3D World’s question of the month

When people generally think about a compositing tool in relation to CG, they assume it is for combining rendered layers to create something of great beauty. Even though this is usually the case, it doesn’t have to be done this way around. Sometimes the effect you want to create in your 3D scene would take a lifetime to generate, while producing the same effect in After Effects may take much less time to produce. Therefore, the need to get your 3D scene into After Effects or a similar package is really of great importance, especially in this time of receding deadlines and ever-tightening budgets.

So how do we go about getting a 3D camera move into Maya? The process is actually quite simple if you have After Effects 5.5 or higher. However, while importing it may be relatively easy, the process required to get it into a useful format before importing takes a little bit longer. While we’re looking into this issue, we might as well take the opportunity to show how Maya and After Effects can be used successfully together to create fantastic motion graphics that each package alone would find impossible.

Let’s begin by addressing some of the problems encountered in the process of going from Maya to After Effects. First things first: even though you have something pertaining to a 3D coordinate space in After Effects, it is very different from Maya’s. If, for example, you move an object four units up the Y-axis in Maya, that is the same as moving an image four pixels in After Effects. So think big when working in Maya –or at least work the way you do normally, then scale up afterwards.

In After Effects you can bring only cameras and locators from Maya – and they need to have a keyframe for every single frame that they exist in. Finally, whatever your rendered image size is set to will become your After Effects composition size, so choose something that is not too large – you can always scale the composition up at render time – and stick to square pixels. (You can use an anamorphic scene, but After Effects will just reconvert it to a square pixel scene, so there’s really no need.)

Don’t let this put you off, though: as Maya and After Effects together can create really amazing results.

Click here to download the support files (24.2MB)