After Effects Tutorial - Tips for Compositing Cinema 4D Renders into Footage Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from a design calm
and today we're gonna cover some handy
compositing tips to help your 3d from
cinema 4d look right at home inside some
footage inside of After Effects let's
learn how right so this is the scene
that we're gonna be using today I have
my little 3d coffee cup character from
cinema 4d and I want to composite him
into this footage a shot of my very
messy work desk using my iPhone 6 so not
the greatest camera in the world right
now it just looks like a 3d object just
plopped on top of a background plate and
what we're gonna do is just cover a few
very simple techniques and tricks to try
to come help this little coffee cup feel
right at home in this scene so first
thing I want to do is jump over into
cinema 4d and just show you how I set up
my scene so I have a couple of takes I
got my main take here and that is just
my normal scene and the crucial part
here is I loaded up my footage into a
material just loaded into the luminance
channel and then just apply that to a
background and then just hit the hit it
from render by just turning on the stop
light to red and also added a light so
you can see that I have my window here
near my desk and I just placed a light
source right where that light would be
shining another thing I did was tried to
use my camera in like the focal length
try to match the vanishing point in my
scene here in my footage and what I did
was I you tried to use my keyboard here
to try to match that vanishing point in
that angle so just try to line up like
the line of keys and just try to adjust
the rotation here and try to get that
focal length looking right so my
perspective looked like it fit in this
scene
and it's an you know it's not an exact
science I just kind of tried to eyeball
that and then the last thing I did was
created a whole different take that just
held the reflection on it so I can
composite the reflection because I'm on
a glass table or a glass desk so I just
wanted to create a disc right here and
then all I did was applied a reflective
black material on here so just a just
some 84% reflection not 85 not 83 a
precise 84 I just kind of arbitrarily
chose that but you kind of make this how
you want and I just added a little bit
of fernell and use the glass preset and
just kind of adjust the strength here
but then what you can do is I'll just
I just rendered this as a separate take
so I can just get my interactive render
region here and once this renders you'll
see that on this take this will just
contain the reflection so as this is
kind of rendering here you can see for
some reason my mouth dropped I'm not
sure what what happened there but that
just kind of happened in the interactive
render region it rendered out fine but
that's just some weird bug the mouth
falls off but you can see we just have
the reflection here so I rendered that
out as a separate take and if we hop
into after-effects again you can see
here is just my layer with a reflection
underneath my coffee cup here so that's
just the kind of a little bit of pre
setup that I did in cinema and you know
you don't need to do that and get so
precise as far as like lighting and
stuff like that I just kind of did it
just to just to make it look a little
bit better but basically these
techniques that I'm gonna be showing you
will help you merge your three object
into video footage no matter what the
lighting is if it's flat lighting
whatever these tips will be Universal
for helping your 3d object fit better
into your scene so
first thing I want to cover is just zoom
into the scene here zoom into our comp
and just kind of go and just choose like
maybe at this point right here and
basically I want to point out how blurry
our footage is and a lot of this has to
do with just the nature of digital video
we have compression we have some
blurriness and every camera sensor is
different sometimes the camera sensor
will try to pump in a lot of blue hues
sometimes it's reddish ooh sometimes
it's green but right now it looks like
we have like a little almost reddish
cast we have some blurriness we have
some sharpening that is happening due to
the compression of the video that is
just trying to you know sharpen it a
little bit and then you can see by
contrast our footage are very imperfect
iPhone 6 footage and see just the
perfect sharp edges of our a cup here
and if I actually render the RAM preview
this you can see that we have a lot of
noise blurry noise on our footage and
really no noise on our cup here except
for the ambient occlusion over here and
that's just that was not planned that
just happens to be I didn't set enough
samples in my ambient occlusion here but
it actually works for the scene because
it makes it adds a little bit of noise
so what we can do to help recreate the
sensor or the cameras digital
compression and stuff because our 3d
renders just looking way too perfect as
is so we're gonna try to blur it up add
a little bit of noise and add a little
sharpening to try to you know make that
video compression look like it's applied
to our 3d object as well so what we're
first gonna do is add a little bit of
noise or grain you can go either way
with this we can add just a little bit
of noise by grabbing some noise and
maybe making three percent
and just rendering and see a little bit
of the animated noise happening but the
noise in our actual footage is a little
