Video Special Effects And Animation Easier With Union Of Software

Published on Tuesday, 09 April 2013 20:21

Darin McGilvra

Creating motion graphics and 3D effects for video and animation may have gotten a lot easier when Maxon and Adobe announced in early April 2013 that they were bringing together Cinema 4D and After Effects. This union of software will allow artists and animators to greatly speed up their workflows while working with 3D and special effects.

Cinema 4D is a 3D modeling, animation and rendering application that is capable of procedural and polygonal/subd modeling, animating, lighting, texturing, and rendering. After Effects is a digital motion graphics and compositing software package from Adobe.

The two have been used together in previous versions. You could import a creation made in Cinema 4D into After Effects. However, if you wanted to edit your creation, which happens often, you would have to edit it in Cinema 4D and then re-import it into After Effects. Because you would have to render the creation each time you edited it before importing it into After Effects, this could be quite the long process.

However, this process has been streamlined with the addition of Cineware.  This software allows the Cinema 4D creations to be edited directly in After Effects, so you won’t need to import it after each edit. You can just drag and drop Cinema 4D creations right into After Effects and edit it right there.

This is most needed when a client decides to make changes on his order for a video. You can make changes quickly this way because you can render the Cinema 4D creation right in After Effects.

Even if you don’t have Cinema 4D on your computer, you can still take advantage of Cineware by using Cinema 4D Lite, which is a new software that comes free with After Effects. It allows users of After Effects to use 3D effects without purchasing another software package.

This will undoubtedly allow many artists and animators an opportunity to use and experiment with 3D effects without having to invest any money. It also will allow the use of various popular 3D exchange formats if you already use something other than Cinema 4D for your video creations.

It also will allow you to use Cinema 4D’s multi-pass system, which allows you to animate using multiple layers. You also can adjust your point of view using the camera tool in After Effects, or even adjust your view for each layer in Cinema 4D.

Another feature is pixel motion blur, which allows you to blur the image to create a sense of motion. Warp Stabilizer VFX will allow you to smooth the video of handheld footage, which tends to bounce around too much. You also can lock a shot automatically with it.

The main advantage to all of this is time. The time you save when using the software will allow you to put more time into being creative and putting your personal touch on the project. If you’ve fallen behind, you can catch up much more quickly than you could have done before Cinema 4D was introduced.

If you like Cinema 4D Lite but would like to have a more powerful software tool, you can easily upgrade to Cinema 4D. It won’t be free, but it could well be worth it depending on how much video graphics and animation you will be doing.

Darin McGilvra

Darin McGilvra has been a professional writer since 1997. He currently writes about personal finances, information technology and sports for numerous websites, including mycashtime.com, mchelper.com, and Yahoo! Sports.

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