C4D noob – mis-aligned import to AE

[Alan Flood]

Hi Zach.

Seems to me as if your compositing file is from a previous render and you need to re-save it to match the current setup you’ve got going. If your models screen size has the same aspect ratio of your footage comp in AE then all you really need for this in Cinema is a locator null (on the upper right corner of where the screen will be) parented to the main model and tagged with an external compositing tag. Then, in AE, parent your footage comp to the exported null and scale it to suit. If your screen size isn’t the same aspect ratio as your footage comp you’ll also want to output a pass of the screen element in Cinema to an object buffer and use this a trak matte in AE to ‘crop’ your footage comp.

[Zach Meissner]

Thanks for the reply Alan. Well i’ve been told that all compositing solids orient on the z axis, so if i rotate the y it is correct. The problem with that is in C4D, i can’t work with the solid because it’s 90 degrees off. Is there a way to make sure the solid comes into AE in the correct position as it is in C4D?

http://www.lab316.com

[Alan Flood]

Hi Zach. You’re welcome. To be honest with you I’m stumped as to what is happening there. If I had to guess though I’d say it has something to do with you rotating it on the y axis. I’ve never heard anything at all about compositing solids having to be oriented on the z axis but I could be lacking in some understanding 🙂 The only thing I’ve ever come across that sort of a must for integrating with AE is that you have to consider how AE treats null objects. When I said earlier that you need to be sure the null is located on the upper right that was a mistake. It’s actually the upper left.

In any case, from what I understand you want to be able to display some footage on the screen element of the display, is that right? Well, I could try and explain it to you here but reading the text probably won’t be as helpful as watching a video so why don’t you have a look at this excellent tutorial …….

https://www.cineversity.com/tutorials/lesson.asp?tid=1183

It’s exactly what you need if you’re only getting into C4D and thinking about integrating with AE.

[Adam Trachtenberg]

You can orient the axis the right way in Cinema without rotating the actual object. If the object is a plane primitive you can do that in the attributes manager by setting the orientation parameter to Z+. Then you’ll have to rotate the object itself 90 degrees to put it back in position.

If it’s a polygonal object you can use the Axis Tool to rotate the axis without rotating the object.