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  • render settings for creating a sandwich of mobile phone, image added on screen in AE and reflections on top

    Posted by Jeremy Paul on August 5, 2017 at 11:01 am

    I am rendering a mobile phone. The goal is to create a sandwich with mobile phone without reflections at the bottom, screen with image applied in AE in the middle and reflection at the top.

    For that to happen I need to render “regular image” without reflections and reflections separately. How should I specify render setting in cinema 4d?

    I disabled regular image in the Save tab of Render settings and choose Add All under right click on Multi-Pass. The render I got after compositing in AE was waay off the one I rendered in cinema 4d picture viewer.

    c4d: https://imgur.com/a/qZofJ
    AE: https://imgur.com/a/oSKiN

    This is the file to play with:
    https://ufile.io/sebog

    Can someone give me a hint on how to create such sandwich?

    Thanks for your help.

    View post on imgur.com

    Steve Bentley replied 9 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Steve Bentley

    August 5, 2017 at 11:24 am

    Probably the best way is to do a multi pass render. that way the reflections (the only thing that will be “above” the screen image, will be a separate layer you can screen over your image in your 2D app.
    The screen area should be black in your 2D app.

    The other way is to just render a black screen with reflections. Then use a screen blend or transfer function to put the screen image in. Reflections are all ways additive so it doesn’t matter if the image is above the reflection or visa versa – as long as the base color is black.

  • Jeremy Paul

    August 5, 2017 at 12:23 pm

    Thanks Steve. I’ve created a separate pass of reflections, but that produced somewhat weird results. I’ve taken a screenshot of how things look in AE. Left comp contains multpass renders. It contains reflection pass, but there are not reflections on the screen. The right comp contains the image of what I expect and get from “regular” render.

    https://imgur.com/a/Yi6Hx

    As you can see something fishy is going on. Is this supposed to be this hard? ???? I’ve already spent hours trying to composite it the right way, but no luck so far:)

    View post on imgur.com

  • Steve Bentley

    August 5, 2017 at 12:29 pm

    Depending on how you rendered your multi pass the reflections might be buried in the file. You can down load the free extractor plugin for AE and pull the different passes from that.

    But really, just render the phone with a black screen and reflections in one pass and then “screen” the screen image you want on top in AE.
    There is definitely something off with how cinema makes reflections look in a multi pass vs how you can make it look in AE vs how it looks in the viewport of AE. Some of it has to do with the color space of the view port and some has to do with how c4d combines highlights vs how you can do that in AE.

  • Steve Bentley

    August 5, 2017 at 12:30 pm

    Don’t use “add” by the way as that that can produce results above 100 percent white and the you get clipping.

  • Steve Bentley

    August 5, 2017 at 12:47 pm

    Woops – that should have been vs the viewport in C4d.
    That render you have on the right looks perfect (reflection and phone in one). If you “screen” your content right on top of that it will look right.

  • Jeremy Paul

    August 5, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    That last part with screen made it perfect ???? Thank you!

    On a side note, if you create an .aec file in render settings under Compositing Project File, than you only need to import .aec file and it automagically find all the passes. So you dont need to worried about buried passes. They are off in my case, but it finds them and applies some blend. Mybe it works for somebody else.

  • Steve Bentley

    August 5, 2017 at 1:45 pm

    True but that depends on the type of file you render out – EXR’s for instance package all the passes into one file and they can be buried and need to be extracted even with a saved AEC.
    We’ve also found that sometimes we get lazy and don’t specify an RGB pass but it renders anyway. Then, of course, as deadlines loom, but after not specifying has become habit, we’ll have gotten used to this and render only to find that the RGB pass isn’t there. So there is still some flakeyness on how cinema packages all that up.

    Glad that worked out.

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