[Darby Edelen]

Not at my computer at the moment so I can’t double check but I believe you want to hold Ctrl/Cmd (Mac/PC) and drag the feature rectangle (or possibly the search rectangle, either way one of the rectangles) to a new feature. The feature center (where the track points appear) should not move.

Try to pick a feature that is the same distance from the camera so that parallax doesn’t throw your track off. I’d also move back to your original feature when it’s no longer obscured.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Eliezer Cisner] ”
t = thisComp.layer(“Null 3”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
i = index*t;
[value [0], value [1], i];”

How about this?

t = thisComp.layer("Null 3").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
i = index*t;
value + [0, 0, i];

You can then animate the position property with keyframes. When your keyframe has a Z value of 0 that will correspond to the distributed position defined by the ‘i’ variable.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Jason Jantzen] ” I believe I’ve tried what you’re talking about Darby, but I went ahead and did it again just to see and Element sees the texture as a big old mess still.”

How does C4D see it?

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[adam roche] “found under the Visibility drop down menu there is an Obscuration layer which then you can select the matte layer and it will not emit from the alpha areas in the matte.”

The obscuration layer does not control the emission of particles but rather affects the visibility of particles. If a particle lies on the other side of the obscuration layer from the camera then it won’t be rendered.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not sure that this is directly possible with the current UV layout. Most UV coordinates are assigned to more than one surface. There’d be no way to assign a different texture to two surfaces that share the same UV coordinate.

I think the only solution that would be relatively painless would be to select “Single Texture” when you Bake Object and disable “Keep UVs” (this will force C4D to use Optimal Mapping to eliminate overlapping polys in the UV) and enter a very high resolution for your output texture (4096×4096 at least) and perhaps some supersampling as well (that will slow down export). Obviously this could be problematic as you’re now letting C4D determine the UV layout but it’d be faster than having to rework everything manually.

That said I’m not even sure if this will work in your case as the project file you uploaded did not include your source textures so I had to place proxy checkerboard shaders in the diffuse to test. With that in mind I was also unable to test baking the alpha as well as the normals.

To reiterate:

Keep UVs – Off
Single Texture – On

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not sure that After Effects gives plug-ins enough access to be able to see that you’re reloading an EXR and then take an action (make new comps, update comps, add layers, add effects) based on that. It doesn’t surprise me that your description is the way it works, it’s what I’d expect (although it’s not ideal).

If you only have one or two new channels then I’d recommend duplicating one of the source comps for the new channels and simply modifying the EXtractoR effect settings in the new comps.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I realized after I posted last night that I was providing an After Effects “solution” to something that might require work on both ends of the pipeline. I think it’d be hard to see exactly what you’re getting without a project file, could you upload an AE CS6 project file with just the camera animation (and maybe some locator Nulls) here so I can take a look?

One interesting thing I noticed was that the camera I exported from AE to C4D came in with a ZYX rotation order (to match AE I assume) rather than C4D’s default HPB.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

You should be able to fake it by extruding the text quite a bit, pushing the camera in very close to the text, and then zooming the camera out a lot.

If you need additional 3D layers in that scene and the now extreme perspective doesn’t work then I don’t know what to say 🙂

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Andrew Matthews] “I’m using a Mac with AE CC and C4D R14.042. I’m using the MAXON CINEMA 4D EXPORTER plugin in After Effects to export the comp.”

I’ve just run a test with the Cinema 4D Exporter going from CS6 to R15 and it looks like C4D miraculously fixes the jump across the 0-360° boundary (at least with those versions).

I’ve given a few ideas a try but can’t come up with a really good way to eliminate this behavior. There is one option that may work but it requires rotating the entire scene around the origin of the camera move.

To do that you’d go to the first frame of the track, create a 3D Null and shift-parent it to the tracked camera (moving it exactly to the camera’s position/orientation). Then unparent the Null and parent the tracked camera (as well as any 3D layers you need to move with the scene) to the Null. The camera’s transforms should all be zero’d out now. Enter a new orientation in the Null’s Orientation property to re-orient the entire camera move (while keeping all transforms relative).

For example, if your camera was oriented (and now your Null is oriented) at 359°, 2°, 5° then you’d want to rotate the Null on any axes that dropped below 0° (and wrapped around) on the camera.

You can easily see where these values have wrapped around by selecting the Orientation property of the camera and looking at the Value Graph Editor in the timeline. You should also be able to get a sense for how far across the 360° line they go. If a value drops from 360° all the way to 350° then you’d want to enter at least 10° in that axes on the Null.

If the camera rotates quite a bit this may be difficult.

When you’re done you can unparent the camera from the Null and check the new orientation values in the graph editor. If they’re good then you’re set, if not then undo the unparenting and modify the orientation further.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not sure how you’d handle it if you’re using Cineware as I haven’t taken that plunge yet.

Generally what I do is work in Cinema at the nearest whole frame rate (e.g. 24 or 30) with the correct number of frames (which AE can tell you) and then interpret the rendered image sequence as 23.976 or 29.97 in AE through the Interpret Footage dialog.

Darby Edelen