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Camera Projection and GI in Cinema 4D Part 2: Compositing the Scene in After Effects 147 Comments


In part two, I show you how to set up your scene to render for compositing. We set alpha passes, depth of field passes, AO and GI passes. Then, In After Effects, we composite the scene using curves, colored solids, blurs, Frischluft Lencare, and Red Giant Knoll Light Factory.

WATCH PART 1 HERE

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147 Comments

  3. dogimo

    was expecting this but not so soon! since you are leaving chicago for stokholm in few days, anyway. thx for making cool shit so fast !
    enjoy your trip to europe, too bad you don’t come to france :p

    Reply

  4. ovidiu

    very nice. hey, how it’s made the 3d text explode like SYFY logo.thx.

    Reply

  5. Nick Jones

    Awesome as always Nick. You got my heart racing when you started rendering in Cinema and AE at the same time… I’ve had some bad nights playing that game… :)

    Reply

  6. Juan Pablo Reyes

    Thanks for this great tutorial!
    I appreciate the time that you invest on this.

    Have you tried before PhotoMatch C4D plugin?

    Reply

  7. MarcyVF

    love how you sort of do all sorts of stuff at the same time. depth of field, projection, dynamics, lightning, text, color correction, everything!

    But I’m still stuck at part one! Help!

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      I made a comment on your other post about part one. Make sure you have Mograph 2 and are NOT using the fracture object. Cheers!

      Reply

    • Tiffer

      i think on the mograph 2 text object you have to go to rigid body go to collision and put it to all

      Reply

  8. Eric

    Thanks for the tutorial Nick … good stuff!

    Just out of curiosity, how beefy is your hardware? What are the specs on your video workbox?

    Reply

  11. Mars Sanford

    Great set of tutorials, lots of great stuff covered render-wise.

    Also ended up with a pretty cool looking piece, love the colors!

    Reply

  12. Steven Jenkins

    At a risk of using some overused words, both totally amazing, awesome tutorials. I just upgraded MoG and C4D to 11.5 and just bought the AR module as well. Really great to see a project from start to finish like this. Looking forward to more!

    Reply

  13. digitalove

    wow! awesome, this technique has helped me think of some new ideas. thanks :)

    Reply

  15. mojo

    why didn’t you render .rla from c4d in order to have information like object id and zdepth?

    Reply

  16. stelios chatzopoulos

    @ mojo ? think that like this he couldn’t have good control of the highlights for the zdepth
    @ The Gorilla: Great tutorials! These two were perhaps of your best tutorials. It would be very nice if we could see also a workflow for the Projection Man system inside c4d 11.5. Thank alot!

    Reply

  17. Adeolu

    hi Nick, this is it. This tutorial is massive, well done

    Reply

  18. DatARobotYouth

    Thanks Nick well worth taking the time out to watch, could you do one for video next time including tracking?
    Same style, just integrating some of the dynamics from the destruction tutorials reacting with footage.?

    d

    Reply

  19. DatARobotYouth

    Additionally, i would be interested as to how quick you would have to do this at industry standard. Taking into consideration your doing a tutorial, i would guess you would knock this out {render permitting} at about the same speed from concept sketch to finish. You make some very specific decisions instantly off your own knowledge and skills. I always love to play around with the balances and image correction but it when a 3 hour project becomes a whole day slog it becomes a little too easy to fall behind. What advice would you give to help with the speeding up of your work flow?

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Time spent doing this work is rarely long. It’s the thought process, problem solving and design that takes the longest to do. Pressing buttons in order is never takes too long.

      I knew what my outcome would be going in. So, redoing the scene was effortless. It was all the time spent trial and error that really is time consuming. This is exactly why I am experimenting with Live Tutorials. Sure, the outcome isn’t too pretty, but at least you can see some of the struggle and effort that goes into problem solving on the fly.

      Speeding up your workflow only happens when you get really good at recognizing and solving problems. 1 hour jobs turn into two days when you have too look things up or keep playing with a design until it looks good. Get good at solving problems and you will be faster!

      Reply

  20. David Kopidlansky

    Nick, very well done. It was fun to watch. I don’t get to work with other designer/animators, so seeing the process is enjoyable.
    Also congrats on your engagement. I wish you two all the best.

