Maya or Cinema 4D

[Eyal Dimant]

If you are working in a facility that uses smoke/flint/flame, for compositing Maya/3ds works better (all are discreet products. as for “realistic” 3ds and maya have better lighting systems, and photorealistic renderings, but mostly your final product will realistic based on your compositing skills.
Also if you are planing on compositing 3d into live, I would check compatibilty between 3d trackers, boujou/syntheyes etc and C4d.

Good luck

[Clyde Villegas]

That is exactly what I want. I want to be able to create believable 3D objects in a 3D program and mix it with live. Do they import the live action video to the 3D program or is it the other way around? Does Maya have a built in 3D tracker? How about c4d? Thanks and God bless.

[Eyal Dimant]

Not sure about C4d (im a 3ds user) as for 3ds it has a 3d tracer which is not very good.
You are better off using external software (Boujou, matchmover, syntheyes), but again check if they are compatible with the software you are going to use.

Good luck

[Jack Leto]

If you want believability get Maya. Maya’s native renderer is stronger. But for optimal realism you’d have to go with a third party like vray or renderman. And… you can import Maya scenes into AE, it just isnt as comprehensive as C4d.
Maya has a built in 3d tracker called Maya Live, but the third party Boujou is much better.

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MOTIONOLOGIST
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[Barend Onneweer]

[Jack Leto] “If you want believability get Maya.”

Could you expand on what you mean by that? I’ve seen a lot of photoreal work done in Cinema 4D. For feature film and commercials. The Advanced Renderer is actually pretty good and reasonably fast.

Maya Live is crap – which I assume is one of the reasons Autodesk bought Realviz. And Maya Live only comes with Maya Unlimited which at 5k is hardly a feasible pricepoint for someone wanting to get his feet wet in 3D.

Bar3nd

Raamw3rk – digital storytelling and visual effects

[Clyde Villegas]

Barend, I’ve seen your demoreel in your website and it’s fantastic! Are all those 3D work done in c4d? Is there a separate plugin to track the 3D to the 2D live action? Or is the 3D tracker part of the package when you buy c4d? God bless.

[Barend Onneweer]

Hi Clyde,

Thanks for the kind words. Yes the 3D elements are all Cinema 4D – using the Advanced Renderer module.

There is no 3D camera tracker in Cinema 4D. If you want to get into 3D camera tracking there are many tools available. I’ve had best luck with Boujou – but many are very positive about Syntheyes which is by far the most affordable commercial option out there.

But for a start you could check out the free (for non-commercial projects) Voodoo tracker
https://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html

Hope this helps.

Barend

Raamw3rk – digital storytelling and visual effects

[Jack Leto]

“The Advanced Renderer is actually pretty good and reasonably fast. “

mental ray is considered the most accurate simulator of raytracing and photon lights. maya has a deeper shader/texture toolset with a very flexible scripting language and more mature character animation tools. (this has all been said earlier).

the OP is looking to integrate “a CGI dog with a real person”, thats more than getting your feet wet!

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MOTIONOLOGIST
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[Theo Brown]

Are there any tutorials on importing Maya projects into AE? Wasn’t sure how many steps/how difficult of a task it is…

thanks!

[Cedrick Salizar]

You cannot directly import Maya projects into After Effects, but you can render layers and passes into a layered PSD file that you can then import into After Effects. Maya also supports some basic blending modes for layers that will be carried into After Effects.