C4D vs. Maya question

[Alan Flood]

I’ve been using Cinema for a little over 6 months now and I honestly can’t say enough good things about it. That said, I haven’t really spent much time in Maya, Max or any other 3D application other than Lightwave so I can’t really speak for them. Compared to Lightwave however Cinema’s integration with AE is truly spectacular. I’ve never enjoyed compositing so much. What used to be a nightmare with Lightwave is now a dream with Cinema. Having said that however it must be pointed out that Lightwave has a bit of a bad reputation for not being too friendly with other applications – AE included.

But we’re talking about Cinema and with Cinema, when you render a scene you have the option in the save dialogue to save a compositing file for a couple of different compositing apps. I’ve only used the AE option so I can’t say very much about the others. You can also choose to render out frames without any 3D data and this will basically just render out your multi-passes and arrange them for you in a comp – all set with the appropriate blending modes. Alternatively you can opt to export 3D data and this is just awesome. Any cameras or lights in your scene will be exported along with their motion paths and settings.

If you are looking ahead and you want to composite in a flare or a shape layer – anything at all – in AE but want it to follow a particular path you can create a null object in cinema, use it to create the path and then assign it an external compositing tag. This null will then show up in your AE composition along with it’s name and motion path relative to the camera and you can then parent whatever you like to it. It’s so fantastically easy it’s almost unbelievable.

All this in conjunction with Cinemas excellent multi-pass rendering – specifically the object buffer rendering – makes it a huge hit in my book. I don’t think I’ll ever use anything else when it comes to 3D to be honest. The modeling tools are also excellent, as is the configurable interface and with R12 the integrated linear work-flow and color management is again excellent. Then there’s the really awesome dynamics engine, hair rendering, character rigging tools, effectors ….. I could go on and on. Like I said, I can’t say enough good things about it 😀

[Randy Johnson]

Integration with AE is as good as it gets but I still use shake since its what I am used too and the integration is pretty much the same as maya-shake is. Cinema can import and Export FBX animation and several model formats that maya works well with. I share a lot of files with different companies using maya, 3dmax with out any big issues. So I think your pipeline will work just fine if you choose cinema.

/Randy