Is this pure AE or with help of another animation prog?

[Rob Webster]

Some of the shots are definitely made with true 3D applications, not with AE. If you’re unfamiliar with how 3D works in AE, it does what’s called “3D postcards”, meaning, AE can place flat 2D layers in 3D space and move them around. What AE does not do is rounded 3D objects, like some of the animated people or football helmets shown in the video. The 3D Invigorator Plugin for AE is an exception – it does do true 3D as a plugin within After Effects, but it has its limitations. What you saw in the demo reel may have used After Effects for part of it, but lots of it used something else.

The train at the beginning wasn’t After Effects. The brief clip where the individual states fall into place to make a map of the US? That could have been done in After Effects, because the states are flat, 2D layers. And the closing title with the company’s name, done with 3D lettering, could have been AE because that’s the type of animation that the 3D Invigorator does well with.

-Rob

[Zvi Twersky]

Thanks a lot ROB!

[Jimmy Brunger]

Is that a current reel? Some of that stuff looks about 10yrs old. You could probably achieve alot of that with Zaxwerks and the more involved character work with something like Cinema 4D or Lightwave, using After Effects or Combustion to composite certain elements of it.

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Zvi Twersky]

Don’t know. It might be old. It is a demo clip of some site.

Let me ask this:

1. What is the most popular software out there for 3D animation? you mentioned Cinema 4D and Lightwave and I read about Maya, 3DMax, Shade and Poser.

2. What would be the choice for a beginner? (It can even be the best out there… I’m a fast learner.)

I currently use AE but never used any 3D animation plugins, and I heard they are very limited.

[Steve Roberts]

Most popular? Sorry, but that’s mostly irrelevant. You need what’s best for your workflow at this point in your career.

Poser is strictly for animating people if you don’t want to learn about bones and IK and stuff. It’s very limited and quirky, and requires some futzing to get stuff into other 3D scenes. But it’s easy to animate people if that’s all you want to do.

I don’t use Maya or Max, but they each have their advantages. Maya might suit you if you want a career in character animation. Look into those apps for more info.

Shade? never heard of it.

Lightwave is good all-round, but I like C4D for motion graphics. LW makes it difficult to animatethe shape of an object in the context of a scene, since modeller and layout are two separate windows. I like C4D because you can change things around all the time within a scene. One window. Cinema 4D is the best choice for motion graphics.

Search the COW for Maya, MAX, Lightwave for more info. This has been discussed a lot.

Just my opinion … I own LW, C4D and Poser.

[Zvi Twersky]

Thanks for the reply!

By the way, you can check out Shade here:
https://www.e-frontier.com/go/products

It’s the third product from the top.

[Jimmy Brunger]

Zaxwerks Invigorator or ProAnimator is probably your best bet for quick and easy to learn 3D text and simple shape manipulation and it works directly within AE. It does have some limitations for stuff like reflections and raytracing, but then so does AE itself.

From what our 3D designer has said (and Steve) Lightwave is a very good all rounder. Our guy uses that for most things. He has Softimage XSI for more complex stuff, but rarely touches it. Cinema 4D has some excellent integration with AE for stuff that’s too much for Zaxwerks. I’ve not used it, but I only hear good things about it. I’m going to try get myself a copy in the next couple of months.

Stuff like Maya and Houdini are the top of the line packages and will cost you a pretty penny, but they are only really for very advanced users.

There are a number of consumer and free programs out there aswell…Have fun!

*Production Studio Premium / *Combustion 3
————————————-
Win XP Pro SP2 / Intel P4 3GHz / 2GB RAM / GeForce FX5200 / DeckLink Pro / Sony BVM-20G1E / DVS SDI Clipstation / 110GB boot/80GB media/600GB RAID-0

[Steve Roberts]

Apparently Blender is popular for beginners …

[Jason Griffith]

I’ve checked out Maya, C4d, Poser and Blender. Out of them all, C4d seemed to have the best balance. Maya is the best but also expensive. Blender is free, but if your looking for more of a professional program to get into- I don’t see it there yet. Poser is great for human animation, which can be used in composites. But for a new program to learn and at a competitive price. I’d go with C4d. Lynda.com released some tut’s on it recently as well, which would help with the basics. It’s pretty powerful. As a previous post pointed out, it can be exported into AE with a plug-in (I think it’s free). If you want, check out their demo reel here —> https://www.maxon.net/pages/movies/reel_2007qt7.html . I would suggest getting bodypaint with it. I think BP is bundled with the premium bundle.
Hope that helps,

Jason Griffith
Broadcast Editor
The Active Word

“An Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living” – Socrates

[Zvi Twersky]

Thanks for all the replies. It helped me a lot.