Maxon’s CINEMA 4D is our 3D application of choice because it integrates so well with our main tool, Adobe After Effects. Although we’ve written about it and demonstrated it in sessions and classes, we never got around to creating a comprehensive course on the subject – until now.

We’ve released an hour and a half course through both lynda.com and Cineversity. In addition to the traditional techniques of transferring camera and light information and creating hold-out mattes, we also discuss at length how to better blend new graphics created in After Effects into your already-rendered 3D world from CINEMA, including lighting effects and shadows. We also take a side trip into the wonders of multipass rendering, including the ability to alter 3D lighting, shadows, and reflections after the fact. Along the way, we also discuss other important issue such as frame rates and pixel aspect ratios. The course comes with exercise files (premium subscribers only at lynda.com; for Cineversity members, the files are connected to the second movie in the series).

If you’re not a member of either Cineversity or lynda.com and want to check it out, you can get a free 7-day all-access pass to lynda.com by clicking here. A few of the movies are also available there for free preview.

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