How to place a null at the axis of one face in an object?

[Brian Jones]

I’m not an AE guy and you can do it with xpresso but I don’t think you need to, check out this https://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2011/12/cinema-4d-to-after-effects-tutorial-plasma-tv/

[David Biederbeck]

I’m not sure I understand why a compositing tag on the face of the phone with an object buffer does not work?

[Craig Ricker]

Does it provide position data to parent to in AE? In a tutorial I watched the dude used a null in the middle to get the position data and the object buffer just provided the matte?

[Brian Jones]

yes it does, check out the link, even though it’s a fairly long tutorial he gets to the bit useful to you fairly quickly

[Craig Ricker]

Ok watched that tutorial through and that looks like it would work. BUT…. my issue I’ve realised is this.

I have designed a phone, from a cube. And then I have gone and used the SPLIT tool to get the polygon face that represents the screen as a seperate object.

Now when i’m in polygon mode the axis shows itself as being in the direct center of that polygon. But if I click on MODEL MODE, the axis is at the center of the world (which is where I first modelled the phone from)

So how do I use the information that is in the bottom attribute display, when I have the polygon selected? Because it shows the actual location of that polygon in relation to the center of the world.

If I render out an external compositing tag as from that tutorial, it places the solid at the center of the world, as where the model axis of that object is?

I’ll post up a project file so you can see what I mean.

4021_phone.c4d.zip

[Brian Jones]

You need to use Mesh/Axis Center/Axis Center… the other axis center commands (in the same Mesh menu) can get the axis in the right place but only the full command gives you the ability to not only put the axis in the right place but give it the correct alignment.

4022_phone2.c4d.zip

[Craig Ricker]

LEGEND! thankyou!