bit different so what we could do is
actually use a different effect I'll
just delete that and we can use the
grain match grain and apply that to our
later and what that's gonna do is you
can set a noise source later so I'll
actually use my desk and we'll set the
viewing mode from preview to just the
final output so we can see what this
noise will look like and if I just turn
this on and off you won't see too much
of a difference so what I'll do is just
up the compensate for existing and let's
just do a ram preview and see if we can
see a little bit of the grain and I hope
you guys can see it's very subtle but we
have a little bit of some of that grain
that's in our video and that's being
applied to our 3d object and it's very
subtle right now so I think what I'll do
is go to the tweak and I'll just up the
intensity and really try to overcome sin
because again this is going to be really
hard to see
so I'll just really crank this up a lot
let's do a Ram preview now hopefully you
can see that now we have a lot of
colored grain on our 3d object and it's
very intense right now that's
purposefully because I want I want you
guys to be able to see it but I'll just
let this Ram preview a little bit more
but again we're actually sampling the
iPhone 6 footage and we're sampling that
grain and applying it to our 3d objects
so you can see now hopefully you should
see it there's a ton of grain now on my
little cup there and if i zoom out we
can see that's at that's actually a lot
of grain so I'm just gonna dial this
back a little bit to say 1.7 butthat
adding that nice digital grain is gonna
help it's gonna help us a lot here so we
can actually you know if we wanted to we
could add a little bit of noise on top
of this as well so we just add a little
bit of noise maybe just like one or two
percent
just cuz we're trying to grunge this up
as best we can you bring down this
intensity a little bit more all right so
we have some grain we have some noise
let's just zoom in here a little bit
more so the next thing I want to do is
again adjust the blurriness and the
sharpening that's happening in our
footage so we have our noise we have
some grain we can go and grab
unsharpened mask unsharp mask and just
apply this we'll apply this before the
grain and all that stuff we'll just
apply this here and make sure it's on
top and what that's going to do is if we
crank this up again we're just trying to
recreate the compression and sharpening
that's happening with our camera sensor
and the compression that uses and you
can definitely tell if i zoom in here
like the highlights on my Wacom pen the
highlights on my little pen cup thing
here and on its cord and the bottom of
my pen cup thing so we can crank this up
a little bit more and you're gonna see
the highlights kind of pop a little bit
more as well so I think that's pretty
good we're trying to match the
sharpening that's happening in the
footage and then what we can do is just
blur this out so we can go and grab
let's grab our Gaussian blur and we're
again we don't want to blur the noise or
anything or the grain so we'll just
apply this so we'll just blur the
unsharpened mask and let's just try a
value of 3 and see how that looks so you
can see that by adding a little bit of
blur we're actually looking like it's
fitting into the scene a little bit
better maybe that's a little bit too
much so maybe 2.5 so I think that's
looking good we can actually bring up
our sharpening a little bit more so
there's more of that sharpening coming
through
but let's just go in and turn off all of
our effects and see where we're at so
far versus where we were so here's where
we were here's where we are now and you
can definitely tell close-up that this
isn't looking more like in a perfect 3d
render and it's got a lot more of that
compression artifact ting and the
blurring and the noise applied to it to
really help it fit in our scene a little
bit more and as we zoom out we can turn
this on and off turn on our effects on
and off you can see that's definitely
helping out a lot so that's looking good
so far let's go ahead and let's start
doing some color correction because
right now the colors really don't look
like it matches a scene to - well it's
close but what I want to do is use some
utilize some of the elements or the
objects in my footage and compare them
to pieces of my 3d object here so the
main thing that I'm gonna try to match
is my keyboard here which is a white
keyboard it just looks a little bit like
a reddish hue is cast on it just because
of the camera sensor just you know
adding a little bit of red to that so
the main thing I'm going to use to try
to match these two elements here is this
info panel what I'm gonna do is bring
this to the percentage view and what
that's going to allow us to do is see
the percentage of RGB values in each in
each pixel that we're hovering over
using our cursor so on my cop here we
have basically the blue hue the blue
percentage is the strongest so red is
the least and if we go to like one of
these keys here you can see that it's
actually flipped because red is the
highest percentage here and blues
actually the least so we need to match
get this cup white value a little bit
closer to that keyboard so let's go
ahead and just grab with this layer
selected we will grab a layers
adjustment a color correction actually
levels adjust nice and
levels we're gonna apply this levels
adjustment up above the match grain so
and in the noise so after our unsharp
