January 16, 2011

Cinema 4D Dynamics + Depth of Field

The influence of Cinema 4D in motion graphics continued to grow in 2010, and not just in making shiny balls. It's enough to spark interest in someone burned out on 3D from time in the Electric Image world.

Some Cinema 4D training resources were mentioned awhile back on AE Portal, and an attractive library of training is available from Tim Clapham. Tim's training can be found at Fxphd, Motionworks, and now HelloLuxx, where he recently released Cinema4D Dynamics Training.

News on the intersect between 3D and Affects Effects and compositing is often covered by Lester Banks, but there's a few new resources on Cinema 4D depth of field. As Quba Michalski notes, "Cinema 4D has a rather counter-intuitive method of producing depth of field. Both the camera controls and the way in which C4D handles depth maps can be a cause of major headache, especially for the newcomers to this program."

John Dickinson has created a new Cinema 4D DOF Quick Reference Guide, which "shows a top view of an actual Cinema 4D camera with extra visuals to help explain what the numbers in the Camera Depth Of Field dialog box are actually doing."

To simplify set-ups Quba has posted Cinema 4D Depth of Field Camera Rig, a 46-minute tutorial and preset, which also aims to help with "exporting both the 3D camera data and depth maps to After Effects (and potentially other compositing packages)." [Update: there's already an upgrade to Quba's C4D rig; see iDoF Camera Rig: Community Update 1.1.]

Here's the preview video, which seems similar to what Andrew Kramer showed using just Affects Effects in a tutorial that came with Optical Flares:

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