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R
returac40658103
Participant
June 8, 2017
Question

360 Video, 3D Particles, and C4D

  • June 8, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 564 views

I know basic 3D modeling and am trying to create a basic sphere with a white material on it in Cinema 4D, then bring it into After Effects where I have two particle systems on top of a monoscopic 360 video. The particle systems are following a ring shape and going opposite directions. I'd like to make the particles 3D by choosing a Textured Particle Type, then using the 3D C4D layer as the Texture Layer...is this possible?

As soon as I save the C4D file and go back to AE, the 3D C4D sphere shows up with the grid and nothing in my AE comp will play I'm using Adobe CC 2017 and have a brand new laptop with an Intel i7, Nvidia 930MX, 16GB of ram, and a 1TB hard drive. I also build VR experiences with Unity and my computer runs just fine with Unity and Blender running at the same time. I've been trying to problem solve this for a few weeks and would really appreciate some help from all the AE/C4D ninjas out there!

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2 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
June 8, 2017

What Szalam said. Your workflow probably doesn't make much sense to begin with. AE simply has no integral 3D space and all 3D-ish effects are basically just flattened buffer overlays of rendered views from another spearate universe rendered inside the plug-in code. unlees special provision has been made for them to hook up to AE API calls, they won't respond to one another or AE's 3D on a general level for that matter. AE doesn't support any native 3D geometry, anyway. Even the Ciname 4D comp renderer is just a lousy hack at this point. So as far as your plans are concerned there's a big Noooooo here. You probably will be able to pull this off much quicker in Unity or Blender natively, anyway.

Mylenium

Szalam
Community Expert
SzalamCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 8, 2017

The particles will not actually be three dimensional. And, by that I mean, they won't be spheres that you can move around in space. You can, however, use them as sprites always oriented to the camera and they will appear to be 3d when/if the camera moves around. However, you might as well make your spheres with CC Sphere in AE for that. No reason to use C4D.

R
returac40658103Author
Participant
June 15, 2017

Thanks Szalam! That sounds like generally what I'm trying to accomplish. Whenever I try to add the CC Sphere effect to the particles, the particles disappear. I've tried changing the settings for CC Sphere, but am not sure what I'm doing wrong. Any suggestions?

Szalam
Community Expert
SzalamCommunity Expert
Community Expert
June 15, 2017

You might be doing things the wrong way around. The CC Sphere effect should be applied to a smaller layer that you reference as the source for your particles in the particle effect which you have applied to a different, composition-sized layer.

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