3d integration with After Effects

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cheeseburger
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3d integration with After Effects

Post by cheeseburger » 17 Nov 2013, 21:23

This what we need too ... Dagnannit !

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3d integration with After Effects

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ace63
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by ace63 » 17 Nov 2013, 23:27

Seriously? No.
After Effects is awful for compositing tasks. It is sometimes needed for 2D and motion graphics stuff, but thats it.
That would be a horrible waste of time.

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Maximus
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by Maximus » 17 Nov 2013, 23:38

ace63 wrote:Seriously? No.
After Effects is awful for compositing tasks. It is sometimes needed for 2D and motion graphics stuff, but thats it.
That would be a horrible waste of time.
LoL gotta love those comments...
Not everyone works at weta digital and needs Nuke for compositing you know?
After effects works just fine for the 80% of the tasks, if not more.

Falam

Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by Falam » 17 Nov 2013, 23:51

I agree, After Effects or Compositor can do the task very well. How many people using Nuke, own Nuke, haha !

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Mathaeus
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by Mathaeus » 18 Nov 2013, 00:03

Well I also don't see the miracle in this integration. Not because of compositing capabilities of After Effects, not my part to comment this. At least I know a lot of compositing people who prefers AE ( and tons of plugins), not Nuke.
But.. it allows to load c4d scene as layer in AE, move camera or lights, and that's all ( more or less). Not any help to compositing people who knows nothing or little about 3d. For hardcore 3d people, it's pretty claustrophobic to handle AE camera, having to switch back to Cinema for anything else, saving and refreshing again. Exporting camera to AE, it was possible before.
Imho, app like Clarisse IFX has much better 2d-3d balance, but, who can waste a time for adapting to new app, costing 3k. How to find the necessary yet another user for this thing...

Anyway, I think this AE/C4d integration has great psychological effect, especially when Max people become suspicious, that they are next on AD killing plan. If we count all these C4d lite copies, coming with AE, actually Cinema is best selling 3d app on the planet. Nothing else is even close.

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MauricioPC
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by MauricioPC » 18 Nov 2013, 12:54

Mathaeus wrote:If we count all these C4d lite copies, coming with AE, actually Cinema is best selling 3d app on the planet. Nothing else is even close.
Lol. That's right!

As for compositing ... I guess Fusion, being 1/3 of the price of Nuke is a very good option. And if I used a Mac, I would still be using Shake (what an amazing software it was).

Paulrus
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by Paulrus » 18 Nov 2013, 14:11

Agree 100% Mathaeus. It would be a psychological boost, if nothing else.

ICE can do some amazing motion graphics & if you could easily integrate them into AE, it would get a lot of attention in the Adobe crowd. It would also give a boost to the Softimage community, who have felt for a long time like they've been abandoned.

Softimage has the power to totally crush C4D if it was given the chance.

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Hirazi Blue
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by Hirazi Blue » 18 Nov 2013, 14:16

Apart from the age-old discussion what compositor to use, I hope and pray Softimage won't spend its extremely precious dev time on such an integration. Technically we've got two (mediocre?) compositors already, let's leave it that. Let the Softimage developer do his/her utmost to code the one new feature for SI2015, so it at least is the best possible one.
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

NNois
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by NNois » 18 Nov 2013, 14:47

yeah, after effect is, for me in the same league as the bad softwares (3dsmax etc..) an horrible production environnment ! so much grips encounter every 10 minutes when you work with !
It's clearly a software devellopped by programmer who never worked a bit on producing serious things in the graphic design industry ;-)

But... even if i have some scripts to do a partial connection, I would gladly accept un the file menu a small "send to" camera/null/grid to after effect, because i'm using it too ;-)
Last edited by NNois on 18 Nov 2013, 17:06, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by Paulrus » 18 Nov 2013, 15:56

Well, I guess the issue is - do you want the developers to focus on what you like or do you want them to focus on doing something that will keep Softimage alive by growing the userbase as fast as possible?

Just because a few people hate AE doesn't make it a worthless market. I personally use Fusion, but I also have been using AE this past year for motion graphics & the one thing I've come to realize is this - the AE market is HUGE.

So for me, if Softimage gained more of a connection between itself and AE & that helped sell more seats, I'd be perfectly happy. On the other hand, if Softimage gained a new feature that made existing owners happy, but didn't help sell more seats, I'd continue to feel fairly negative about the long-term viability of Softimage.

Softimage is a just product that Autodesk sells. Autodesk is a business & does not care at all about any of the software they sell. Autodesk cares about how many units they've sold and how much of a profit they've made - that's it.

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MauricioPC
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by MauricioPC » 18 Nov 2013, 16:49

Not that Digital Tutors has any insight at what Autodesk plans, but it's the second tutorial that comes out about Softimage and Games.

http://www.digitaltutors.com/tutorial/1 ... and-Mudbox

Not steering the thread away from the subject. But it would be nice if was a tutorial for Broadcast as we all know the games market is going to Maya and Maya LT.

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SamHowell
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by SamHowell » 18 Nov 2013, 18:39

Love it or loathe it, it does not matter. After Effects has a very large user base that increasingly augments their 2D vector animations with 3D elements. After effects as a compositor is a secondary concern. Every Motion Graphics artist I work with has retrained themselves to use Cinema 4D because the interoperability tools are so good with After Effects. This is a niche that could just as easily have been Softimage, although as usual it is probably too late.

