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How to Animate the Inception Totem Part 2 – After Effects 93 Comments


In part two of this tutorial, we head into After Effects where we composite and finish the scene using Frischluft Depth Of Field, Curves and blurs. I also show you how to use the object buffer from cinema 4D to color correct different parts of your scene separately. Enjoy.

Watch Part 1 of This Tutorial

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93 Comments

  1. nipper

    hello, I’m from china. Frist,i want to thank you for to teach me many things in cinema 4d and ae .You know,for some reason in china,we can’t watch the video on vimeo&youtube. can you give me another link to see your tutorials.or ,you can send your video files to me. i will Upload it to the blog we i see it. my msn is:johnlennon_0127@hotmail.com . my english is so bad.so,if you have time .all the chinese cinema 4D user will thank you.

    Reply

  3. Classicgamer

    Thank you very much for this tutorial Nick another winner for sure. I really enjoy your tutorials and have learn’t alot over the last 2 years or so, love the colour grading you do with levels and the like in AE and it gives the final renders a very professional look.

    Looking forward to many many more tutorials in the future, you rock!

    Reply

  6. EXT:103

    great tut nick, maybe you could show us your “essencial plugins” for after effects. havent seen that plugin before. would also be good to see how you would achieve the depth without that plugin and what is possible with a standard install of after effects.

    Reply

  8. Bran

    Instead of double rezing the entire render, couldn’t you just double rez the depth map, then scale it back in AE?

    Reply

  9. IceCold Studios

    Great Tutorial…Learned some new techniques. Thanks

    Reply

    • christopher

      Sweet… nicely done. I’m digging the brushed metal texture you added…

      Reply

    • Kamran

      Hello Mike
      Thank for sharing, I can see christopher downloaded it your file, but I’m having problem on mac with your zip file.
      could you please check it out?
      Thanks again,

      Kamran

      Reply

    • RagingClaw

      hey thanks for this. its helped me a great deal in understanding some of the things i was doing wrong with the lighting.

      Reply

    • Mark Shingleton

      Hi Mike,

      Thanks very much for sharing that. Much appreciated and I’m looking forward to your forth coming videos on lighting and texturing :)

      Cheers

      Mark

      Reply

  11. Altaf

    nice nick! good work as usual. Yes I like to see mini tutorials once in a while just as you said during the end.

    Reply

  12. Ronn Trevino

    Great tutorial nick.. I acutally havent watched your 2nd part. I kinda went ahead and just made my own version leaving off from your first part. I also exported using a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. when I get home from work I’ll view the 2nd part. ( work doesnt allow vimeo. 8( )

    http://vimeo.com/14172200

    Reply

  14. klopsknoedel

    Hi Nick,

    i defenitly don’t wanna go on your nervs but i think you have to try it.
    In this part on minute 16 or so you say that there are steps on the edges of the totem caused by the alpha-matte and there is no way to fix it. But since Cinema 4d R11.5 you can.

    As i’ve written in my comment for part one, there is a litte check-box in the render-preferences under Anti-Aliasing. “Consider Multi-Passes” i think (i’m from germany so i don’t know if it’s the real name in the english version).
    When you tick that all multi-pass-renders will be anti-aliased and fit perfectly to the rendered picture. So hopefully this will fix these stairs-edges even with DOF.
    I’ve tried it with photoshop and it worked.

    It’s just a tip, i realy don’t whant to annoy you! So keep on going, love your tutorials!

    Reply

    • daveglanz

      That’s a good tip. I think you can also precompose the depth pass, and add a bit of a fast blur (remembering to repeat edge pixels).

      Reply

    • Adam

      The whole point of a depth pass is to accurately represent depth in gray-scale. If you start anti-aliasing your depth pass, you add in shades of gray which are representing depth which wasn’t originally there. I wouldn’t recommend doing this, although it’s sometimes unnoticeable. Rendering your depth pass at 2x resolution then scaling back is a more accurate way of solving the problem.

      Just my opinion anyways :)

      Reply

  15. Renzo

    Hi Nick, quick question;
    Doesn’t the adjustment layers effect the values of your depth map below it, and thereby changing the focal point? I never used the frischluft stuff, but I do just that, color correction on my depth pass, to adjust the blur with the built in AE tools.

