80+ Excellent Cinema 4D Tutorial and Best Practices
Layered GFX
80+ Excellent Cinema 4D Tutorial and Best Practices
Layered GFX
I found this great tutorial by Jerzy Drozda Jr to create an advanced 3D planet. So I took the .AEP file and modified it a little and rendered the video for you. It is 25 seconds long at 720p and 24fps. Enjoy.
A lot of new After Effects users and sadly even seasoned users get hung up when it comes to rendering their videos. The most common mistake that I have seen people make when rendering their videos is choosing the “Animation” compression type when outputting a QuickTime video file. This results in ridiculously huge file with an unnecessary level of detail. This blunder is soon followed by another when the inexperienced user tries their hand at the AVI output setting. More frustration overcomes the user when they experience a tremendous loss to the level of quality in their video, long render times and large files. When it comes to rendering videos for the playback or further video editing leave the “Animation” and “AVI” outputs to the pros.
Rendering High Quality Video for Further Encoding
The Quick-Time “Photo – JPG” compression type is what you should be using if you are archiving source files from AE, rendering video to import into your video editor or rendering video to later encode into video playback format like WMV, MP4 or MPEG. “Photo – JPG” compression can create relatively small video files without sacrificing much of the the quality of the video. That is why “Photo – JPG” is the compression type of chose when it comes to stock video clips bought over the web. The quality is superb and the file size is manageable.
Two things you should keep in mind when it comes to the settings for these two compression types. One is compressor depth and the other is compressor quality. The depth is the bit-depth of color. For “Photo – JPG” you want to keep this on Color. Compressor quality is something to be noted when using “Photo – JPG” because it determines overall compression quality. It is a good practice to keep this marker somewhere on “High” (If you choose “Best” you are going to be left with a very large file.)
Rendering High Quality Video for Easy Distribution and Playback
It is common to render a video straight from After Effects into a playable file that is good for the web or universal distribution. On a Windows machine or on a Mac equipped with Flip4Mac, Window Media Video (WMV) is a good choice if the viewers will be Windows based. A general set of WMV export settings are as follows: WMV Standard, One pass, constant bit rate (CBR), Quality of 80 and a Bit rate of 2000 Kbps SD, 3000 Kbps for WS-SD and 5000 Kbps for 720p.
Another common form of distribution is the Flash Video (FLV) file format. A general set of export settings for this file format are as follows: Max data rate 650-2000 Kbps, On2 VP6 video codec (Sorenson Spark is a less desirable alternative) and a frame rate “Same as Source”.
Lastly one of my favorite formats to render video in is xH.264. This produces a very high quality video that that is small in file size. At times this can be a very complex format to use because of all the setting variations, so stick with the factory presets if you are unsure. Here are some general settings I like to use: NTSC, CBR of 2Mbps, Progressive field order, square pixels and “main” profile with a level of 3.0.
Written by Jeff McIntosh
1. Stockmusic.net
A great stock music site with some nice features like “find more like this” links, embedded flash music preview players, and one click download available demos. Tracks sell for $29.95.
2. Revostock
A growing collection of stock music and sound effects. The site offers rollover music previews, extended license options and in depth file specifications. Tracks sell for $10-40 depending on the licensing agreement you choose.
3. Narrator Tracks
A nicely composed collection of stock music in a user friendly format with well written descriptions. Tracks sell for $34.95.
4. The Music Bakery
A well categorized collection of stock music and effects available in different audio formats and lengths. The tracks sell for $34-47.
5. The Beat Suite
An expanding site of music beats that are well categorized and easy to preview with embedded flash players. The tracks sell for $20-60.
Honorable mention: The Best Sites for Royalty Free Music
Written by Jeff McIntosh
1. Ayato@web
Ayato Fujii from Japan is the producer of this fantastic resource and has provided over 50 exceptional After Effects tutorials with step-by-step instruction, screen shots and video previews. A moderate understanding of After Effects is required to complete these tutorials and many of them require third party plug-ins from Trapcode and Red Giant Software.
2. VideoCopilot
Andrew Kramer from the USA is the producer and host of over 70 After Effects all screen-casted for easy reference. Andrew has kindly included the sources files for most of the tutorials however some of them require third party plug-ins or rely on other visual effects software.
