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Exporting 360 3D Data from C4D to After Effects for VR Compositing
Posted: 30 September 2020 06:12 PM   [ Ignore ]  
Total Posts:  25
Joined  2008-03-16

I’ve watched the Cineversity video Exporting 360 3D Data from C4D to After Effects for VR Compositing and I’ve been using this method for getting 3D data out of C4D and into AE and it does work. My question is if its possible to render the camera out normally ie without constraining the camera to zero rotation?

The project I’m using this on is a fly-by animation of a subsea oilfield. The camera is moving and rotating around the different subsea equipment. I’m following the workflow from the video and am using xpresso to constrain the cameras rotation to zero. The main reason I’m using this technique is to also export placement nulls for callout text. As I stated above, this workflow does work, but its a little confusing and the render frames I’m outputting aren’t good for anything unless I run them through AE and re-export so the camera view looks correct. I’m wondering if there is a more straight forward way to be able to render the frames out from C4D using the camera rotation in C4D. One of the reasons I’m looking for a different solution to this is my animation is 14K frames long and its 4K res so I’m dealing with quite a large set of data. I realize with either method I would need to re-output in AE to add the text in AE, but if I could use the frames with the camera rotations from C4D I could at least preview the animation without having to run it through AE first. Does that make sense?

Thanks,

Michael Stafford

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Michael Stafford
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Posted: 30 September 2020 08:33 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 1 ]  
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Hi Michael,

This tutorial’s idea is that the Null (positions) are aligned with the objects in the scene. When the camera rotates, the rendering is not aligned anymore with those position information providing objects. The objects themselves will stay stable, but the equirectangular is then sliding (relatively to the fixpoints).

Of course, the alternative is to NOT focus on After Effects and render the scene with your camera moving freely—no text at this time.
While importing it to any compositing app, you would need to track those positions. This might be problematic for many reasons and not practical since you have the scene data in Cinema 4D.

Back to Cinema 4D, you set up the text insert on and off where and when they needed. If all is done, you can switch off (rendering wise) all other non-text content. Render the text out Object Buffer and place this layer on top of the full render. If the text is at some point behind an object in the scene (a frame-based tower, for example), you need to set this Tower (compositing Tag Matte object: black), not to the Object Buffer.

If a text element needs to be changed, it can be rendered out quickly.

As a side note, perhaps use the Take system for the different results of the rendering.

I’m not clear how many text objects you need, but with an Object-Buffer (or if you use a different render with Object ID options), you could switch the single text rendering on and off in Ae.

Since all are rendered with the same camera animation, the equirectangular should match perfectly.

In a nutshell. The camera, with a position-only-animation, creates a spherical representation of the scene. A clear line can be drawn among camera, object positions in the spherical rendering, and the real position in 3D space.
This straight line is not given anymore when the camera rotates.

Anything else will bend this line constantly, with the rendered representation in the middle of that bow.
In the past two hours, I have explored several setups, but my suggestion. Is the one from above; if not, the tutorial is used to begin with.
One thought is perhaps to un-rotate the equirectangular, then have the text placed on it, rotate it back, or have the text rotated into place. Each of these operations would require to mix up pixels with each other. A loss of quality would be given. How much? That is not easy to say, as the equirectangular provides more pixels for the poles than for the equator. Since 4K is not quite a lot, to begin with, that would be very visible. (90º view of an equirectangular is 960 horizontal-pixels)

All the best

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
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Posted: 30 September 2020 09:39 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 2 ]  
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Thanks Sassi!

I knew I could count on you! I like the idea of rendering the text out separately in C4D and then compositing that in AE. I hadn’t really considered this, since I was thinking it would be faster to just do the final output in AE. But I can actually render these out a lot faster on my network with C4D, so it will add 14K frames of text, but I will be able to use the “bare” render frames for preview.

There are a ton of callouts. Probably 100 or more. Can I have that many Object Buffers?

Thanks Again!

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Posted: 30 September 2020 09:51 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 3 ]  
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You’re very welcome, Michael, thanks for taking the time.

The number of Buffers available should be sufficient here (0-10000)
https://help.maxon.net/r23/en-us/Default.htm#html/TCOMPOSITING-COMPOSITINGTAG_GROUPOBJBUFFER.html#COMPOSITINGTAG_IDCHN0

Going by the duration, perhaps some improvements can be made. To share text in the same buffer, that is never in the same image. (With 360º/180º, that might be out of the question…)
If the text is monochrome, you might even think of using the R, G, and B channels separately to cut the data amount. This could be three channels, or if combined (difference/subtracted) even up to six or seven, but it might get messy.

