After Effects & Cinema 4D Tutorial - 5 Tips for Improving Your Cineware Workflow Video Lecture | Create stunning 3D Graphics with Cinema 4D - 3D & Animation

hey everybody its EJ from I design comm
and today I have some handy tips for
those of you out there who use Cinna
where a lot now if you don't know what
Cinna where is it allows you to import
cinema 4d files into After Effects which
is really cool and if you send where a
lot these 5 tips are going to be huge to
improve your workflow so let's check
them out alright so let's start out with
one of the most common tips that you
need to know when you're working with
Cinna where and especially when you have
a scene like I have here or I have a
externally or a null here that's just
going to I want to export out so I can
composite stuff on it inside of After
Effects like you know a lens flare as
you do so here's my little external
compositing tag to ensure that this
little null is exported out into After
Effects and here I have a you know
somewhat complex camera morph that has a
camera morph tag on it that I'm just
morphing between these three cameras
here I have a target as well that these
cameras are all looking through as well
as some vibrate tags so that this is
kind of like a nice organic type of move
now typically with just you know simple
camera animation I would be able to just
go into After Effects import my cinema
4d file go to somewhere tips just drag
and drop that cinema 4d file into a new
comp there's my little viewer there I
have my cinema 4d file actually in my
viewport which is really cool one little
mini tip is to use opengl so you can
remove all the little wireframe stuff
it's a little bit nicer of a render and
sometimes even faster than the software
version basically this is a very quick
preview of of your scene Ram previews
very fast now if I want an export all or
extract all that 3d data especially that
null from this cinema 4d file I just
have to go into my sin aware options go
to extract and there's my little camera
morph the only problem is if I go ahead
and just scrub through you're gonna see
that none of my nulls none of my lights
or anything is actually moving with this
scene so something's wrong we need to go
one step
and that is to bake out our camera which
is very very easy so here's the camera I
want to bake out when you go into my
timeline I'm going to drag and drop this
camera into my timeline so there it is
already with that camera select I'm
going to go to functions baked objects
make sure that I have all parameters
checked on and I like to make sure that
this create copy is chain clicked on as
well
and we also need to bake expressions to
be able to bake all the vibrate tag
information that's in the vibrate
expression tag and just hit OK and what
that's gonna do is it's gonna create a
new copy and if we just go ahead and
look through it you're gonna see that we
have even our focal length is baked out
because we had all parameters all
expressions all that good stuff
everything that's animated will be baked
down okay so what I'm gonna do now is
just go ahead and save this and jump
back into After Effects make sure that
our scene updated just cleaned up it's
updating that little file and now I can
select this little cinema 4d layer again
and hit extract and now you're gonna see
we have that Kim morph copy now if we
scrub through here or just ran preview
you should see that all of our 3d
information all of our lights that comp
tagged all should move perfectly with
our little 3d scene here so again we can
go ahead and composite our little lens
flares here which is really nice so even
the expressions are vibrate tagged baked
out as well which is very important to
remember to have that expressions thing
turned on so one thing you're gonna
notice and this is are moving on to our
second tip here is in my little scene
here I actually have a background with
an environment and environment object
and all this good stuff and you're gonna
see that if I go into After Effects
you're not seeing that at all you're
actually just seeing a background alpha
here and the problem with that is is
every time you import a cinema 4d file
into After Effects if I right click and
go to interpret footage main you're
gonna see that it's going to think
there's an alpha channel there but I
have a background object okay you can
see my environment there's my background
object it's just a blue gradient and
it's not coming
that's because we have a alpha so what
I'm gonna do is just go in say you know
what ignore that alpha
he's a jerk don't mind him just ignore
him he's being annoying just click that
hit okay and now you're gonna see it's
gonna get rid of that alpha
interpolation and now you can see we
have our blue background in here and
that's kind of like a big thing that I
ran into a lot as far as you know be
having backgrounds come in and stuff
like that it's kind of an extra step you
have to take to just you know ignore
that alpha and then that background will
come intact all right so one other thing
it's very handy for when you're using
stuff with 2d or anything like that so
if I go ahead and let's just go into my
sin aware layer and just change this to
standard final okay and let's go into
cinema 4d and typically when you render
out an animation you're gonna you know
choose anti-aliasing best you're gonna
choose animation filter and save that
out now the problem with this and I'll
just demonstrate it inside of After
Effects here but if i zoom in here and
just wait for this to update let me go
to full res again everything every time
you especially at standard file every
time you actually Ram preview a frame