    Reply

  22. Fabian

    Okay, I got a little lost when you were explaining about all the passes and stuff… so I just tried out some stuff in After Effects. I’ll just have to try out the whole tutorial again, to see if it gets any clearer, but so far here is my result: http://vimeo.com/8760670

    Thanks again for this tutorial man, it was awesome!!!

    Reply

  23. AdamV

    I just got CD4 this week but I have been watching your tuts for months which has allowed me to step right in and make cool shit. This is really the topper on the cake!

    Thank you :)

    Reply

  24. Richard Laxa

    Nick this has got to be one of my favourite tutorials I have ever done. I must say the way you do your tutorials are the easiest to follow.

    I was wondering, Would this work for animated character with a walk cycle?

    If I can use this tutorial instead of having to track some video footage then composite my character into the footage using after effects/C4D then this will save me a lot of rendering time, as I only have a macbook pro to do all this work on! lol

    I’ll probably email you if you wanted a little more information on what I am trying to do.

    Cheers man!
    Love this tutorial!!!

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Hmmm, that sounds pretty difficult. You want to project footage of a person onto a character? That would need a ton of roto and hand animation of the 3D character. It’s really not the same thing. This is a pretty simplified version of camera mapping.

      Reply

  26. Jerry

    That is very nice tutorial , It’s really helpful.Hope you can make more cinema 4d and after effects integration tutorials . thanks Nick :)

    Reply

  27. Kevin

    Hey Nick,

    I got a little question. As I scrub through my animation, the still is projected onto the planes and the camera is animated, but when I go to batch render, my text and shadows rendered with the camera, but my background/everything else does not. What can I do to make sure my whole scene renders with the camera?

    Please help me!
    Thanks,

    Kevin

    Reply

  28. Lennart Wåhlin

    Hi Nick, it’s always nice to see (how) others work :)

    A few notes, if it’s ok?
    For the scale issue, adjusting the Gravity and Time Scale in
    Project Settings -> MoDynamics can be another way.

    When adding a AO pass, make sure to uncheck the “Apply To Scene”
    (in the AO effect) not to stamp the AO into the beauty pass.

    The DepthPass is a little confusing using the Front -and- Blur
    of the Camera. You get a White to Black(Cinema Focus) to White again.
    This locks the focus in post to the full black since -one- grey value
    represents -two- “depth”. You have the same gray both infront of
    subject as well as behind it.

    To get a “true” DepthMap (White to Black) using the Cinema camera,
    only use Front Blur. The Front Blur “End” parameter is full White and
    Target Lenght is full Black. (Keep Front Blur Start at zero)

    (The White To Black To White is really only for Cinemas own DOF stuff.)

    Hope you don’t mid my notes :)
    Have a nice stay in Sweden! (I live here in the snow)

    Cheers
    Lennart

    Reply

  29. Lane

    Off subject a little, can you tell me what some of your menu bar programs are, it’s driving me crazy. Oh, and what are those finder add-ons as well. Great looking tut and really informative. Thanks!

    Reply

  32. Karim

    Pretty impressive what you offer the community here! A very useful and beautiful example, especially as you show the AE comping too!

    Will be hard for you to top this i guess =)

    Reply

  33. nick

    Hey Nick

    Thanks for the brilliant tutorials. Unlocked some niggling secrets and can’t wait to try them out on projects.

    Thanks for sharing the knowledge.

    Reply

  34. Huerequeque

    Hi Nick,
    Thanks for posting this, along with the content on the rest of the site. Watching your tutorials has always been helpful and appreciated. I’m wondering if you would consider allowing the videos on vimeo to be downloaded, however, as I frequently want to watch them in fullscreen on a second monitor as I work alongside them. I realize that there is a fullscreen setting in vimeo, but you cannot be using another app while doing so, as vimeo reverts it back to regular size. If we were able to download them, you could open the video in another player app and continue to happily work side by side. I’m sure there’s a number of reasons that I’m unaware of as to why you don’t do this, but thought I would ask.
    Cheers.

    Reply

  37. TOny

    Awesome tutorial.

    However one thing i think you should really touch on is UV mapping and bump mapping in Cinema 4D. I think that being able to take that 3D text and texture it in Photoshop so that it looks like metal or rock would be awesome.

    Reply

  39. Ben Black

    Great tutorial Nick. Just what I needed.

    just a quick question tho… I need an alpha on my export. I ticked the alpha channel in the render settings but when i bring the whole project into AE the main render has no alpha on it.

