Can AE motion track a cineware/C4d File?

[atracksler]

Trying to do some motion tracking on a C4D file.

When I import it into AE, the tracking options under animation are all greyed out.

If I try and use the 3D camera tracker, A red bar appears saying "3D Camera Tracker analysis doesn't work with Collapse Transformations".

Any ideas?

Thanks.

[Dave_LaRonde]

There's something you're not telling us.  Please show us a screen shot of the problem -- the whole user interface.

[atracksler]

Here's a C4d project

Imported it into AE:

Animation Menu:

3D Tracker error:

[atracksler]

Hightail link for the AEP And C4d

https://spaces.hightail.com/receive/RnaElkxMjb/fi-d6c05aa6-0c6b-4992-8989-01977e178149/fv-6f270375-6...

[atracksler]

Also, here is the tracker panel, I cannot select the C4d as the motion source. (it is greyed out)

[Jose Panadero]

There is no reason to do that. In the bottom of the Cineware Plugin, you can Extract the Cinema 4D camera to get the same camera in After Effects. The extract button can extract objects with external compositing tags. lights and Cinema 4D cameras into After Effects.

[atracksler]

Will that allow me to put some text over the top of the pyramid and have it stay in 3D space with the model?

trying to have text around a mode like this:

Forerunner 630: The Numbers that Measure a Runner - YouTube

[Jose Panadero]

If you activate the 3D in your text layer, you can do it. Anyway, the best way to do it is to put a Null Object and add an External Compositing to that object in C4D to extract this info in your AE Composition. Or add a Light in C4D, put it on the top of your pyramid and extract this object position to put your 3D text in the same position as the light.

[atracksler]

I tried to use the external compositing tag this morning.

I looked at a few tutorials, and it seems that the solid is not animating with the morph camera, it stays in the same place in the viewport while the camera/model moves.

Does the external composting tag not work with morph cameras?

[Szalam]

Sometimes Cineware doesn't extract camera info correctly from stuff like the morph camera. However, if you go the AEC route, it'll be fine. You save an AEC file out of Cinema 4D in the render settings area then, if you've installed the importer plugin, you can just import that file and it will have the correct camera information.

[Rick Gerard]

Make sure you bake everything before you extract anything animated in C4D. It is always a good practice.

[Kevin-Monahan]

Hi atracksler,

Did you ever nail down this animation? How did you end up solving the issue?

Let us know,

Kevin

[marcCb]

Hi,

I had this issue similar to the one atracksler had.

Dropping the c4d file straight into AE and extracting the 3d data with Cineware "seemed" to work, but not really. The text I added in AE wasn't tracked at all. I loooooong suffered for this, one entire morning pulling my hair.

But Szalam pointed to the right direction. I was using a morph camera tag in c4d, and for some reason Cineware doesn't get it.

Then, saving the data from c4d onto a .aec file and importing this file into AE worked just fine.

See if that helps Kevin-Monahan​.

Cheers,

Marc