mask and our Gaussian blur
there's our levels so what we're gonna
do is adjust some of these individual
channels here and try to bring back a
tamper back to blue and bring up the red
so what we'll do is we'll just grab
we'll just go into our blue hue here and
we're just gonna try to tamper that down
a little bit so we'll just let me just
turn off my match green here so I don't
see that weird out effecting in my view
there so I'm just gonna bring my blue
values down and you're gonna see that
we're actually making this look a little
bit more yellowish almost so let's go
ahead and see what our values are you
can see that just by bringing the blue
output white down to like 76 we have now
brought yet blue value from a percentage
of I believe it was like 89 or something
like that all the way down with like 56
and now you can see that our red is now
that actually the second most
predominant second to green so what we
can do is just kind of bring maybe
tamper the green back here as well so
just a tiny tiny bit that's a little too
much green so that's looking a little
bit better so now depending on where we
are our red is the most predominant
followed by green and then blue so we
can tamp this back a little bit more so
now we're looking good so now we're
matching we're getting very close to the
values on our keyboard just a little bit
higher but you can see what's going on
so that's looking good so far so let's
actually go and adjust our so that's
matching some of the colors let's
actually match some of like the
highlights and the darker areas our
shadows so the one way I like to do that
is utilizing this adjusts Bossier and
what that's going to do is if we crank
this up you can see that a lot of our
shadows are
getting blown out but you can see our
eyes and the mouth area here are still
pretty dark and to fix that we'll just
have to bring up in our RGB Channel
we'll just bring back we'll just try to
bring up the darkest black values and
just bring up the output black to see
like 2.7 percent and now we can see how
that looks by just clicking this little
shutter icon here little before and
after so that's looking good we can also
test how our darker values are and I
think that's look actually our dark
values our light values are looking
pretty good so our highlights aren't too
hot you can see that they're just about
as bright as our keyboard here so I
don't think really have to do any
adjustments to our lighter values so
I'll just turn that off let me just save
this really quick so I don't lose
anything and so now what we can do is
kind of adjust the saturation because I
think that the saturation of our blue is
just a little bit too much and I just
happen to have some blue in my scene so
like this pen and the reflection of my
scissors here you can see that this is a
little bit less saturated so what we can
do to do a little D saturation is going
and adding a tint and I'll just apply
this after my levels and I'll just tint
this just a tiny tiny amount so maybe
like twelve percent maybe fifteen and we
can see that if I turn this on and off
it's just a very subtle thing but we're
getting closer to that kind of D
saturated blue that I see in my footage
so we can turn our match green back on
again
so I think that's looking good I think
the only thing now is to just copy some
of these effects and apply them to our
reflections so we got a reflection right
back here and it's just kind of sitting
there nothing's changed on it too much
yet so what we're gonna do is just grab
the Gaussian blur
the grain and the noise maybe the tint
to copy that and paste it onto our
reflection there and you can see that
that greens a lack actually a little bit
too much on that so maybe I'll just get
rid of the grain on that all together
still have the noise in the tint I'm
gonna actually bump up the D saturation
on this even more because for
reflections especially on a black
surface that's already naturally less
saturated than the actual original
object that's being reflected so I think
what I want to do is just go into my
green on my main cup layer and just
bring down the intensity cuz that's a
little bit overkill maybe bring down the
compensate for existing something like
that that's looking good so let's just
go ahead and let's do another comparison
so this is with no color correction or
any grain or blurring or sharpening at
all and there's with just a little bit
you can see that just those few little
effects with just very tiny values at
that to really help to blend our 3d
object into our footage so we're not
done yet because what we can do so we've
matched a lot of the elements and the
colors to our video footage our
untreated and ungraded color graded
footage so we can actually do now is do
a main color grade that also color
grades the our little coffee cup guy so
let's go ahead and just create a new
adjustment layer and I'll just rename
this color grade color correction grade
I don't know I'm not I don't know what
is the perfect description for this I'll
just use color grade over the color
correction and what we can do is for
this so just like we used a tint to
desaturate what I want to do is actually
give like a night nice Lake wash of
color to the entire footage to try to
unify it even more so what I'll do is
grab a cc toner apply that whoops apply
that to our color grade adjustment layer
and you can see what that does is just
cast this kind of like a goldish tannish
hue we can actually change all these
values and get like maybe have like a
