Tutorial 1 | The Basics – Part 2

Tutorials
Posted by Al Heck on 01, February 2011 with 6 Comments

For the second part of tutorial 1, we’re going to dive into After Effects. In order to import this file properly into Cinema, you need to add the plugin which is buried in the Maxon/exchange plugins/aftereffects and copy it and then place it into Adobe After Effects/plug-ins/format.

Then get ready to have some fun with the RPF sequence. The first you should do is import the AEC (After Effects Composition) into your projects window.

There are 3 folders that will be added, but start with the composition tag. This opens your scene with any lights, cameras, null objects from external compositing tags, and maybe a pass or two. In the special passes folder, you will find most of the other passes, including your RPF sequence.

The tutorial will explain how to put together your composition/background and make it all pretty, but let me highlight a few small details:

To get really nice anti-aliased buffer channels, instead of using the ID Matte, render your sequences with separate alpha channels and then apply them into After Effects. It will help with the rough edges. But if you don’t care about edges or are ok with a slightly blurred edges, then go with ID Matte as a time saver.

Finally, be sure to play with the 3D channel in After Effects.

The flexibility of using depth mattes, depth of field, Fog and more will be more than enough to convince you to switch to using RPF’s vs. TIFF sequences. Hope you have fun and make some awesome stuff now!

For those of you awesome enough to read this entire blog, you can download the actual project file by clicking HERE.

Al Heck
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6 Comments

  1. Admin
    Auth
    08 February 12, 12:11pm

    This is a good post, if only to pvreent people from asking Nick so many dumb questions. Like “How do ya make ribbons!?”

  2. Admin
    Krish
    08 September 11, 4:51am

    Hi
    I am too new to c4d. I like your tutorials but you are bit fast and would be great if you can make it full screen, so it is easy to see all that is going on in the screen. Any way Thank you
    Krish

  3. Admin
    Ella
    26 June 11, 8:56pm

    Pretty good post. I just stumbled upon your blog and wanted to say that I have really enjoyed reading your blog posts. Anyway I’ll be subscribing to your feed and I hope you post again soon.

  4. Admin
    Joren
    18 June 11, 1:17pm

    Hey Al, I’ve been playing around with .RPF and have noticed a fair amount of issues with aliased edges. Have you ever run into this problem? Do you have any solutions or fixes for it? Thank you sir!
    Joren

  5. Admin
    Al Heck
    25 May 11, 5:20pm

    You can render out your passes. I do anyways because they don’t use much memory and when I’m done, I collect all the files I used in AE, dump the rest and move forward. Also, since the time is minimal to render the extra passes, might as well rather than go back and take forever rendering it again.

  6. Admin
    Rovino
    21 May 11, 1:02am

    Sweet. Nice work.. so the ID Matte effect was placed on the RPF seq? and that saw all the object buffers you created? wow then why render object buffers in the first place.. do they need to be in the timeline to work? So essentially you could lose all your Obj Buffers but still use the RPF as a defacto alpha matte? thats impressive.. you mentioned pulling a camera from the RPF did I miss that part in your tutorial?
    thanks Al,
    Ive been using AE for awhile now but just last year picked up C4D.. there is so much to learn.
    I’ll start following you on the Twitters.

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