Camera data export script

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shakevp3.jpgThe pipeline including a video compositing program like After Effects and a 3D app is quite common among motion design professionals. More than just rendering the 3D content and importing it into AE or Shake, its often needed to use the camera data to get correct tracking.

Sometime ago, when presenting Blender to a friend who works extensively with After Effects, one of the first questions he asked me was if one could smoothly get the camera data from Blender into AE. After some research on this subject, the results were not very pleasing: there was no painless way of doing it.

Well… seems that things have changed!

Andrew Rollo (a.k.a. osxrules) made a Python script that allow us to do export camera data to After Effects and Apple Shake using Maya ASCII format.

You can download it on the BlenderArtists.org thread. Be sure to check for updated versions (in the time of writing this, they are in this post).

Wondering if it works well? I’ll quote a response made by an user known as dsp_418:

I’ve played with your script: actually, it rocks.
I’m not getting any kind of problem, and finally I can exchange data between Blender and After Effects. That’s really important for my job (and I think for many other people around who use Blender and do compositing in a commercial environment).

Thanks, Andrew, for making this and Piero for the heads up!

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    • freakydude

      That’s pretty cool, Imagine using this in combination with the blenses script.
      http://home.metrocast.net/%7Echipartist/BlensesSite/index.html
      http://www.mindinsomnia.com/tutorials/image_2_3d/

      Sweet stuff.

    • http://www.martineschoyez.com.ar Martín Eschoyez

      Cool! I work a lot in AE, but i think that knowing the composite nodes & VSE i can replace it very well… i hope to have the time to switch this year…

    • Dread Knight

      osxrules not xD

      Anyway, you did a great job! :)

    • http://www.liquidgate.it rIO.sK

      That is a great news, but… it’s me or the files (and the site) are gone offline ??

    • http://www.peerlessproductions.com Colin Levy

      DUDE!! That’s so awesome! I’ve needed a script like this for a long, long time…

    • http://www.virtualmatter.org KevinW

      YES!!!!!!!! WOOOOOOHOO!

      –
      Kevin

    • rdthjdrtj

      Awesome, now real world data can be used very good.

      Would love to see this in Blender native.

    • http://www.robotsoup.com Ian Hubert

      AH! Epic! Glroious! So awesome!

      This shall be HIGHLY helpful. Andrew Rollo… you the man.

    • rupchar

      I am having trouble with this i am using after effects CS3 but when i import the camera i doesnt have the data attached with it :-( (upsetting!) it looks like it des but doesnt i even had the updated version but still know joy i also keep getting this message in the code box of blender every time i try this:

      scene.getCurrentCamera deprecated!
      use scene.objects.camera instead
      scene.getChildren Depercated!
      use scene.objects instead

      i am a newbe so i dont know how to do any of the coding so i am in need of some help!!!

      ANYBODY…?

    • sambre

      Hi everyone,

      First thanks for that script, i’ve been looking for it…

      I need your help, I have a macbook pro running with Leopard and the latest version of Blender and I’m having trouble making it work (the script, of course). Can someone guide me trhough the installation of this script (on a mac)?

      Thanks.

    • Eric

      Reply to sambre

      you need to use terminal to show hidden files first (i had the same problem yesterday)

      open terminal and type:
      defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE
      then press enter
      then type:
      killall Finder
      then press enter

      then go through your computer and navigate to the blender application

      then right click and click on show package contents

      then go into contents, macos, .blender, and drop it into scripts folder

      then go back into terminal and type the exact same set of lines except change TRUE to FLASE (this makes everything back to normal)

      by the way I am having the same problem with the camera data not being there in after effects. It has all the null objects and the camera but no keyframes or anything, just no data attached to the objects or camera.

      PLEASE HELP

    • Clas

      Thanks Eric!=)

    • http://www.my3djourney.tk kenneth

      how can i install the script on windows 7 – 64 bit?

      the blender i have is 2.49b
      python i have installed 2.6.4