[John Cuevas]

Here is an old tutorial, Flying through a tunnel in After Effects that should get you started in the right direction.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Can you post a screen grab of your timeline and comp window. 2nd to last icon above.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You would precomp everything you needed to make your bullet displacement layers, the particular layer, light & solid parent, any cameras that lights are using.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

pretty much. Except you need to make a 3D light in AE and shift-pickwhip (parent) it to the solid. This light will be your emitter. Change the name of the light to “emitter” In particular, under the emitter pulldown, change the emitter to “Lights”. You will need to apply an external composite to each bullet, for each displacement map you need to make.

Don’t parent particular layer to the 3D solid layer. Particular looks 3D and behaves 3D, but it’s a 2D effect. Turn a particular layer into 3D, adjust the rotation and you will see it’s not truly 3D, but a projection of 3D.

Hope that explains it.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

This video shows how to use the external compositing tag from C4D to AE using Cineware at around 2 minutes. You want to apply a tag to the bullet, so that the particle emitter you create for displacement follows the bullet. If you are still having issues, I would suggest posting in the C4D forum. As I said before, I am not using the Cineware version currently, so my knowledge is a bit limited.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6avqvjBHmhs

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

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[John Cuevas]

Here’s a tutorial showing how to save and import into AE from C4D

https://greyscalegorilla.com/tutorials/how-to-export-your-scene-from-cinema-4d-to-after-effects/

External copositing tag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meR3kULpekc

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

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[John Cuevas]

Yes, you would export it with a external composite tag applied to the bullet. When you import the C4D.aec, there will be a 200×200 solid, that will follow the bullets path in 3d space. You will create a new solid, add particular, and then create a light. You will parent the light to the solid(holding shift so the light moves to where the solid is located). In particular you will change your emitter to “lights”. Now particular will follow the bullet in 3D space.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Using a CS6 edition, so I have to render it out. So I’m not sure how using the C4D plugin in AE works with compositing tags, but essentially you have it.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

In C4D you will either need to add a external composite tag to your bullet(if you are moving the bullet position), or export the camera data to After Effects. In your render settings, under Save you need to check “Save” and make sure the target application is After Effects. With the C4D tag you will use that information to apply to an emitter in AE(light).

If you aren’t using the CC version of AE, you will need the C4D importer. When you render from C4D , it will create a .aec file along with your renders. You will just import that into AE and that’s how you get your tags.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

When you create shape layers, they are the size of your comp. Check out the position of the layer when you start, it will be at half the width/height of the comp. And the path position of the shape layer isn’t the comp position, but it’s based on the coordinates of the layer. If you move the shape layer using the transform properties of the layer and not Transform:Shape(under the coordinates) you will get offsets like in your video.

You can create an expression to add the difference, like so for a 1920 x 1080 comp.

value + (thisComp.layer("Shape Layer 1").transform.position - [960,540])

Check out this example project, it illustrates the problem and solution.

9873_shapelayers.aep.zip

For a lot more information on shape layers, check out the tutorials by Andrew Devis

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.