what's actually happening in the
background is cinema 4d is rendering
that frame so if you have stuff like you
know blurry reflections ambient
occlusion stuff like that it's gonna
it's gonna be more render intensive so
at that point it's kind of bad to Ram
preview at the standard final but here
you can see we finally have this
rendered image pulled out you're gonna
see that our edges are very blurry now
if you're using say you know text which
is you know continually rasterized
you're gonna see that the sharpness of
the text does not match with the
blurriness of our actual image so if
you're doing a very 2d or you have a lot
of shape layers and stuff like that
things that are continually rasterized
you're gonna get this mismatch
of blurry edges on your cinema4d stuff
and sharp edges on your continually
rasterized stuff okay so one thing I
like to do is when you are you know
dealing with 2d ish scenes or you're
trying to composite with shape layers
and stuff like that primarily 2d stuff
what I like to do is just choose not the
Goss animation filter because what the
Goss animation filter does is blurs your
edges to prevent flickering on moving
objects but for 2d stuff I like to use
either cubic or sync so either still
image cubic or sync and I'll just save
that out and jump back into After
Effects and now wait and watch it's
gonna be very subtle but you should see
the edges sharpen up ever so slightly
and match more of the sharpness of our
continually rasterized text layer here
now we're watching this watch the edges
here as it's going to update Boop and
you can just see how much sharper that
looks right that was a huge change okay
so keep in mind when you're working with
2d say sketching toon stuff choose your
antennae seem to be best and choose one
of the sharper filters don't use
animation goz for stuff like that all
right
so another little tip here let me go in
import another file here that's just
going to have some 3d text let me go and
just create a new comp with this like so
there we go and let me just zoom out
here so I just have you know some
orbiting text nothing nothing too fancy
actually there's no camera here at all
let's go to OpenGL but the one thing is
that one thing that's really cool is you
can go and use After Effects cameras so
here's my camera to be able to orbit
around and kind of move your 3d footage
around now deep by default on your sin
aware layer your cinema 4d layer it is
going to use this cinema 4d camera and
since there is absolutely no cinema 4d
camera in that file let me just open
that up let's go to 3d cue or
yes you can see there's no no camera in
there at all okay it's just text
floating in space what I can do is go
ahead and choose centered comm camera
basically what centered comm camera does
versus just comm camera is in cinema 4d
zero zero zero is actually dead center
and in after-effects zero zero if you
see the X Y is actually in the top left
so what I like to do when I'm using
cinema 4d Center where layers is use the
centered comm camera it will negotiate
between After Effects is world space in
cinema 4d z-- world space there and now
if I use the orbit tool you can see that
I can move around but it's not working
exactly like you would think I would
want to orbit around the actual 3d text
here okay the problem is is that if I go
into my camera settings we're just using
a one node camera with 3d when you're
using sin aware layers use a two node
camera that's the big tip here use the
two node camera because what that allows
you to do is actually orbit around the
actual object itself so it's more like
having a target tag on a camera and you
can then orbit around that piece of
geometry here so really cool stuff now
what if you know I had this footage in
here what if I'm doing a bunch of you
know bumpers or something I need to do
some lower third stuff and I just need
to shrink this down to the you know to
be a bug on your broadcast TV maybe in
the lower right here typically what
you'd want to do is you know move this
and scale it down but you're gonna see
that you can't move this layer size or
this later at all or it'll give you that
error okay so one thing I like to do
you're typically to get around this
you'd pre-comp this but I don't like to
pre comp more than I really need to so
one thing I like to do is if I know I
just need to move this and shrink this
down or something
in and I don't want a pre comp it if
it's just a simple transform what I'll
do is go in get my transform effect if I
could spell transform right transform
there we go
haven't had too much coffee yet so get
your distort transform and now check
this out don't need a pre comp if I
scale this down I can just go ahead and
move this okay I can move the position
move this wherever I want and I don't
have to pre-comp that layer so no
extraneous pre comms just to scale
things Center where layers down or
anything like that just use the
transform and and there you go you can
even you know do whatever you want you
can skew this layer just really cool
that you can actually use transform to
be able to move this in aware layer and
not have to pre comp which is really
really cool stuff right so that's my
five handy tips and some little mini
ones mixed in there to help you use sin
aware a lot better in your workflow so
if you have any questions about anything
sin aware or anything covered in this
tutorial please leave a comment I'll try
to get to your questions as soon as I
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and as always really appreciate all of
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see you all in the next one bye
everybody