[Keith Banger]

Thank you for the detailed response!

To clarify, I am not rendering any C4D elements directly within AE. I am rendering out the full scene with all elements on (as a bottom layer in AE) and just the front parts of the left “engine” turned on (as a top layer) with an alpha channel as PNG sequences so that I can import and layer them in AE and add Particular in between them to simulate depth. I then use the After effects camera tracker to motion track Particular into the scene (which worked perfectly).

I do not use any C4D camera data– I tried it for particular and got terrible results– or anything else from the C4D project for that matter. Just the png sequence exports. And it is one of the exports that does not match the other– every 4th frame is a little “off” and then matches back up on the next frame.

I have checked frame rate and it is the same camera and frame rate being used for both clips, and the framerate matches the AE composition frame rate, aspect ratio, etc.