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Mike Griggs replies
Cinema 4D and After Effects are two applications that have longed worked well together. However, what happens when a third-party After Effects plugin like Red Giant’s Trapcode Form is being used to create UI elements?
Cinema 4D’s 3D camera animation control is much easier to use than in After Effects, and thanks to Cineware these camera moves are easy to import into After Effects.
Thankfully, it is straightforward to get Cinema 4D, After Effects and Trapcode Form working well together. The trick is to use Cinema 4D’s excellent file export toolset to create an OBJ object, while also using the External Compositing tag to make null objects that can be easily updated from a live Cinema 4D file. This makes it easy to modify the camera animation in the C4D file, which then updates in After Effects without the need to create a new version of the data.
This system allows the artist to create elaborate OBJS. These can then be manipulated using Trapcode Form’s vast array of look styles to develop complex UI elements that render in seconds, allowing for near-real-time feedback. In this example, I will show how to prepare and export a city model from Cinema 4D into After Effects.
This method also works with OBJ sequences. This means that animated character models, for example, can be loaded into Trapcode Form to get the best of both worlds – with complex 3D animation and particle systems mixing together to create bespoke UI systems.
Once this way of working is mastered, it can be utilised to mix other third-party After Effects 3D plugins as well. By having a ‘defined’ null created by Cinema 4D using Cineware, this means that the null can be used as a ‘focus’ point for attaching other After Effects nulls that many thirdparty 3D plugins for After Effects now create for this very purpose.
Trapcode Form loads in the OBJ file through the plugin, making it available for every layer in the After Effects process. This means that multiple Trapcode Form layers can be stacked in an After Effects composition, all parented to the same animated null created in Cinema 4D. These can each have different effects applied, allowing for complex animations to be built in a fraction of the time than would be possible with similar systems. Let’s take a look at the process.