bluish color cast on top of this so we
can understand some values here some
nice hues and maybe for these shadows
maybe we make this you know we can get
kind of funky wood maybe we have like a
dark red something like that and what we
can do with that now is just adjust the
blend with original you can see that
just a very subtle like color wash say
85% we can just turn this on and off
it's very slight but just having that
nice overall cast to our 3d object in
our footage helps to unify it a little
bit better so what that actually does to
is depending on what level you use and
what your colors are is it kind of makes
it less contrasting so what we can do to
introduce a little bit more contrast is
not a converse a curves adjustment there
we go and we'll just kind of do it just
a very slight S curve on this whoops
let's go to our RGB there we go
so just a tiny s curve so we're just
crushing our blacks and upping our white
values a little bit here and maybe just
adjust the midpoint here a little bit
too so just adding a little bit of
contrast there upping our highlights
here and you can see the before and
after with that too so maybe it's a
little too dark and we can even go into
individual colors here and maybe
introduce like if we go into the blue we
can have a little bit more blue cast
happening here something like that so
again kurz on and off so with too much
and
just adjust all this a little bit here
so we can tweak forever and if you know
me I love my tweaking so I'm just gonna
leave that alone now what we can do so
we got our toner CC toner we got some
curves and a nice little contrast
contrast eNOS here what we can do is
then just like we added blur and on
sharpening and noise to our coffee cup
we can actually do that to our whole
entire scene to help unify it that way
as well so let's go ahead and just add
another Gaussian blur and again we're
gonna add this whoops go to my color
grade there we go
I had a Gaussian blur to our color grade
layer repeat edge pixels on and we'll
just give like a very slight blur value
let's actually zoom in here and see how
much is it's affecting so maybe a value
of two I like to make two value of two
just a pretty good amount so there's our
blur let's add some unsharp mask and
again this is applied on our adjustment
layer so it's gonna be applying globally
and we can adjust the sharpness here so
we're sharpening our whole entire scene
and then blurring it again
again helping unify everything and let's
just add some noise just a tiny tiny bit
of noise and we'll apply this last and
maybe just a value of like one so zoom
in here and see one's very subtle so
maybe two well choose a little bit too
much let's slice it down the middle do
1.5 and we can see what that looks like
before and after as well so that helps
to unify our entire scene by doing an
overall color grade with our 3d object
as well so the one final thing we can
tie this all up with a nice little bow
is add a nice little vignette and what
this can help us do with the scene is
this is just really overblown over here
so it kind of draws your eye over here
so what we're gonna do
it is adding a vignette and try to
darken the areas over here and bring the
focus to the center of attention the
coffee cup over here so let's go and
just grab a new solid and I'll just get
like a dark dark blue and this will just
be our yet and we'll grab a circular
mask and just draw this here position
over here by our cup and we'll subtract
hit F to go to our feather controls and
we'll feather this out and then we'll
just apply a like a multiplied blending
mode and darken that up a little bit and
then what we're gonna do is actually
place our vignette underneath our color
grade so it's actually color graded as
well and we can just dial back the
opacity of this color grade and maybe it
just they're masked a little bit here
you can see before and after there so
that just helped tamper down those
highlight areas over here and brings the
focused to our little coffee cup so
there we go we used a combination of
tints curves levels Gaussian blur we use
some unsharp mask we added some grain we
added some noise and we did those with
just very subtle touches and you know
nothing too heavy-handed with any of
these effects that we use and hopefully
you now understand the power of using
the combination of the blurs the and
sharpening vignettes grain noise and
just a little bit of those stacked on
together can really help tie your CG or
your 3d objects into your footage even
if that footage is a crappy iPhone video
of a very messy desk alright so there's
some handy tips to help your 3d renders
look right at home and a piece of albeit
very low-quality iPhone
footage using some effects inside of
After Effects so we covered grain noise
blurs unsharp mask tints and color
correction techniques to help a little
coffee cup character look right at home
in on top of some footage of my very
messy desk so if you have any questions
on anything I covered in this tutorial
leave them in the comments below I'll
try to get to them as fast as I can if
you create anything using any of these
techniques I'd love to see em I'd love
to see some characters on your work desk
so share them with me on twitter
facebook instagram is all that good
stuff and if you like this tutorial
please hit the like button I'd really
appreciate that and I appreciate you all
of you out there watching this tutorial
and I'll see you all in the next one bye
everybody