After Effects and Cinema 4D Lite: 3D Motion Graphics and Visual Effects Using CINEWARE

I've worked in post-production (video conversion, editing, titles) for close to ten years and 3d (Maya, Max, and Modo) for four years mostly optimizing interfaces for real-time engines and product modeling and texturing using MARI. I'm transitioning to motion graphics and animation because that just seems to be the work that is more available now. I've used digital tutors extensively for awhile and youtube as well for lessons. While DT is good to great, sometimes it does fall short of matching results with the promotional material for some lessons (and it is quiet expensive). For those who have existing experience with other 3d applications and want to get a better understanding of how to use Cineware to increase the efficiency of their pipeline with After Effects, I highly recommend this book. Another review here felt that this wasn't good enough for a professional and more for a hobbyist, I would say it depends on wha the audience is looking for. C4D Lite is included with your subscription to Adobe's After Effects and I feel is a worthy application for editors, finishers, or post-professionals who have no true interest in 3d but have to wear more hats now in terms of their skills. C4D lite is cheaper (free in essence) and has a more robust community and support than it's next closest competitor — Element 3D. Element 3D is a fine product, but it is limited with what it can do when compared to C4D lite. ALL that being said, this book does a terrific job of explaining how C4D lite handles most of the simple tasks you would need to accomplish for commercials. It's not the job of the book to turn you into a professional motion graphics artist or achieve super polished results — that's on you. It explains the tools, how they work, when you can use them and how the results can be easily transferred to After Effects for further finishing. It beats having to render ever frame of animation in another 3d application, import into AE, composite and start working. This book opened my eyes to the possibility of this pipeline and I'm now going to upgrade to a Pro license of C4D as a result of how efficient it is.

WOWIf you don’t know anything about Cinema C4D you MUST buy & read this book. Chris Jackson’s book holds your hand thru each step: he tells you what to click, what to type in and poof you now have created the same item as Chris. REMEMBER this book is for someone that does not know anything about Cinema C4D. I was able to find the example files right where Chris said they would be. After reading the book I can say I can now turn on C4D and make a box, but I’m not an expert in any way shape or form. Their are so many switches and toggles that a book this small could not possibly go over everything, what I did get out of this book was an idea of how to build other things and understand about how ‘effectors’ change things. Now when I watch YouTube videos I have a better understanding of what they are talking about. The exercises went by very fast and I was suppressed by how much information is there.Now for the bad parts of the book: it was written for R14(I believe) on a MAC so things like ‘Specular’ are now called ‘Reflection’ and some of the toggles are either moved or missing. You can’t hold this against Chris because at the time the book was written they were there. Also some of the projects did not completely work as expected and I’m thinking this is because of version differences, again no knock against Chris.

I purchased this for my Broadcast Graphics 2 class and this came in handy. I enjoyed how simple and easy it was to understand. It worked well with my CC15 Aftereffects. The price is fair and much better than many school books I've had to purchase through the years.

Wanting to get into a more in depth into Motion Graphics and After Effects so purchased this book. Unlike Adobe Press books this book doesn't have any of the materials (Source files) that are referenced for this book.The references in it go to a website and references source files but that site isn't maintained and those source files don't exist. Keep looking there is more out there.

This Book is really an Excellent source for After effect and Cinema 4d integration.It is a step by step based on real world projects.I really enjoyed this book and recommend it for any one who wants to add 3d skills to his workflow.

Excellent book! Simple and easy to understand exercises that explain some VERY powerful stuff. This book is so effective that my motion graphics instructor has integrated it with the class and it helps tremendously. Only reason that I don't give it a full five stars is because I feel that there should at least be some basic video guides included as this is a motion graphics book. The book includes final composites and video material to work with, I just think that having a visual representation to go along with the steps would help a lot for anyone who has trouble with long text tutorials. GREAT BOOK!

i wasn't going to write a review because the other reviews are reflecting my thoughts very well. but, this is a very good book. it's very well organized and well laid out. it would be nice if it were updated to 2021 but that's a function of book sales. this is me nodding my head in agreement with the praise of the other reviews.

Great instructions and easy to follow. The short cuts are a big help. Steps also have images to help explain the process.