While working on a project, Robert Leger came across a need and an issue in need of a solution. By creating planes in Cinema 4D that flipped in 3D space, meant to reveal different pieces of footage, for compositing purposes, Robert wanted the planes to be represented as solids in After Effects, and this is where the issue began.
With the XPresso tag node you reference every tag that has been added to an object. In this example we’ll set up a simple iteration in XPresso and combine it with the tag node in order to change the “Size X” and “Size Y” values of a bunch of External Compositing tags
Here, Robert briefly touches on the methods for creating that project by taking a look at the workflow from creating the rectangle artwork in Adobe Illustrator, and using that in Cinema 4D as splines and then extruded, right through to creating the render passes for compositing.
In wanting to have solids exported to After Effects, Robert explains that using the External Compositing Tag in Cinema 4D has the feature to have solids, however, the problem arose that the size of the solids from the tag were not the size of the planes, and Robert shows in this tutorial how to use Xpresso to link the X and Y size of the solid generating compositing tag.
Check out Robert’s post for Using the Tag Node in Xpresso here where you can read all about his technique for exporting the scene to After Effects including the camera, and also including the solids with correct sizes.