Cassius Marques
Forum Replies Created
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[Lochlan Doyle] “‘progressively reveal their stroke’ but how could I achieve this?”
If you’re using a shape layer, go to the stroke property, animate the end point %.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Things get a lot easier if you stay in 2d. For example I’ve made a test in 3d just now and I’ve got a pretty interesting result even without any motion blur, check it out:
To get the blur I’d have to rely on textures instead of geometry, that would require more work than the 20m I had. So I just called it a day.
If you stay in a 2d iconic look, just animate the strokes in a precomp, add an echo for before and an echo for after, compose both (or just use CC force motion blur). displace all those precomps in 3d and rotate a camera. You may need to do this precomped animation in a higher frame count and speed up later… I’d have to test to be sure.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
On that example, no edge is in more than 2 dimensions at a time(its just circles rotated and displaced in 3d). That could be done in AE by having said paths to progressively reveal their stroke while animating the offset. Add a motion blur or forced motion blur, or the echo effect (whichever works best) and its done. (aside from them or a camera being rotated, of course).
If you want arbitrary 3d shapes, you just have to do the same in a 3d application. Not AE.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Its all simple masks and position changes. Really basic stuff. Just a fraction of the first text changes position while a mask reveals the rest of the words and quickly hides them while revealing the other font. (if you’re new to AE, just search for “how to animate masks”)
There is nothing more to it.
It happens in about 8 steps, you could literally make 8 static images of that and just cycle through them.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
The is also another paid plugin called Stardust (that may be a bit cheaper than Particular)
You could try the free DuStroke. It’s not for that specifically but from the preview it seems one can do that.
If those two options don’t work, you’d better get to animating that by hand because I’m out of ideas. It will take you a couple of hours, but its doable.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Your applications are fine. It’s the execution that is wrong. C4D is the 3d application. You should create models or import, texture them, light them and render it all within. After effects is a compositor, it should import, overlay and adjust the passes you brought out of C4D. (this is the desired workflow, not always the fastest, but it is the most direct and robust)
Your current workflow is bridging the rendering (3d) part to After effects (even though cineware still invokes the C4D engine). But that comes with caveats as you’ve seen. Things look one way in C4D but don’t translate the same in AE.
[Matthew Ruiz] “First, I am wondering how I could keep the physics enabled while still animating the model, because I feel like it could be useful for some of my future projects”
The safest way is rendering it out of C4D. You could keep using AE’s cineware for render, but I’m almost sure you’ll have to bake all animations to PSR in order to keep things corresponding. Baking dynamics is not very straightforward. I’ve struggle some with it, specially if you’re using cloners, modifiers or time tracks. Xpresso is needed for that, and that is another level of complexion all in itself.
[Matthew Ruiz] “I always run into the issue of not being able to render the videos from the animation software without a background or with the needed reflections”
This should not be an issue. You just need to review what you’re doing and why you’re struggling. C4D and its many available renderers all can output alpha and separate passes that will enable you to recreate whatever it is that you’re relying on AE for.
I’d still recommend you to check (if you haven’t already) Video Copilot’ss Element 3d plugin. It straightforward, robust and can get plenty of jobs like that done all within AE, with just the model with UV’s from your 3D applications.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
I guess I still need a TEX folder with the road, hdri and etc. that were used. Can’t reproduce without it.
What I mean is that though you can see it working with just the .c4d file. I don’t have access to the textures there are stored localy on your machine. I may have the hdri (need to check), but I’ll still need the road texture. I’m rendering without it atm to see if I spot anything anyway.
Make sure you have to right camera set too, cause by default I don’t see any movement. (I’m missing that gorillaCam plugin though)
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Can’t think of anything else but a very calculation intensive particle system. Not complex, but huge.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Let me start by saying that this workflow (using C4D through AE) is not usual, and that functionality has been updated a bit in the past, but I doubt it’s up to industry standards.
What I think may be happening is that AE may rely on PSR values and its not capable of “reading” the animation caused by the motor. I’d suggest you either bake all animations to PSR or render it out and import as footage.
PS: There is a checkbox on cineware that says “no pre-calculations”, I have no idea what that does, but have you tried?
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -