In this tutorial, guest host Grischa Theissen demonstrates a cool technique for creating the popular photo mosaic look in Cinema 4D, where one image is made up of multiple images. Recently Grischa was working side-by-side with Tim Clapham, who helped refine the technique. I wonder what’s bringing these talented Cinema 4D artists to Australia… there must be something in our water! Watch tutorial (13min, 40MB)
The Foundry has released 3D Camera Tracker and Kronos, two exciting new plug-ins for Adobe After Effects.
Alexander of Amateurmedia.net has created a stylish new font named Typograph Pro. Also check some of the great usage examples created within Cinema 4D.
Red Giant Software has released Colorista 2, with some exciting new features and improvements. Use motionworks10 for a 1o% discount.
Fontfeed.com has an excellent column “Screenfonts” which discusses the use of fonts in movie posters.
Industrial Light and Magic has a new site. It’s quite amazing just how many productions ILM has been involved in.
Urban Dirty has terrific free grunge stock images and also provides color themes for various images with a downloadable .ASE file. You can import the .ASE file into After Effects using Swatch You Want.
32 Responses to this post
January 11, 2010 at 5:15 am |
Great tutorial. Thanks for sharing.
January 11, 2010 at 5:18 am |
Thanks Ron,
Glad you liked it!
January 11, 2010 at 7:30 am |
Hi, thanks for the tutorial was a real help!
I’m new to cinema and had trouble with a similar effect earlier on in the year so ended up animating it manually in AE which sucked!
Wish i saw this sooner!
January 11, 2010 at 3:09 pm |
Thanks Cai!
Maybe it will help you in the future on another project!
January 11, 2010 at 10:37 am |
wow grischa very cool
January 11, 2010 at 3:10 pm |
Thanks camiloesc !
January 12, 2010 at 6:00 am |
Nice Tutorial and a really good Idea to do this in C4D. I always knew that AE sucks in terms of render-management, but that it would work so smooth in C4D I never dreamed of. Its funny, because all the time we try to save 3D rendertimes (like motionblur and Dof) by using AE for the post, now it is exactly the other way
One question: In the tutorial I thought Grischa was saying he was waiting 46 hours on the PiP preperation render – really 46 hours???
January 12, 2010 at 6:17 am |
Thats right: Now its the other way around. I am not sure how it all works in AE but for this task the AE 3D is way too slow.
I meant 4-6 hours for the calculation of the photo mosaic. I guess you can run it for a bit longer to get really good results. And if you change the tiles the app needs more time for calculation as well.
January 13, 2010 at 10:15 am |
Thanks! Nice tut!
January 19, 2010 at 10:40 am |
Really helpful tutorial!
A while back i really struggled with this kinda effect. These techniques can be handy for my next project.
So thanks you!
January 19, 2010 at 3:39 pm |
Hi Willem
Glad you liked it!
Hope the next project is coming!
January 25, 2010 at 5:59 am |
Hi Grischa
Thank you for the tutorial. Much appreciated!!
January 30, 2010 at 1:11 am |
I noticed that MacOaiX has a new version (2.1) as of January 26th. Looks like it has quite a performance boost.
regards
Cameron
January 30, 2010 at 1:15 am |
Ah scratch that last comment, still living in last year. The update was Jan 26th 2009.
This is what happens when I leave tutorials for the middle of the night.
January 30, 2010 at 6:10 am |
Happened to me too. On some days I still live in 2009
January 31, 2010 at 1:53 pm |
hi Grischa
Great Tutorial, I just did a project using ayato tutorial in after effects and it was really hard to control it.
I have a question , how do you control that the images don’t get spread out in z depth positive? what i mean is to spread the images in just one direction. I want the pictures coming from behind camera to form the final mosaic image.
Thank You
Dan
February 1, 2010 at 11:12 pm |
Hi Dan!
Thanks.
Never thought of this scenario. Set everything up like in the tutorial and then only animate the minimal/maximal values in the effector tab of the random effector. That will do the trick.
There is probably another way. Would be nice to know if anyone has a clue?! Make the random effector not so random.
February 2, 2010 at 11:11 am |
What setting did you use for the motion blur for the images that are close to the camera? Did you use object motion blur or vector motion blur?
Thanks, great tutorial!
JJ
February 2, 2010 at 11:15 am |
I just found the tutorial on the motion blur.
Thanks,
JJ
February 8, 2010 at 3:27 pm |
Nicely done Grischa. I paid attention and I saw in your tutorial the pictures are not separated from each other like the final render you showed, I mean each picture it was not separated from others in edges.
Is this just a problem in video or anything else?
The most interesting thing about this effect is to see each picture individually when we move the camera between them and then they come together and make the final pic as you know.
this is just a question that I have and I want to make sure I can separate the pictures from the right edges.
Thank you for your time and art.
Best Regards,
Kamran
February 10, 2010 at 2:44 am |
Hi Kamran,
I am not sure if I understand your question right.
The PolyFX in combination with effectors, in my chase the random effector rips the picture apart. Each Pic is on a separate segment if the segment setup match the segments of the mosaic photo (etc. 80×80).
February 10, 2010 at 3:05 am |
Hello Crischa
Yes you got it right. sorry about the confusion. it’s wonderful, I want to use your tutorial to make a nice opening for a video that I’ll edit for my wife’s valentine day.
Best to you,
Kamran
February 10, 2010 at 3:37 am |
No worries.
Good luck with that!
February 10, 2010 at 7:58 am |
Are you aware of any other software that might be able to assemble a whole directory of photos into a grid of photos and then put them together into one huge photo without making a mosaic? The big grid photo works great because Cinema 4D can break it apart. I would love to use this effect on a directory of photos and not have to make a mosaic.
The problem with the mosaic software is I want to use every file in my directory and use each file only once in the scene. If I use the mosaic software it may not pick every photo and it may put some of the photos in the grid photo more than once. In my animation I just want to put all my photos into the 3D space and fly through them. I don’t want the photos to re-assemble into one big photo.
Let me know if this makes sense. If not I will try to explain it better.
Thanks,
JJ
February 10, 2010 at 1:06 pm |
Hello JJ Cyr
you can use each file only once, just click on the any image you don’t like it and change to any other image you like. the problem is you need a lot of patience.
good luck…
February 10, 2010 at 1:34 pm |
I understand what you are trying to achieve but at the moment I don’t know any solution to that.
There is probably a way in Photoshop to generate a grid of Photos with exact tiles and rows.
February 16, 2010 at 3:25 am |
did anyone try with video? is it even possible? anyway great tutorial.
February 17, 2010 at 1:12 am |
You should be able to apply a video to the material and use that as the texture on the plane. Just make the plane the video size.
Unfortunately you are probably not able to use PLAYING video as the source of the mosaic. But you are able to use still frames of video in your mosaic. Just check the MacOsAix settings.
March 29, 2010 at 10:08 pm |
Thanks guys
i am new bie in motion works thanks for the tutorial awesome
Thank You Grischa Theissen
Dushyanthan (Sri Lanka)
March 30, 2010 at 2:22 pm |
Thanks t_dusy!
You’re very welcome.
June 24, 2010 at 11:01 pm |
Grischa
Ive tried that Ayato tutorial in the past and it was a pain.. your workflow and solution is simple and effective. nice touch with the delay effector. Ive taken a few classes with tim as the instructor at fxphd.com hes the bees knees. Grischa I look forward to trying your technique. I wonder how difficult it would be to add moving video to some of those frames? Guess I’ll have to give it a shot.
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