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Maya 3d into After Effects

E

Enaver

Hey guys & girls

I make my own short films and i want to learn how to get 3d into my footage.

Ive managed to get a copy of Maya 2011 from work. Unfortuantly i dont have nuke so i cant use that.


Im aiming to get tanks, helicopters and jets into my footage but i have no idea how to do this at all and i have no idea where to start. Ive looked around loads and i just cant find anything, i must be looking in the wrong places or im blind.

I'd need a step by step guide of getting a 3d object from Maya to after effects. Also how animating it works.



Cheers everyone
 
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Is that all? lol....

You cant import 3D objects into after effects... yet. AE is a 2.5D app, not 3D.

You will have to do all of your modeling, lighting, and most of your animation in a 3D app like Maya, 3D Max, C4D or other. You'll have to render the sequence out, usually as .png (lossless with alpha) and then comp the images in AE.

Google maya basics tutorial or similar.

If you start today, you may have something that looks halfway decent in six months or so. :)
 
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?

How are going to composite without importing the footage? You need a render with either an alpha channel (which is what I would recommend since it provides cleaner edges without any halo), or a color background for keying. The most difficult part is following camera moves which will require at least 3 reference marks on the original footage. This will translate into camera tracking data in the 3D app. Once the camera tracking has been keyframed, the footage is rendered, imported in AE as a layer, set to accomidate the alpha or key color, and colormatched to the underlying footage. Remember that the lighting in the animation must match the source footage in regarding key and fill light position.

Enaver said:
I know its not easy and i didnt mean to import it in, merely to comp it in AE
Click to expand...
 
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There are a lot of different ways you could go about doing this. Depending on if the camera is moving or static will determine complexity to a certain extent. A full process from start to finish would be something like this:

___________________________________________________________________________________

Prep

Roto/Prep
3d Tracking

3D

Modeling
Texture
Rigging
Animation
Lighting

EXPORT - EXR 16/32bit, TIFF 16bit etc

2D

Comp

EXPORT FINAL

___________________________________________________________________________________

So as you are just looking to do tanks, jets etc mite be worth getting a the models from turbosquid or something so you dont have to do some of the 3d (unless you want to). For things like jets in the distance you can usually get away with rendering 1 frame and animate/comp it in. Any way, its a lot of work if its just you and especially if its a short film.
 
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To Jooble,
Sound like you have done this before.
I wanted to buy the tanks form turbosquid as welll.

For my learning, when render the tank image (for 1 frame only),
what is the render resolution setting? Should it be 2K (given
my other footage was shot in 2K) or much larger?
What is the appropriate setting for the image to be
"believeable" when the whole footage after comp in AE will be
printed to 35mm?

Say, if I decide to show the tank as much as 1/4 of the screen.
Much Thanks
 
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The usual workflow is to import your footage or ”plate” into maya and set your camera and lighting to match. You should render your sequences to match the frame size of your footage. You can render smaller images to comp into the background but rendering 1:1 will generally give you better results. If you want to show a model that takes up 25% of the frame you will need to render it full res.

Theres no single setting to make something realistic. The lighting needs to match, along with camera angle, color and texture, contrast, film grain and image sharpness to name a few.
 
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If only doing 1 frame, you'd be better of just going out and getting a picture of a tank to comp in. The reason is.. the point behind using 3d is to have your objects in 3-dimensional motion for a camera move. If all you're doing is comping in a single frame, you can go out to a standing decommissioned tank / helicopter / whatever and get a photo of it to comp in and have a much more realistic looking element in your comp.

There is so much more work in using a 3d model even to get a single frame to match your footage. At that point, it isn't that big a step to go from your single frame to a match moved 3d camera move in the 3d package to bring into your comp. If you're going to take the years to learn the 3D software to get that one frame, you may as well go full out with it ;)

3D is the one area of filmmaking that takes THE MOST TIME to learn. I've been learning filmmaking for 10 years, other than detail, that took 2 projects to figure out (the technical bits)... I've been dabbling with 3D for 20+ years and am just finally getting it figured out. The interface is different than every other program on your computer, the workflow completely alien, and the concepts behind it take far too much time to absorb.

I'm not sure what's out there for Maya, but Blender (free) has a lot of good tutorials out there (also free). These will actually help with Maya as well as the concepts are the same between all of the 3Dpackages out there, you just have to do them slightly differently in all the different packages.

Creative Cow's Blender Survival Guide is THE starting point.
BlenderGuru.com
BlenderCookie.com

This will give you the ground work for being able to import the model, texture it, light it, plant a camera that matches your footage and perhaps animate it as well.

Good luck!
 
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Guys, I am glad that I asked.
To Anim8: Yes, I'll try to bring the model into Maya and try to see if I can match the lighting, etc. It worths a try for subjects like tanks, alienships, etc.
To knightly: The effort to get a good shot of a military tank seems out of reach from where I live. Though the idea of using real photo certainly something I have to keep in mind when dealing with unreachable props. I agree with you: getting into 3D animation is not in my strong suit. Even so, the cost of rendering would drain everybody budget. I have no idea how much it cost to render a 10 second sequence. I can guess 10x24=240 frames of high quality can take about 480 days in a good PC. That's more than a year., and would cost my arm.
You are right, if I can find a standing tank, film it with a dolly, with or without green screen, and comp it in AE, that would be great.
 
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240 frames shouldn't take that long depending on the complexity of the model/textures... and at these budget levels, you're probably talking a matter of less than a week for 10seconds. I rendered a fairly complex model (not terribly complex mind you) with blender of a 36 second interior walkthrough as a previz for new museum displays over the summer and that render only took about 4 hours. Not photo realistic, but that's all texturing anyway in this case as the structure itself was REALLY simple arrays of small objects.
 
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