Final Product What You'll Be Creating
The more you get into After Effects, the more you realize how cool it is to bring in stuff from outside the program. This tutorial shows how take a scene from Cinema 4D and bring it over into AE. After Effects is a compositing program and this is a perfect example of how to take a basic animation and add some “after effects“!
Tutorial
Step 1
I’m making this tutorial presuming that the reader has at least some basic knowledge of Cinema 4d so I won’t show you the details. Basicly, you should set up a scene like this. I used MoGraph Text Object with Start and End Fillet Cap’s enabled.
Step 2
Next, we’re going to set up lighting. Create Sky under Objects>Scene. This will serve as HDR light.
Create two new materials in Materials panel by File>New Material.
Save your work.
Step 3
First material will be for text object’s and the second one for skylight.
Open the first one and tick Reflection. Set its texture to Fresnel so it would reflect more around the edges and less in middle. Call the material TEXT.
Step 4
Now the second one. Call it SKY. Untick the Color‘s checkbox and enable Luminance. Set your HDR image as Texture.
Step 5
Now, attach those materials to the corresponding layers. You’ll see that the Sky light makes an ugly texture in background that we don’t need there. To resolve it, Right Click on Sky layer and choose Cinema 4D Tags>Compositing. After, click on that tag and under Tag Properties untick Seen by Camera.
Save.
Step 6
Next, you’ll have to make a new camera and animate it. When making Target Camera, don’t forget to go into its Depth options and untick Use Target Object and if necessary, change Target Distance.
To get more control over camera’s Depth of Field tick in Front Blur and Rear Blur in Depth panel. Change the view so you can see the camera in your viewport. Then start changing the End values for both Front and Rear Blur. As you change those values, you’ll notice changes in camera’s Field of View both in front and rear. Those dark green lines shows which where the blur will start and where it ends. Basicly, everything that’s between them will blur and vice versa.
See the screenshot.
Save.
Step 7
After you render a frame, you’ll see that everything doesn’t look very well. Go to Render>Render Settings. First, select Options and disable Auto Light, then go to Global Illum. and enable it. Set its type to Stochastic.
Save.
Step 8
Now I’ll show you how to render seperate alpha channels for both text objects and a depth map. First, you have to apply the Compositing Tag for both text layers (as in Step 5). Select one of them and open its Object Buffer tab, tick Enable. Do the same with other one except, after ticking Enable, change the Buffer value to 2.
Step 9
Open Render Settings.
First, highlight Antialiasing and select Best quality. Also change Filter to Animation.
Second, highlight Multi-Pass. In Channels pulldown, select Depth, Object Buffer with ID 1 and Object Buffer with ID 2. Change Path as you need.
Third, go to Output and change everything of your choice.
Finally, highlight Save and select a path for the main render. Enable Alpha Channel as well as Compositing Project File and 3D Data which are the most important for integration between Cinema 4D and After Effects. This will aslso export lights from Cinema to After Effects if you need one.
Save.
Now you can render your movie by going to Render>Render to Picture Viewer.
Note: If you decide that you want to render the image with Depth of Field inside Cinema4D, open Effects and add Depth of Field from Post Effects pulldown.
Step 10
Before you open After Effects, there’s one more issue to clear. Cinema 4D has generated an AEC file which essentialy is an After Effects composition but you can’t import it inside After Effects just yet.
You’ll have to open you Cinema 4D directory, then find Exchange Plugins folder and open aftereffects folder in it. After that, basing on your OS and AE version, copy the right folder to you After Effects plug-ins directory. For me it was pc 6.5 because I have PC and After Effects CS4.
Run After Effects.
Step 11
Once in After Effects, go to File>Import>File… and import that AEC file from your main render directory.
Open Cinema 4D Composition. This is how it should look.
Step 12
First, I’ll add background and a vignette. After that, I’ll bring in the exported depth map into composition and create a new Adjustment Layer under it. Call both layer Depth map and Depth Control accordingly and set Depth Control’s TrackMatte to Luma Matte.
Save.
Step 13
Apply Fast Blur to Depth Control and change Blurriness to 15. Tick Repeat Edge Pixels.
Save.