    Reply

    • Renzo

      sorry! Obviously effect in ‘Doesn’t the adjustment layers effect the values of your depth map below it’ needs to be affect.

      Reply

  16. Hugo

    Thanks, i really like this one! Tonight i’m going to see Inception in Imax

    Reply

  20. Neily Peely

    Great tutorial Nick!

    Too good to be true… or was it all a dream. :)

    Reply

  23. Ramzes

    Thank you Nick! You are great as always!looking forward for your After Effects tutorials.

    Reply

  24. lunarbluestudio

    Great job Nick! Your tutorials keep me inspired and motivated!

    Reply

  25. Alex

    Excellent tutorial. Glad that I find this website and learn something new today.

    Reply

  26. Marco D

    How are you Nick?

    Love your tutorials. I have been a big fan of your helpful tips for a while now.

    I had the same problem with the anti aliasing on some projects and I resolved the issue by putting just a 0.5 to 1. of Gaussian blur on the Z-depth pass.

    Reply

  27. Lysander

    Really great to find all these different type of tutorials on your blog. It is inspiring and helps alot.

    Reply

  29. Fissunix

    Hi Nick,
    thanks a lot for all your tutorials.
    You gave me an idea with this “Inception” thing. Let’s create our own totem for a fake “INCEPTION 2″ trailer. So here is mine : TOTEM #1 “le sablier”.
    http://vimeo.com/14200758

    Reply

  32. darren case

    I loved the little look you gave right at the very end! lol
    Awesome job as always!!

    Reply

  34. Mark Shingleton

    Great stuff as always man.
    Here is my version using a different type of spinning top / gyroscope thing.
    http://bit.ly/abDPNd

    PS. You said to let you know what I thought of your HDRI Light Kit Pro … It’s awesome man! So intuitive. Great results .. can’t wait to get stuck into to some more C4D.

    Reply

  36. Drew

    Hi Nick,

    Great work as always. Learned a lot. Anyways, one quick question, I’m just starting out using c4d, does the size or scale of the object affect the render time?

    Thank you very much.

    Reply

    • mism

      No, size nor scale will affect render time. Render time will increase with the use of (very roughly in order of impact, least to most) reflections, transparency, area shadows, high anti aliasing settings, blurred reflections, Global Illumination.

      The last four in particular have settings that can be tweaked to get a decent result in an acceptable time, depending on the project.

      Hope that helps.

      Reply

  37. mism

    Great tutorial as always Nick.

    I tried to do something a bit different in a roundabout sort of way. I deliberately kept the texturing very simple and played around with the colour in Motion. Tried for very subtle, simple look.

    http://www.vimeo.com/14237770

    Reply

  39. kamykazee

    I know this isn’t related to the tutorial (thanks for it, by the way) but how do you compress the file you want to render. I know there are some settings. Say you had an avi file about 700 MB’s. If you were to put it in After effects, without adding any additional layers to it, and then render it, what compression settings would you use to keep it at the initial 700MB’s size?

    Reply

  51. Sacha

    Thank to your tuts I’ve good hope to go from paper edition to video FX…

    Reply

  54. Tzani

    Hey there, Nick, I really love everything that you do on here. I especially like this video but I had a problem. I can’t work with Cinema4D, instead I work in 3Ds MAX and I decided to see if I can replicate the result using what I know.
    Here is what I ended up with:

    http://vimeo.com/23615088

    Unfortunately it was my first time using AE so there are mistakes.

    I just wanted to share.
    Keep doing what you do because it’s awesome.

    Reply

  55. Slayer

    Hi Nick, i know this may be a dumb question but when you import the tiff layers into after effects you get it all in like 1 single file, and i wonder how do you do that because i cant , so if you could tell me it, or somebody else i would appreciate it. :)

    Reply

  57. CD

    Outstanding – thanks for putting this together.

    Just a comment about your closing comments – RE doing some more animation type stuff in just After Effects: WOULD LOVE THIS!

    Reply

  59. Julius

    Hey Nick!

    Great tutorial u’ve made there! Do you now what Frischluft actuelly means?:
    Its German for ‘fresh air’…

    Keep it up!

    Reply

  60. TrippleLLL

    Thank you Nick. You are a inspiration. Keep up the great work.

    TripleLLL…….

    Reply

  61. CM FERADOR

    Thank you very much for awesome tutorial, I’ve lot’s of things as always!

    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.