to write them either bottomup or topdown. Because of Shake's bottomup nature, you will quadruple the I/O time (actual render time remains the same) when dealing with topdown Cineon or Tif files. You can set which way you want Shake to write the images - reading either way is no problem, except for the speed hit. You place this in a .h file.

Add these lines to the include/nreal.h file, or in your own .h file in your startup Directory (see Customizing Shake for more information on setting up your own .h files). We recommend placing it in your own .h file, as the nreal.h file will get overwritten at the next release.
script.cineonTopDown = 1; 
script.tiffTopDown = 1;

You can also set environment variables in your .cshrc (or .tcshrc or whatever):

setenv NR_CINEON_TOPDOWN 
setenv NR_TIFF_TOPDOWN

Setting these variables forces Shake into topdown. mode.

By default, Cineon and Tifs are set to the slower topdown., as there are many other software products which do not recognize a bottomup image. If you write a bottomup and read it into another package and it upside down in that package, you have four choices:

-Reset the TopDown switch/environment variable, and re-save the image in Shake
-Flip the image in Shake before saving it
-Flip the image in the other software
-Call up the other vendor and request they properly support the file formats in question

jpeg, jpg jfif

You can set the quality level in the FileOut, as well as determine which channels are present in the file.

.avi, .mov

The QuickTime format is available on the NT only. Avi's are written through QuickTime. If you select either as your output format, you have 3 additional options:

  • codec - popup menu with a list of all available compressors
  • compressQuality - 0-1. A high value sets high quality and a larger file size.
  • framesPerSecond - this gets embedded in the QT file.

rgb, sgi, bw, raw, sgiraw You have the option to set which channels are saved into the output file.
rla, rpf Adobe's After Effects and AutoDesk's 3D Studio Max do not properly support the original Wavefront specifications for the rla file concerning the Z channel. Therefore, you have to explicitly write the image in a specific format, the rpf (Rich Pixel Format) in the FileOut but use the .rla file extension in the file name, or else these packages will not recognize the extension.

tif, tiff Photoshop has a bug that trashes 16-bit tif images if they are big endian (e.g., created on IRIX) and read on a little endian machine (e.g. NT). We have added an environment variable to write little endian images that will be read properly by Photoshop. This only applies in the case of images written by IRIX and read on NT.

setenv NR_LITTLEENDIAN_TIFF

yuv,qnt, qtl, pal You have the choice to write out in NTSC or PAL resolution, or 1920x1080 4:2:2 8-bit.