Media

This year we decided to jump into the 3D world by adding Maxon’s Cinema 4D to our motion graphics tool shed. Although we’d already been able to dabble with Zaxwerks‘ 3D Invigorator & ProAnimator plugins for After Effects, we had been a little frustrated with their limitations. Now six months after getting a hold of Cinema 4D, along with its MoGraph and Net Render modules (addons), we’re very excited about what it has done for us. But it hasn’t been without its challenges. Here are a few things we’ve had to learn, and some things we really love about it.

It’s not compositing. No layers or effect filters, just creating things that could exist in real life. You don’t have to fake anything – we’ve enjoyed the way realistic shadows, shines and gradients just naturally appear as we design a scene. But it’s certainly a whole new way of thinking that takes some getting used to.

Integration. It’s been fairly simple to render out a single frame with an alpha channel and use it for a print project, but we’re still learning the best workflow for using it in conjunction with After Effects and Final Cut. While the results are often pleasing, it involves some very time-consuming renders, and it’s hard to match the 3D look with any 2D elements we would add with any other program. Animating to music is also very challenging in C4D, but we’ve really enjoyed using it to design end tags and transition graphics.

Rendering. Don’t plan on using your Macbook Pro unless you enjoy getting 2nd degree burns as it threatens to fly off your lap. My Mac Pro even sweats pretty hard. In order to really see what you’re making, you have to constantly be rendering previews. For our current sermon series, Solomon Says, I built words to look like they were made out of stone. Each single-frame render took about 10 minutes at 72 dpi, and 30 minutes at 300 dpi. Making constant corrections and tweaks to the lighting and materials required constant rendering, which ate up my time fairly quickly. The NET Render module allows us to farm out all our computers for rendering, but it’s only useful with animations.

Learning Curve. Although C4D is a sleek and efficient program for 3D, it’s still like walking into the cockpit of a 747. I went through all the training on Lynda.com and explored some Creative Cow tutorials, but after all that I really had to spend some serious hours tinkering around with it myself before I could do anything useful. It has been a very rewarding application to learn, and I haven’t regretted a single minute I’ve spent drudging through the previously alien-looking interface. You might be surprised how quickly you can get on your feet and start impressing some folks.