Adobe AFTER EFFECTS CS3 PROFESSIONAL User Manual page 594

OpenGL in After Effects supports the following features:
• Shadows, except point light shadows (Colored shadows appear gray.)
• Lights (eight maximum)
• Masks
• Alpha channels
• Track mattes
• Intersecting layers
• Transformations for 2D and 3D layers
• GPU-accelerated effects, including Alpha Levels, Bevel Alpha, Box Blur, Brightness & Contrast, Channel Blur,
Color Balance, Color Balance (HLS), Curves, Directional Blur, Drop Shadow, Fast Blur, Find Edges, Gaussian Blur,
Hue/Saturation, Invert, Noise, Radial Blur, Ramp, Sharpen, and Tint.
• All blending modes except Dissolve and Dancing Dissolve
• Metal property settings for 3D layers
• Cone feather settings for light layers
• 2D motion blur
• Adjustment layers
• Anti-aliasing
Important: Use caution when enabling the OpenGL renderer in a network rendering environment. Inconsistencies may
arise if the sets of features supported by the OpenGL cards in the network aren't the same.
When OpenGL does not support a feature, it simply renders without using that feature. For example, if your layers
contain shadows and your OpenGL hardware does not support shadows, the output will not contain shadows.
• To enable OpenGL for rendering final output, click the underlined text next to Render Settings in the Render
Queue panel, and select Use OpenGL Renderer.
• To enable OpenGL for rendering previews, choose Edit > Preferences > Previews (Windows) or After Effects >
Preferences > Previews (Mac OS), and select Enable OpenGL.
• To see what features your OpenGL card supports, choose Edit > Preferences > Previews (Windows) or After
Effects > Preferences > Previews (Mac OS), and click OpenGL Info.
• To modify the amount of texture memory, choose Edit > Preferences > Previews (Windows) or After Effects >
Preferences > Previews (Mac OS), click OpenGL Info, and enter a value for Texture Memory of no more than 80%
of the installed video RAM (VRAM) on your video card.
Note: Mac OS provides the total amount of Texture Memory available on the display card in the OpenGL Info panel;
Windows does not.
See also
"Work with render settings" on page 591
"Preview video and audio" on page 124
AFTER EFFECTS CS3 588
User Guide