    Any ideas?

    Cheers,
    Ben

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      There won’t be an alpha in this situation. You need to set an object buffer for every object you need an alpha for.

      Reply

  40. Jeroen Krielaars

    Nice tut! Have you ever tried doing the same with projecton man? It seems it has even more ways to cheat camera movement.

    Cheers!

    Reply

  41. Wiseduck

    Hi !
    I had a little further question: Is it possible to change the move of the camera right in Ae, after the render ? (It sounds too good to be true but I had to ask anyway ^^) And have you got any idea why I can’t actually see my camera keys in Ae ? (Because we can see them in your comp…)

    Thanks for the tut anyway !

    Reply

  42. Gabriel

    That is a great tutorial, I’ve been waiting for it since the first KeyframeTV episode with the “Believe” spot.

    The final effect looks cool but don’t you think the DOF looks rather like a tilt-shift?
    It seems a bit shallow for a real world camera.

    Thank you for the tutorial anyway!
    Cheers!

    Reply

  43. Patrick

    I have 1 question about the depth pass.When i get my pass rendered it’s a moving depth pass. Is there a way to keep it static,and not moving? Thanks

    Reply

  45. eskile

    hey gorilla, thanks for your work but I’m stilla having trouble since I don’t have MoG2 on my 11 release.

    so I tryed to animate the Mograph text in my scene with traditional Dynamics tools, but I cannot fix it…for two resons:

    1. Nothing moves =(
    2. If I succeed to animate it (don’t really know how), than it sticks to frame 90 even if I make the project longer than 90 frames…

    could you please tell me where am I wrong? I’ve seen also your intro to Dynamics (’cause I’m quite new to animation) but text animation is pretty different isn’t it?

    ok, thanx a lot!
    byeeee!

    Reply

  46. Stef

    Cool stuff nick, to bad i do not have after effects but seeing your workflow i’m considering off buying it because it looks like a great piece off software.

    Here’s my take (no dynamics , just the scene)

    Reply

  48. Tom

    Nick, what a tut to start off the new year.
    Really enjoy the tuts that marry C4d and Aefx for a complete production work flow. Most helpful and appreciated.
    Good on you mate!

    Reply

  49. David

    This has really been great, I’ve dedicated a few hours to following along with my own project and I’ve really learned a lot. Especially this second part on exporting the different layers to After Effects…really good to know. Seriously thanks so much. I’ll post my project soon.

    Reply

  54. Fabian

    Thx Nick…Fabian here…CHECK OUT the one I made w/your help & tell me what you think if u can: vimeo.com/9052178

    Reply

  56. Kerry Murphy

    Thanks for the awesome tutorial!! I’ve had a great time experimenting with the technique.

    After some playing around I got this done

    http://www.vimeo.com/9111538

    I’ve been wanting to buy Frischluft Lenscare for a while now, so once I got the money I’ll get it for sure. In my example I just used Lens Blur which works pretty well too :)

    Kiitos!

    Kerry

    Reply

  58. Mark F

    Is there a forum anyone can recommend?

    I’m on my third attempt from scratch, but I am not getting any kind of shadow casting (using GI) from the type/objects I place on the floor.

    In a new scene with a couple simple objects, and GI, I GET shadows… so don’t know where I’m going wrong with the camera mapping process.

    Reply

  62. Valentin

    Hey, thanks it’s a really good tutorial. to begin with cinema 4d (at least for me). I’m trying tu use the mograph effect on the fracture object, it works, but the textures I used changed, only the first is used for my 5 extrude nurbs (they are all in a null object because i used envelope). Do you have an idea, a solution? Thanks in advance…

    Reply

  63. jairo jaime

    Is there anywhere where i can make a Tut Request because i would really love to see how you can do the effect off the D.A.N.C.E Music video by justice i have an idea on how jsut need a lil more visualization :D well yea h:D
    This is a nice tutorial btw i learned so much! thank you

    Reply

  65. Toros

    I only get one pass layer even though i checked DOF and the others before rendering in C4D. Did I miss something?
    Thanks for the tut learned a lot!

    Reply

  66. saif

    gr8 tutorial
    is it possible to load a footage instead of the image for projection

    Reply

  67. yakuzowner

    Thanks for sharing.

