• Maxon Cinema 4D

  import video with alpha channel

  Posted by Paul Rijkaard on February 7, 2016 at 4:28 pm

  I have some animated footage of a character, which has an alpha channel.

  I would like to bring the character into 3d space in c4d and make it move around a 3d room seen in perspective. The result will be that we can see the figure is 2D in a 3D space.

  I would like the character to be effected by the lighting in the scene and to cast a shadow, I would also like to give the shape of the character a bit of thickness, so it looks like the character is the thickness of a sheet of card or something similar.

  Can anyone please help?

  I could easily comp this is AE, but I would like the figure to interact with the scene in 3D space and I don’t think that this is possible in Cineware.

  Many thanks

  Paul Rijkaard replied 10 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  February 7, 2016 at 7:14 pm

  You can load the 2d animation into a material in Cinema and put the material on a plane. You would load the same material into the material’s alpha channel to knock out the background. That will give you most of what you want, but not thickness.

  For thickness, you might try loading the alpha channel into the material’s displacement channel, but I’m not sure if that would work.

  There’s a pay plugin that would allow you to create an animated extrusion from the alpha channel, but it’s a little pricey: https://cinemaplugins.com/c4d-plugins/vectorizer-professional2/
• 

  Paul Rijkaard

  February 7, 2016 at 7:31 pm

  Brilliant, many thanks – I have the footage imported with alpha – looks good, but the image is still and not a video.

  I have imported the video into materials: colour: texture

  do I need to do anything to activate the video?

  thanks in advance
• 

  Adam Trachtenberg

  February 7, 2016 at 8:39 pm

  Click on the texture name (movie file name) and that will bring up another dialogue. At the top-right there’s an “Animation” tab. Go in there and click the “calculate” button, or assign other options if needed.

  Then, in order to see the animation in the viewport, click the material’s Editor tab and check the “Animate Preview” box.
• 

  Paul Rijkaard

  February 7, 2016 at 11:52 pm

  Thank you this is very helpful

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