The key to good project management is workflow, and also to ensure that all your pieces and parts will all come together in the final assembly. Design is no different.
This tutorial deals with some more advanced compositing techniques, and hopefully after watching the first tutorial, you’ll have a good grasp of the basics and be ready to dive into this 3 video tutorial featuring advanced compositing using tags, multi-pass renders, and expressions in After Effects.
This tutorial is Day 2 in a series – Go to Day 1
Before you hit ‘play’ there are a few points I want to make clear:
One thing I’m considering is to do an entire project from beginning to end – for example, a ‘show open’ for CGTuts+ screen casts. It would take you from beginning to end, giving some of you a taste of what it means to do this professionally. If that’s something that sounds interesting, let me know. It would definitely be multi-part.
Final Effect Preview
Video 1
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
Video 2
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
Video 3
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Note: click the ‘Monitor’ icon to view tutorial in full-screen HD.
Start at the beginning – Day 1
This tutorial is Day 2 in a series – Go to Day 1
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By Harrison Ambs
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have looked forward to this one, man! Gonna watch it right away.
“Apparently I didn’t pay much attention to my note. You’ll see (sorry f1a5h84ck, I tried).”
Man, I really appreciate that! Thanks anyway! :) I found your tutorial extremely useful. Thank you.
“One thing I’m considering is to do an entire project from beginning to end – for example, a ‘show open’ for CGTuts+ screen casts.”
Yes, it sounds interesting, Harrison. I think that’s a great idea. May be some sort of news program pacckage? I mean the whole stuff: the open, the transition element, the lowerthird, loopable bg, etc. And we need more AE integration. Not simple camera export and adding some particles in AE. More info about different obejcts matte export, multi-pass export and working with multi-pass in AE… Something like that.
Oh…my…..
Dude, that’s at least a month’s worth of work. And you want me to screen cast that? Don’t you go outside? (lol) If I do something like that, it will be an epic multi-parter. And I’ll have to check with Kaleb to see if it’s cool for me to use Envato’s logo in one of these.
I’ll keep that in mind, but I’d like to hear what everyone else thinks.
Maaan, I’ve done such package in four days… But I wont show you the result.. LOl.. :)
Seriously, it’s a plenty of work, of course. And probably you don’t have to do such project. All we need is cool techniques, that makes our work easier and more interesting.
May be we should try to find some videos, that looks great and probably you can explain how to do such things in C4D and AE?
Sounds like a good tutorial series
I’d hit that
thanks for the tutorials, I hope you continue doing many more.greeting from Argentina.
Sorry about my English.
You can upload tutos create Motion Graphic in website: http://www.giantoctopus.com? broadcast projects very nice.
Thanks
Very informative and deep tutorial! But you talked to slow, I had to watch it in double speed ;)
Seriosly, since I had problems to render out “clean” motionvector and normal passes, I would like to see how you render out this stuff and use it in AE.
Also avoiding the halo effect from too much Dof you mentioned would be good to know. Since I am an AE geek and I knew all the stuff you explained in AE I would rather see some more 3D design tips form you than a “boring” expression I already knew – but thats probably just my opinion
Thanks for putting the time and effort into the tutorial. I wish you would structure you lessons in a more rigid manner. I felt confused at points because you would sometimes go off on a tangent when all that was required was 3 words, or I never got an overall sense of what we were working towards. I just watched and finally understood that you wanted to create a broadcast piece.
Is there a better way to break down your lessons?
Yeah sure, I could outline what it is I’m going to show you how to make, in addition to the techniques involved. That’s a really good tip, your parents named you well.
Thanks for this tutorial I learnt allot, I would love to see you go over the materials and show us how to make some cool ones along with what everything does.
Keep it up
This is a very useful tutorial, thanks!
http://www.mushtools.com | resources for designers
That was brilliant.
Thanks
Thanks for the in-depth tutorial.
I learned a whole lot!!
//Klas
I’m new to Cinema 4D and i’ve been scouring the internet for a tutorial of this quality. There’s a lot out there but the way you explained the workflow between C4D and AE was very helpful and has already taken my motion design to a higher standard. Look forward to the next tutorial.
hey man very cool technick
I break my head by trying to export from C4D to after effects
but it will take as a 2D. saw wath verzion of Cinema 4D are you using?
thanks alot it help me alot
Cheers.
Great tutorial Harrison. I can not wait to see some more of your advanced tutorials for Cinema 4D.
great tut
maybe in another tutorial you do about ..How export/render a transparet or glass material to AE…..like in your project for Q13FOXNEWS …example http://i35.tinypic.com/fd4iro.jpg
Thanks for the best tutorial I have seen on the net. I learned shed loads. What I would love to know is how you achieve the glorious light shininess to all your excellent work. If you are planning more tutorials I think this would be a great topic. Thanks again. Andy
awesome tuts man!! and thanks for the possible downloading!!
Hi! Thank you for the tutorials! Though I haven’t tried out myself, simply by looking at them is exciting enough! I did a project using MAYA to model, animate and rendered out and then do compositing and some effects in AE which was so hard. Now I can play with Cinema 4D and AE which would much easier! This also helps with my thesis project too.