    Though I really waited for a realistic motion blur to get applied by using Cinemas MotionVector Pass. I’m always getting problems with that, since I kind of need to apply the motion blur to my objectbuffers too.

    I ended up blurring the final result at once using RealSmart Motion Blur but that way iam getting incorrect blurriness sometimes.

    Maybe you could show us how to add that little extra to this Comp?

    Anyway, thanks for sharing.

    greets from germany

    Reply

  69. Rakan

    Hey Bro . AMAZING WORK . i just love your stuff ! i just started with C4D and ur tuts really helps . i have 1 Quistion .when i hit the render . i get this ( GL ANIMATION PREPASS ) update passes 0 of 12 and it starts to render . is that normal ?
    coz i did another tut . and i didnt get that msg . and its taking alot of time to render :/

    Reply

  70. Seb

    Haven’t you forget to increase the ambient occlusion you’ve reduce for ease purpose before final render ? ;)
    +1 for the save before crash, an eternal usefull topic ahah.

    It’s a great tut, I’ll check others for sure ! Thanks a lot.

    Reply

  71. Shea

    Great tutorial Nick. I’d been experimenting with vanishing point in AE and this method makes things a hell of a lot easier. Cheers.

    Reply

  73. Andres Martinez

    Nick do you know why it won’t render my camera movement? I turn on the camera and selected, still won’t render only the letter dropping that is it. By the way great website!

    Reply

  74. Florentin

    Hi, firstly THANKS for all this awsome tutorials! I have never seen such good tutorials on Internet about C4D.
    But i have a problem when i save the c4d project for AE.
    In fact, the .aec file i saved in render options can’t be opened in my After Effects :( Do you know why ?
    Thank you

    Reply

  75. Matt Frodsham

    Here’s a fully realised project using the technique. Went a bit further into pulling and pushing some geometry to fit with the photo like cutting windows out and bevelling frames etc. http://vimeo.com/11023691 there’s a project blog o see the development/process too if you click through from the vimeo link.
    Cheers Matt

    Reply

  76. Tyler

    Great tutorial I used this so i could lean about passes and better renders in cinema 4d to after effects, I was wondering when you preview your clip in after effects by dragging the timeline tool through it, it runs through it normal but on mine, it will go frame by frame, so if i one to move to a section of my clip it wont play back it will just skip to that frame, is it the amount of ram you have?

    Reply

  77. Aaron

    Thanks for the awesome tutorial really opened my eyes to a whole other spectrum of graphics I can do with just C4D and AE. Thanks again!

    Reply

  78. Marcos Morales

    Thanks for all your help Sensei! I used this tutorial to make this for Texas Tech:

    thedeadsee.com/Media/RedVsBlack_Final.mov

    Keep an eye out for the “Sheol” music video I made for my band The Dead See!

    thedeadsee.com/Media/Sheol.mov

    -Marcos

    Reply

  80. Ryan D

    when i try and give motion to my move camera and i move it i end up getting double images over everything. why is this and what can i do to stop it so i can move around the scene with out this double projection.

    thanks so much

    Reply

    • Ryan D

      and now it wont open my files in AE it says unsupported file type are extinction…

      Reply

  82. saunter

    Fantastic tut, ive learnt loads of new things. Im new to after effects and having a big problem though. I cant open the aec project file in AE, obviously a small fix but i cant understand it. I saved it in the render options to the same folder as the rendered tiff fils, plus the target application is set to AE. any help folks i really wana finish this tut. cheers anyway and thanx for all the time you have put into uploading these for us. mucho love

    Reply

  83. saunter

    another stupid question, im still having trouble.
    when i save the project in the render settings, save, save project file. it saves it as a .aec file, and AE tells me thats an unsupported file type. its looking for .aep files??? confused, as i cant seem to find a way to save as aep? if thats makes any sense

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      You may not have the most current plugin for your ae. You need the correct plugin for after effects for it to read properly.

      Reply

  84. saunter

    Thanx, didn’t know where to start.
    Plus the icon for the project file when I save it looks like a page with a small AE on it instead of a large AE logo.
    But I can work on using the tiff files so all is good.
    Big ups for a reply.

    Reply

    • saunter

      the plug-in is still in my C4D exchange folder, oops

      Reply

  85. Junior

    Your a serious guy Mr. Nick, too much thanks goes out to you.