3. Layers
The fine people at the Adobe Layers magazine have been posting an assortment of After Effects tutorials and have a collection of about 30 now. The tutorials come as either screen-casts or written documents and will inspire both the begginner and intermediate. Tutorials for CS4 are becoming more prominent on the site and of course the integration of Illustrator and Photoshop are showcased as well.
4. Pixel2Life
This is a portal for an assortment of different tutorials provided by many different designers. The site boasts around 100 tutorials ranging from animation, text effects, video correction and audio. With so much to choose from it is a good starting place for anyone looking for tutorials.
5. CGArena
Despite only having 9 tutorials, CGArena is a diamond in the ruff. It holds many interesting tutorials created by different designers in screen-cast and written form. Some even include the source files so check it out and you might find something you like.
6. Graymachine
Harry J Frank is a After Effects and scripting wizard and has provided almost 2 dozen tutorials that look at the finer details of the program and the third party plug-ins we know and love.
7. Rhys Works
Rhys Enniks is an up and coming designer from the UK who is producing some one of a kind After Effects tutorials. His collection consists of a dozen or so screen-casts and most them rely heavily on the Trapcode Particular plug-in. His tutorilas are getting literally tens of thousands of hits and his site is defiantly worth the click.
8. Designer Today
This is my second least favorite site out of the collection because it lacks thumbnails showing the effect making the site very difficult to navigate. Its collection of over 150 tutorials seems impressive, but once you drill down inside of them you start to realize that a lot of them are outdated. Learn at your own risk.
9. Creative COW
My least favorite place for After Effects tutorials is Creative COW. Its endless pages with poorly designed thumbnails, oddly shaped advertisements, unnecessary text, red coloured headings and blue coloured links make me run for the hills whenever looking for a specific tutorial.
Written by Jeff McIntosh
ProLost posted a nice After Effects 7 preset called Film Burn.
filmBurn.ffx is an After Effects 7.0 Animation Preset that automatically creates the overexposed “roll-out” effect, where the tail (and the head if you want) of a clip flickers into overexposure. It’s aware of the in- and out-points of your footage layers in the After Effects timeline, so you can experiment with different effects just by trimming your layers differently.
Smashing Magazine just wrote an insightful new article titled “7 Ingredients of Good Corporate Design“. It is a great article that outlines how a logo, typography, colors, brand, quality, community and culture play important roles in business design. These truths translate into many areas of design and are the fundementals of design success.
This is just a preset project file that comes with C4D. I thought it looked nice so I animated a camera and made a simple flyover composition. I thought it could be useful.
I hope this chart will help you to understand the differences between the many video size standards available. NTSC is missing for some reason, but I suppose it could fall under the VGA (640×480) category. NTSC is 720×480 with a pixel aspect ratio of 0.9 giving it a video resolution of 648×480.
When I heard that Trapcode-people.net was abandoned I was very disappointed. It was a one of a kind community where people contributed there Trapcode plugin presets and allowed users to download them freely. Within the collection were a few very high quality files that became an important asset to my work flow. Whenever I had a project with a new challenge I would always click over to Trapcode-people.net to see if there were any solutions ready to be downloaded. More often than not I could find something that could be adapted to meet my needs. Now with the site gone I am at a loss and I know that other designers are too.
While the site was up I did manage to archive some of the preset files and find more using Archive.org. I want to offer all these files to you and hope that the spirit of Trapcode People will live on.
Here are some of the files the zip contains:
Download file
(Some of the files have errors in them and you cannot open them up directly. The workaround is to import the After Effects project file into an existing project file.)
3d-particle-line.aep, 3Dboxs2.aep, 3dlines.aep, 3dplant.aep, aboveclouds.aep, adifferentkindofsphere.aep, alphabet.aep, atom.aep, aurora.aep, birds.aep, confetti.aep, fireworks.aep, flare.aep, fuzzyflower.aep, glowball.aep, grass.aep, grassfreebie.aep, impacticular.aep, leavesparticular.aep, lines.aep, neon.aep, new_partiulcar_#8.aep, novaticularlux.aep, pyropackpalfireworkscascade.aep, rain.aep, slowrisingdust.aep, spermticular.aep, splaticular.aep, supernova.aep, text2circles.aep, tunnel.aep, volcanolavaexpl.aep.
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