Step 14
Next, you can start adding particles to the scene. Create a new solid and call it Particles_front. Apply Particular to it. To get the emitter in the centre, open Camera‘s transform options and see the values for Point of Interest. Then open Particular’s Emitter pulldown and change Position XY to the values of Point of Interest. In my case, they’re 189 for X and 0 for Y. If necessary, you can do it with Z value too but at the momoent we won’t do it.
Change Emitter Type to Box.
Save.
Step 15
Basically, the idea is to make three layers of particles – one in front, another one in middle and one in back.
As the layer name tells, this’ll be the first one.
Offset Particles_front layer in timeline so at frame 0, particles would be fully generated. Change Emitter Size X to 4000 and Y to 2000.
Lower all the Velocity values to 0. Also, change Particles/sec to 200.
Save.
Step 16
Go to Particle pulldown menu and change Life to 10 and Size to 3. Change Color to #887B58.
Lastly, open Physics>Air>Turbulence Field and change Affect Position to 100.
Now, to stop them from emitting, highlight Particles/sec and position timeline marker to fram 0. Add a new keyframe and offset Particles_front layer 1 frame so that the created keyframe would be at frame -1 in timeline. Next, go to frame 0 and add a keyframe with Particles/sec set to 0.
Step 17
Duplicate Particles_front and rename it to Particles_middle. Change Particular’s Position Z to 600. Also change Emitter Z to 320 for more depth.
You can see particles through Cinema 4D type. That’s why I rendered both alpha channels seperatly. Bring the alpha map for Cinema 4D inside the composition.
Create a black solid underneath this layer and set solid’s TrackMatte to Luma Matte so it would “cut out” the alpha.
Save.
Step 18
Precompose both layers and call the composition Cinema4d_Alpha. Place Cinema4d_Alpha above Particles_middle. Set particle layer’s TrackMatte to Alpha Inverted Matte. Now particles will be seen everywhere but on top of Cinema 4D type.
Save.
Step 19
Duplicate Particles_middle and call it Particles_back. Turn off its TrackMatte. Set particle emitter’s Position Z to 1100. Again, you need an alpha matte. Duplicate the layer with main animation, since it contains alpha channels of both types together, and place it above Particles_back.
Set Particles_back TrackMatte to Alpha Inverted.
Save.
Step 20
Now you’ll have to set up Depth of Field for particles. First, go through all the particle layers and change Render Mode to Full Render + DOF Square (AE).
Also, while going through, open Visibility pulldown for all three particle layers and change Far Vanish to 2200 and Far Start Fade to 1900 so there wouldn’t be so much particles in the scene.
Then open Camera‘s Camera Options. There, change Depth of Field to On. Set Focus Distance to 900 and Aperture to 85.
Step 21
Finally, create a new Adjustment Layer on top of every other layers and call it Colors. Apply Curves for contrast and Noise to it.
See the screenshot.
You’re done.
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By Eddie Bogdanov
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Nice. but i like video tutorial. Help me video
…….
great tut.
realy help full.
another screenshot tutorial :(
nice tut. The video would be good, but this is very helpful none the less. Thanks.
please fix the posts so the entire post doesnt show up in google reader.
i know this wont work but stop asking for videos people. beggars can’t be choosers.
word!
making a tut is al lota work – making a video-tut even more, so –> be more thankful for sharing knowlege !
frieden sei mit euch!
True. There is an image or more for every step so…come on people.
sorry my english because i from Brazil
good tuturial !!!
It´s a shame these people asking (complainning) videos. If you´re beginner, pick up any information you can, it doesn´t matter from where!
exelent,thank you,from argentina
you know what’s really a shame?
the fact that the tuts network now has 2 different tuts from 2 different people on the exact same subject matter.
where are the editors?
if this is how i can easily get $150 from you guys i will go ahead and start rewriting the existing tuts to submit to the other pages and call them my own.
That´s a little harsh…But I understand (and agree) that the topic “integrating between C4D and AE” has been beautifully done by the Ice Cream Tut, but this wasn´t that bad since it actually portrays a cool scene with text and particles.
good tut. i love the seamless integration of 3d into AE.
but, for some reason i can’t import a C4D ‘.AEC’ file into my After Effects. even after following step 10. hmmmm…
Macbook Pro (intel duo core) OSX 10.4.11
AE CS4
C4D version 10
any solutions?