As far as I’m aware, you can do compositing like I demonstrated in Maya. It’s been a long time since I used that program (version 6, I’m ancient); but it’ll always hold a soft spot for me since I cut my teeth in 3D on that program.
It should have a way of exporting a file for importing into AE. I’d be extremely surprised if it didn’t, considering how much it’s used in the Movie and Television industries for 3D work.
this is one of hell great tutorial buddy
i get a lot of new things after watch your in-depth tutorial
cant wait to see another incoming tutorials from you
-nervian-
Wow! Great tutorial! Very informative. I had to go back to re-watch the section on turning on DoF in CD4 though. That flew by a little to fast.
And using separate null to isolate Rotation and Move is brilliant. That’ll make my life a lot easier.
Thanks!
thanks! good tutorial !
hey thanks for the tutorial it help me allot saw can you export an animation
to after effects from C4D? saw in cinema 4d how do you group the layers?
saw they all move together as an animation? that is wath Im trying to do
but thanks keep up the good work
cheers.
Great tuts man…. been searching for a while for an explanation like this… finally keep up the good work.. and keep them coming along that line… i’m sure there’s tons more to learn
GREEAAAT TUTORIAL !! :-) Thanks a lot for this very informative and accurate work you did ! :-)
I have 2 questions, hope you’ll have the opportunity to give them an answer :
1/ About the Lens Blur fx in AE :
In Video 2 , you point at the ugly outlines this effect may provoke around the text, when the intensity of the blur is increased. You say you could come back to this problem in another tutorial.
I’d be VEEERRRY interested by the ways you can avoid these ugly outlines ! :-)
I’ve observed that changing the blur intensity from 15% (by default) to 20% is enough to create these bad outlines… It seems we don’t have so much choice to increase the blur !! :-/
2/ About the window Interpret Alpha, in AE :
I observed you choose the 2nd option (“Straight Alpha”) to import your sequences in AE (except for the circle Matte).
In a former work I did, I had to import such a simple text from C4D to AE, but I couldn’t get rid of black outlines around the letters, whether I choose one or another option in the “Interpret Alpha” window (Straight alpha, white color, black color etc…) :-(
Have your already encountered such a problem ? Would it come from a strong setting in C4D ??
Thank you a lot for everything ! :-)
Hey, 2 e’s and 3 a’s; sweet deal!
1: I will be getting into that, but it’s more of an AE thing than a C4D thing, so it probably won’t be on CGTuts+, most likely AETuts, or maybe in a future project where I use DOF. I’ll try to make sure to reference it in a future tut. It’s not really something you can ‘fix’ just alleviate. It’s complicated.
2: Ah, Premult vs. Straight. Yeah, I’ll do a ‘shorty tut’ on that in the future. I’m currently working on an epic 3-parter, I’ll put that down on the docket next.
Incidentally you look a frighteningly amount like a friend of mine from high school. I know it’s not you; but it’s funny none-the-less.
Great work….. been searching for such indept tutorial… got a lot of answers .. guess your style is my style… looking forward for new tutorials
Thanks a lot for this Tut m8.
I’m originally an AE user and I have been looking into expanding my knowledge by looking into 3D applications because obviously the 3D options in AE are very limited.
I’ve only been doing this for like 2 days now so, in advance, if I’m asking for the obvious I’m sorry :)
After watching these tutorials combined with some VideoCopilot stuff and some random video stuff I made this little videoclip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3BmmJhNFhI
Now I ran into 2 problems.
The first is the matter that I can’t figure out how to get the audio that is in the movieclip inside the video to export. The way I set it up is by creating a material with the video as the texture. And then rendering the whole thing to a quicktime movie instead of seperate images. I’ve also tried putting a mic in the scene to see if that would help but again no luck. I’ve been searching around the web for a bit but I couldn’t find an answer anywhere so I’m starting to worry that it isn’t possible?
Obviously you can put the sound in AE but if you make a scene like this with a lot of movieclips things could get rather complicated.
The second thing I noticed when I exported the 3d camera data was that the data didn’t include the keyframes for the light intensity. This is probably the case for other parameters as well so I’m wondering if there is a way to add these in as well. A tag of some sorts?
Any help would be highly appreciated.
Greetings from The Netherlands
Thanks!!! Great tutorial! fantastic
BUT.. I HATE player on CGtuts…
maybe guys from envato can borrow solution from vidocoopilot? ;)
i like when:
1 mouse click – pause
1 mouse click – play
& big screen all the time
Greetings from Poland
amazing tutorial! really-really helpful, made my very first 3d project cause of it!
Thanks, you’re a good, talented teacher – please do not stop.
for some reason…i cant get the render setting that you implicated on here to work with my after effects folder
i get a error message when i load what i did in cinema 4d text, object, cam data..into my after effects
i did everything you said but still doesnt work..do i have to install a plugin that enable after effects to see cinema 4d data…because my .aec comes up greyed out and i cant select it..thanks for the help im new to cinema 4d but made some excellent 3d with it..so any help would be usefull