Description from Mode Adjust:
Rendered entirely using Cineware inside of After Effects CC
Mode Adjust wanted to try out the new Cineware rendering solution inside of After Effects - where a Cinema 4D scene can be rendered on the fly during the compositing/After Effects process - so we worked up this little short to test it all out. It was important to keep the characters and storyline simple, so as much time as possible could be spent working with Cineware and putting it through it's paces. There is a level of freedom that Cineware brought to the table; being able to hop into C4D at any moment in the composite and change whatever was needed, was pretty liberating. Although, the price paid for that flexibility is speed in the composite in After Effects. Updating changes and RAM previewing can take some time, deepening on what Cineware needs to be render. In general though, and as would be expected, the simpler the 3D being rendered by Cineware, the better/faster the process seems to be inside of After Effects.
Overall, this was a great test of the software and gave us a really good idea of what Cineware might be good for in production. There are definitely instances where the old tried and true method of rendering passes out of 3D will still work better and be faster on the composite side of things; but it's pretty exciting to see where this is all going. In future versions of Cineware we'll be most anxious to see what updates are made on the speed of rendering front. In particular, will Team Rendering be available through Cineware? We sure hope so!
Director - Marshall Bex
Producer - Chris Webster
Concepting - Monte Simard & Marshall Bex
3D/Compositing Lead - Monte Simard
Additional Compositing - Russell Hirtzel
Live Action Shoot - Monte Simard & Russell Hirtzel
Music - Grant Harold
Producer - Chris Webster
Concepting - Monte Simard & Marshall Bex
3D/Compositing Lead - Monte Simard
Additional Compositing - Russell Hirtzel
Live Action Shoot - Monte Simard & Russell Hirtzel
Music - Grant Harold
I did all of the modeling, texturing, rigging, and lighting for this project. For the rigging, I did something that I haven't done with a rig before, and that was to make use of the bend and twist deformers inside of Cinema 4D to give the joints a softer, broader bend. For the penguin and robot, I built simple skeletons and parented the body parts to the bones rather than skinning, and then I added the deformers accordingly. After that, I rigged everything up in Xpresso so that the joints controlled the deformers and everything was controlled by sliders. The dinosaur was very unique and was by far the most challenging rig I've done in a long time. I used only deformers to rig it because the bone structure technique I used on the other characters didn't work. The deformers were often prone to deforming too much of the model, and without being able to use the parenting system of a bone structure, having the deformers react to one another required a lot of Xpresso . Once I had all of the rigs completed, I used C Motion to create walk cycles for each character. At that point, we filmed the plates and began compositing.