I have the same problem
me too, how do u resolve this please!?
no luck on my end. could be a compatability issue with CS4 and cinema 4d. too bad, i really wanted to take advantage of lighting and animating a full 3d scene in AE.
anybody have any answers? solutions? comments?
Get this plugin http://www.maxon.net/en/downloads/updates-co/updates/plugins.html and put it in to your AE/plugins directory.
That was awesome, just a question what about shadows how import shadows in efter. Can I use the same way or i need to do something more please help me
very basic, but quite cool.
showing good techniques.
hope that it works in maya
For a not english user, the screenshoot tutorial is very usefull.
Muy bueno. Gracias.
Great tut, but tutorials like these I think screen casting is better. My result was quite different on the particles. Thanks a lot anyway!
Very Helpfull ! Thks !
hey …
this tutorial is good..
but if you make a video tutorial si better
(sory for my “good” english)
Keep it up! :D
nice, plug and play
I want to be a brilliant AE artist. But with as little effort on my part as possible. So why no video? I’m sniviling, lazy and ungreatful but just don’t care!!! – If you want a video tutorial why don’t YOU buy the software to do it, learn how to use it and make a video for the rest of us???
you will never get a brilliant ae artist without effort on your part. you have to leave the comfort zone, my dear… ;)
You just derped hardcore, man…
that’s EXACTLY what i was looking for.
so thanks a thousand times !
wow thanks
will read the rest of the tutorial soon, but for now, thanks for the tip on digging the plug in out of the C4D folder, hadn’t had any luck getting any of the links online to load. cheers!
I got stuck at step 10.. How does it work for mac os users? The maps arent located the way as they are on vista.. Pleas someone help?
I tried everything the way you did it as another persons settings and I can not get the file to show in AE as 3d at all. everywhere else ive been says this isnt possible?? but on your tutorial and the other one I was on you guys are doing it. Do you know why maybe its not working for me??
Great tutorial.
Thanks!
Thank you very much for this tutorial!
This was what I was looking for :) Works great (after a lot of “hickups”)
Like it beceause the basic of integration is well explained!
As a basic level user of Cinema 4D I’m a bit confused with the differences in render settings layout and options in Steps 7 – 9. Global Illumination does not exist with those same options and in that order in my version (11.5) and so had to guess a few ticks and options here and there that appeared to be the same..
Alas when importing into After effects although everything seems fine (composition, camera, tiffs etc) the background is black and not transparent like in step 11 even if I click on transparency grid so methinks somewhere in the render settings I have done something wrong yet I cannot figure out what as the instructions above provide no help in understanding the process – which is my only criticism of the tut.
Its a shame as it ultimately means I cannot continue to follow the tutorial after step 11 and see it through
:(
Global Illumination is part of the module pack in the C4D bundle. It happens to be that if you have it installed, but registered, you can still use C4D but you can’t use that particular module. I believe GI is under the Advanced Render module. Don’t quote me on that, though. :)
Hey. In after effects ther is an option to toggle tranparancy grid. click on it and the composition become the way you want.
Thanks for explaining the plug-ins, know one else even acknowledged this step and without it all of this is useless.
so what for do you have to use c4d to create 3d text than transfer it to after effects?
you can do it ery easy in after effects so no nee for c4d
Thanks dude u saved my day
thanks alot, very helpful :)
Brilliant, finally got it… Thank you. Integration works!!
Great guru, u know what the student-strugglers, like me require …thanks…and long live your integrated lessons…
this is a bit outdated. I couldnt get the results on R12
h r u?
sir my cinema 4d project will not be open in after effect plz tell me what i have to do
Thanks for the tutorial, definitely useful to many.
To those having a argument on the video part. I think it’s got to do with usability more than anything. A person may find it a bit tedious vertically scrolling the page, especially, when the page is long (Tutorial + comments = tiny scroll bar + long scroll). Add to it, when you accidentally miss a step, you have the user desperately scrolling the page.
The owners of the site could introduce a slide-show mode to such tutorials, where in a person can go from one part to another in a convenient manner without having to scroll up and down.
Just my 2 cents. Thanks.
Thank you for your tutorial, especially the part about plugins. CONGRATULATIONS
Just for the record I like tutorials you read
very very helpful tutorial. i have a qustion. can i open this fil into after and 3d rotation by aftereffects camera?
if you tell me by email i thank you