    Reply

  86. Ash

    Wonderful tutorial with a great end product! You’re the man Nick Campbell! :)

    Reply

  87. monomonki

    dude… how did you get more than the clasic 2 squares when you are rendering?
    and, did you change the Gi to IR+QMC full animation before?

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      Each square, or bucket as they call it, represents one thread of processing. To add more buckets, you add more chips. I have 24 buckets from 12 chips double threaded. I’m guessing your computer has two threads from two chips.

      Reply

    • monomonki

      yeaph… i should upgrade my computer soon,i fan another question… im studing architecture,i made my 3d models in archicad but for renders i use cinema, and the materiales of cinema, especialy the architecture edition, did you recommend me something about cinema to improve my renders?

      Reply

  88. monomonki

    sorry about the worst english or the worst redaction that you ever read

    Reply

  90. YOUSE

    hey nick thanks alot for u r great tutorials…. is it possible to add.. like floating mountains o watever it is said made in cinema 4d and put it into a real world footage….

    Reply

  91. Isaac E.

    Hey Nick! I’m really greatful for these tutorials, I’ve been following them for 6 months now and I wanted to show you what I did after watching this one, it’s actually a combination of pure gorilla knowledge, It is the combination of your glossy candy stripe texture tutorial, several tutorials on the mograph module and modynamics features, The easycam tutorial, this tutorial, and finally, I used one of the presets (a little bit tweaked) from your “vintage film for looks”.
    Hope you like it, here’s the link:
    http://vimeo.com/17205614
    Greetings from Mexico!

    Reply

  92. Lucio

    Hello
    I am looking for a way of building a 3D city with cinema. Is there a tutorial about that?
    Any ideas?
    Thanks

    Reply

  94. Hasan

    Bro ur an inspiration for me!! thankz aloot for this awesome tutorial :) ..

    Reply

    • Shallon

      All is good, except that it would be cool to see the camera move. The camera move is part of the whole reason for setting up a projection through Cinema 4D.

      Reply

  100. marsio

    hi nick
    any suggestions of how to manage the depth of field in case u have many objects animated in your scene using multiple cameras?

    Reply

  102. Tony

    Awesome tutorial (both parts of it). I’ve been plowing through C4D tutes from different sources and yours are really the first that allow me to grab the info in a relaxed and informative sort of way. Well done Nick!

    Reply

  103. khufu

    This is more a question do you have any tutorials projection man?

    Reply

  104. Randall Tolliver

    So if anyone is compositing in MOTION, then it works a bit differently. I copied the regular tiff sequence, put it as the top layer then put an image mask on it with OBJECT 1. In the mask settings, you must set it to Luminance, blend mode is ADD, and turn off stencil and invert mask. It took a while to figure that out. Then have the original tiff sequence below. Then when you put Levels on the masked image, it will only effect that area. WHEW

    Reply

  105. immi khan

    You have Such a Great Telent man … I have start seeing your Tutorial from the morning 10 am till late night . in one day by seeing your Tutorials i have become your HUGE FAN … LOVE YOu NICK …. n THANK YOU FOR ALL TUTS

    Reply

  107. steven

    Hey Nick. For some reason, I want to render out each object buffer in an RGB pass for each one, and then a depth pass for all objects together, but when I render, the object buffers are depth passes instead of RGB passes.

    Reply

  108. Laurel

    Great info – makes a lot of sense to see the project with goals in mind. Used a similar strategy with vanishing point in psd for after effects … didn’t know this projection method. The rendering trick was fabulous. Re: the letters bouncing … have you seen the plug-in “Newton” for After Effects from
    http://www.motionboutique.com? It helps control the bounce movement & adds another dimension to AE.
    Much thanks!

    Reply

  109. Joep

    Hey Nick,

    I did the renders including saving to AE project files.
    But I can’t open it in AE.
    The folders contains all of the depth passes, GI’s, psd-files etc, including a .aep AE file.
    I van open it but it contains information of another project.

    Will I have to re-render (and wait 5 hours again)? everything?
    Hope you can help me out…

    Thanks

    Reply

    • Joep

      Nick,

      The biggest problem is this: the camera’s from C4D aren’t exported to AE.
      I only have a still image in AE because there’s no project file, although I did save it in C4D…

      What can I do to solve this problem?
      Just shooted some nice video’s with my Sony DSLR, can’t wait to use these…

      Thanks again!
      Joep

      Reply

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Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.