Adobe After Effects CC includes Maxon Cineware, a fully integrated 3D pipeline between After Effects and Maxon Cinema 4D Light, but motion graphics artists and animators can use to insert 3D objects directly into an After Effects scene without pre-entering passes or complicated file exchanges.
I'm going to show you how easy it is to import a 3D object created in Cinema 4D Light into a composition in After Effects.
Any adjustments I make to the object in Cinema 4D will be made in the After Effects comp automatically.
It's worth noting that Maxon sometimes updates its Cinema 4D product line, so the version you're using might differ from the version I'm showing in this demo.
Also, if you happen to have more than one version of Cinema 4D installed, you can choose which instance of it you're going to use with After Effects.
So, I've got this scene where a camera is passing in front of a car and we wanted to dress up the front of the car with a grill or some kind of metal work and we didn't have time, so we figured we would do it in post.
The first thing I'm going to need to do is get some tracking points and I'll use those inside the 3D program.
I'm going to write click on this layer in the composition and I'm going to use Track Camera.
And this is going to set off the 3D camera tracker, which will take a few moments to analyze the scene.
I'm going to pause while the analysis takes place.
Great, and right away, if I just scrub through this composition, you can see those 3D tracking points.
It still blows my mind that this works amazingly well.
Now, because we're going to be working in 3D, we need to specify a ground plane, or an origin plane.
So, the 3D app understands the difference where the ground is and where everything else is that is sitting on top of it.
So, I'm going to make a selection of these points around here and I'm going to right-click and I'm going to choose Set Ground Plane and Origin.
Not all that much seems to happen, but I am defining some very important information for the scene.
The next thing I want to do is pick out this area at the front of the car, so I don't need to get all of it, but I'm just going to get kind of this area around the center of the grill that we can use as a reference.
Once I've made my selection, I can right-click and I can choose Create Solid and Camera.
This creates a solid in 3-dimensional space, which is tracking the front of our car, and we're going to use that later in our 3D application.
Let's send this tracking information over to Cinema 4D Light, where we're going to use that 3D object and we're going to pull in a grill that we've got pre-built to attach to the car.
So, I'm going to go to File and Export, and I'm going to choose the Maxon Cinema 4D Exporter.
I'll put this in my C4D folder in with my media and I'll call this SUV Track.
Okay, now I need to start up Cinema 4D, so I'm going to go to File and choose New and Maxon Cinema 4D File.
I'll just call this New C4D so I know what it is and put that in my C4D folder and click Save.
This is going to start up Cinema 4D.
Now, within Cinema 4D, I need to open that SUV Track file I made—we're going to work with it right here.
So, I'm going to go File and Open and browse into my C4D folder, and take that SUV Track and click Open.
Right away I can scrub with this little timeline at the bottom of the viewer and there's our solid moving in 3D space.
Now, let's pull a 3D object in so we can attach it to that solid.
I'm going to go to File and I'm going to choose Merge.
And now, I'm going to take this grill guard file, this C4D model and click Open.
Now, I need to tell Cinema 4D that the grill guard should be following this solid and to do that I'm going to look for the solid on the list over here in this list of objects.
I'm just going to expand this entry here—Road is the name of our composition in After Effects, and there's the solid.
So, I'm going to take the grill guard and I'm going to drag and drop it onto the solid and that's going to place it, if you like, underneath it in this list of hierarchies.
And the next thing I need to do is zero the position a little bit, so, in fact, you can see right away, it is moving a little bit.
It's moving, associated with the wrong part of the image, so I'm going to choose the grill guard, go to Coordinates, and I'm just going to zero everything here, so I'm just typing in 0 and I'm pressing Tab and Tab—I'll keep those other X, Y, and Z coordinates, and then Tab and Tab and Tab and that's all fine.
So, I'm just pressing Tab between each of those entries, and right away you can see the difference this makes.
We're already getting a fantastic movement.
Now, let's bring up the background plate that we're using in After Effects to use for positioning.
So, down at the bottom, I've got this little footage icon.
I'm going to select that, then I'm going to go over here to my Luminence setting and right down here under Texture, I'm going to relink the movie, so I'm going to click on these 3 dots and browse to the file.
There's my background video.
I won't bother creating a copy so No, that's fine.
And we need to tell Cinema 4D we're going to use a background, so we're got a little button at the top here called Floor, but if I click and hold the mouse button, you'll see I've got a background option that I can choose.
There it is at the top of the screen, and now let's take our footage that we've linked up and drag and drop that onto the background—there we are.
Now, let's take a look and see if this is really following well.
I think the movement's not bad, but we could do with a little bit of repositioning.
So, I'm going to take some of the standard tools here— let me choose the grill guard and then I'm just going to use the standard X, Y, and Z controls to reposition this.
Let me get some rotation, and it takes a little bit of experimentation to get this just right.
You've got a few different tools to use at the top for positioning— that's probably not too bad.
And let's just scrub through again—it looks okay to me.
Up here, I'm going to disable the track solid color, let's get rid of that.
And now I'm going to save— I'm on Windows, so it's Control + S, or Command + S on a Mac.
I'm going to switch over to After Effects and in After Effects, in my Project Panel, let's have a look now, if I go into my C4D bin, I'm going to import a file, I'm going to browse into that C4D folder and here's my SUV Track—remember I created this from After Effects, but now I'm going to import it; now, let's take this C4D file and drop it straight down on top of our composition.
And I'll set the renderer to Standard.
Turn off visibility for that track solid.
And there we are—looks like I could do with a little bit of an adjustment to the angle there and that's fine because I can go backwards and forwards between After Effects and Cinema 4D, save changes in my C4D file, and see them update right here inside of After Effects.
In fact, if I want to, I can make sure this item is selected, go to the Edit menu, choose Edit Original—up it comes in Cinema 4D.
I can select the grill guard, go to my rotation tools, rotate a little bit, save with Control + S or Command + S, toggle back to After Effects, and there's a little moment while it updates, and it's done; so, now you can work live on your 3D object in Cinema 4D and see them update in your composition in After Effects, which means you only really need to render at the very end of the process.