I’m not clear what renderer you use; Object IDs or similar concepts would be simpler.

My best wishes for your project

Cheers

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
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Posted: 30 September 2020 10:00 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 4 ]  
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Hi Sassi,

Thanks again my friend. I really appreciate it. I’m using the built-in C4D renderer. Is there a better way than using Object Buffers?

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Posted: 30 September 2020 10:02 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 5 ]  
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Ok, maybe I didn’t fully understand your reply. So I would need a separate render for each piece of text?

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Posted: 01 October 2020 12:08 AM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 6 ]  
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Hi Michael,

The idea was to have the main rendering (anything without the text), as you wanted to have rendered it out (camera rotating).
The second pass would be the text pass. I assume that things might need a change (the text itself, timing, color, etc.), based on your mentioning of the Ae use for setting up the text.

To have those two separate seems to be the key. Which will result in at least two render passes, Main and Text.

Since I now know that you have quite many text-objects to place, and I do not know the camera move, some text might obscure other text objects. This needs to be checked. Also if objects from the Main pass will obscure text objects. Please understand that I haven’t seen anything from your project, and I “fly” blind here.

Perhaps the text can be grouped in objects along the camera path.

Even 14k frames sound a lot; if the text is just black, for example, and the text itself is not large, the rendering should be fast, which means an Alpha Channel might be sufficient. A re-render after the text changes might be needed in full or partially, considering black text needs no light, nor reflections or transparencies, it should be fast.

I think it is a balance of your preferences, what is faster or more comfortable.


All the best

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
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Posted: 01 October 2020 04:32 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 7 ]  
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Thanks Sassi,

I think this will work for what I’m doing. I’m trying to place the text so its not occluded by geometry. I’ll probably need to play around with it some to get everything to fit right, and I’m not that far along with putting all the text in yet, so that is yet to be determined. If it does need to be placed behind the geometry then I think this is a better solution than using AE since I can use the compositing tag to mask it out. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I agree 14K is a lot of frames, and that’s why I was thinking it would be better to do in AE (because of inevitable client changes to text), but its going to be just plain text, probably with just a luminance material so it won’t receive any lighting from the scene it should be really quick to render. Actually now that I think about it for this project I’ve actually had to sideline some of the nodes on my render farm because the scene geometry exceeds the memory they have installed and the renders get paged put to the HD, which really slows things down. So I can bring those back online and dedicate them to rendering out the text overlay. Overall I think its a better solution than using AE because I can used the Main renders for preview and just overlay with the text as it develops.

Thanks again for all the effort you put into this.

PS Also just one last thing. I think its a testament to your knowledge base that you could understand what I was trying to achieve without really seeing the actual animation files. Your comments and observations were right on point with what I was trying to convey. smile

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Posted: 01 October 2020 06:02 PM   [ Ignore ]   [ # 8 ]  
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You’re very welcome, Michael; thanks for the kind feedback.

I was trying to find anything that could counter the camera rotation/movement so you can get both worlds. But I ended up getting these Euler-Flips of the whole scene.
I also tried to move the scene instead of the camera, which was discussed in the early ‘90s for some TV sets. But also here, the 3D space of (I guess) any 3D package and the unique 3D space in Ae creates quite some obstacles. So, no show with this one either.
I excluded Cineware here.

However, to keep it in Cinema4D, and produce the layers that you need, keeps certainly the best quality. Ae’s changes to equirectangular is certainly large; even one conversion back and for might require 8K source footage to get real 4k out. Again, if there is a conversion needed.
If there is any question, please let me know, I’m happy to look into it.

I use equirectangular images a lot, mostly in the 30K width (or up to 60K)
drsassi.me
So, I super picky with quality. wink

Thanks a lot for the nice feedback; really appreciated.

My best wishes for your project.

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Dr. Sassi V. Sassmannshausen Ph.D.
Cinema 4D Mentor since 2004
Maxon Master Trainer, VES, DCS

Photography For C4D Artists: 200 Free Tutorials.
https://www.youtube.com/user/DrSassiLA/playlists

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