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pdesopo
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by pdesopo » 19 Nov 2013, 00:51

I've used CC at work, even if for a short time so far with no chance to check what new actual features is bringing to the table. Despite the short amount of time, I wanted to give C4D lite a try.
Needed a simple sphere with some reflections. From within AE it creates a new layer and opens C4D, then the user can save the project (user actually needs to save it on the drive as any other C4D project), and then it opens back in AE. Moving in the project at that point wasn't as smooth as before.
I don't know if I missed something, I guess I probably did. If not, and this is all about, I don't see anything new here a part of skipping the import step in AE and opening C4D. Besides, CC crashes a lot (really, a lot). There has been an update just a few days ago, after that it went worst and by the way all my preferences were gone, I guess because I didn't *clouded* them.
Adobe created a lot of fuss, I don't see any reason why I should personally upgrade from CS6. C4D lite is a joke, but that comes from my brief experience, so I might be totally wrong here.
Said that, any 3d package that can export to AE is good enough. I personally find 3ds Max integration pretty solid, despite 3ds Max users complain about the State Sets (that I personally find quite good).

I can still use C4D when it's needed, but I'm glad I moved away from it a few time ago. I don't want to bring any flame here, it's just my personal opinion, simply what started to bug me is that Maxon kept adding *new features* that weren't new at all. I started to notice how they were lagging behind Blender and trying to catch up adding a few of those features that I was already playing with in Blender a year before. Still, the AR is the same old render engine. Sure, it's good for some mograph stuff, but after several years I haven't seen any serious improvement (AR3 and Physical Render are not any better).

Why C4D is so popular? A part from the AE integration, also is widely used in studios by designers who, in a rush, need a *cool* motion graphic render: they all use GSG studio setup. C4D is easy enough to pick up fast, so they can drop a cube into a Cloner and ta-daa! Is this good? I think is actually really bad. This is not giving chance to anyone to approach 3D, is actually all the opposite. These people will be happy enough with their 3D knowledge as is, as long as it will work.
Like I said, just my personal opinion.

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MauricioPC
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by MauricioPC » 19 Nov 2013, 10:49

pdesopo wrote:I've used CC at work, even if for a short time so far with no chance to check what new actual features is bringing to the table. Despite the short amount of time, I wanted to give C4D lite a try.
Needed a simple sphere with some reflections. From within AE it creates a new layer and opens C4D, then the user can save the project (user actually needs to save it on the drive as any other C4D project), and then it opens back in AE. Moving in the project at that point wasn't as smooth as before.
I don't know if I missed something, I guess I probably did. If not, and this is all about, I don't see anything new here a part of skipping the import step in AE and opening C4D. Besides, CC crashes a lot (really, a lot). There has been an update just a few days ago, after that it went worst and by the way all my preferences were gone, I guess because I didn't *clouded* them.
Adobe created a lot of fuss, I don't see any reason why I should personally upgrade from CS6. C4D lite is a joke, but that comes from my brief experience, so I might be totally wrong here.
Said that, any 3d package that can export to AE is good enough. I personally find 3ds Max integration pretty solid, despite 3ds Max users complain about the State Sets (that I personally find quite good).

I can still use C4D when it's needed, but I'm glad I moved away from it a few time ago. I don't want to bring any flame here, it's just my personal opinion, simply what started to bug me is that Maxon kept adding *new features* that weren't new at all. I started to notice how they were lagging behind Blender and trying to catch up adding a few of those features that I was already playing with in Blender a year before. Still, the AR is the same old render engine. Sure, it's good for some mograph stuff, but after several years I haven't seen any serious improvement (AR3 and Physical Render are not any better).

Why C4D is so popular? A part from the AE integration, also is widely used in studios by designers who, in a rush, need a *cool* motion graphic render: they all use GSG studio setup. C4D is easy enough to pick up fast, so they can drop a cube into a Cloner and ta-daa! Is this good? I think is actually really bad. This is not giving chance to anyone to approach 3D, is actually all the opposite. These people will be happy enough with their 3D knowledge as is, as long as it will work.
Like I said, just my personal opinion.

You are not that far from the truth. Of course, as any software, there are people who excel at it, like Beeple-Crap. His works is almost art, using only Cinema 4D. But I guess he would be good in any other software as well.

I have a friend who work in one of the biggest advertisement agencies here in Brazil, as a Art Director, and he said to me that almost all machines there uses Cinema 4D with GSG products. I think it's obvious, since GSG products are really good. On the other hand, Nick Campbell is a great guy, but when you see his tutorials, you realized that he knows how to work in C4D, but he doesn't have a foundation of 3D knowledge, that in 'harder' software, are required to produce great work.

One thing that C4D stands out, in my opinion, is in stability. Man, I was unable to crash that in all these months I have played with it. Can't say the same for Autodesk products. That stability is a great selling point. From what people say, Modo also crashes a lot.

I for one would still be in Adobe CS5 is it weren't for some improvements (things added like Mocha) and video presets in Premiere. Hell, I still prefer Photoshop CS3!!! Way faster and stable than the latter options.

-- EDIT --

One more thing ... For motion graphics, sometimes is wiser to use Element3D. You can create some amazing motion graphics with it and Andrew is getting ready to launch version 2.0. And it's much cheaper.

nuverian
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Re: 3d integration with After Effects

Post by nuverian » 21 Nov 2013, 20:25

As I've already posted, for me the collaboration of Cinema4D and After Effects is how the industry should be. Or in other words "Work together, not against"
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