After Effects Exporter for Blender

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Paolo Ciccone writes:

For years the integration of 3D in the post-processing pipeline has been dominated by commercials applications. Today there is an alternative that I think can compete with the “big guys”. I just released the After Effects Exporter for Blender.

[...]

The exporter, nicknamed AEE, is released as Open Source Software and I hope to have it included in the final release of Blender 2.5. While other solutions have been tried before, I believe this is the first time that Blender has such complete support for After Effects.
This program integrates in the File/Export menu of Blender and it allows you to export an entire animation from Blender to After Effects,  including the camera, lights, 3D meshes, planes, all of which will create corresponding After Effects 3D solids, and footage. The Exporter even supports multiple passes.
Paolo has prepared a 20-minute video tutorial on how to use the exporter, and supplied a link to download the projects files, which includes the exporter, a Blender Python program, a manual, and the blender file shown in the tutorial.
Watch the video and download the files from Creative Cow here, or visit Paolo’s site here
(Also thank you to Mitch Klein for reporting that Creative Cow has just recently added a Blender forum!)
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    • Jonathan

      Nice

    • Bullit

      Amazing

    • http://www.konrad-haenel.de konrad8ha

      This is perfect! I used the old exporter for 2.49, but this is much, much better.

    • jack

      Now we only need a Nuke exporter and we would be ready to work!

    • http://riokuro.com Rio

      This is great but i’d really appreciate them fixing the multilayer exr erporter, it’s been broken for ages now! is simply makes a dent in your workflow.

      that said, i can’t wait to see this for nuke!

    • abhifx

      let me tell this to my friends using maya and max. go blender…

    • http://rexprime.com rexprime

      this is great news. well almost all blender news is good news…

    • MmAaXx

      awesome news!!

      I work with blender 3dsmax and AE, an exporter will save my life!

    • http://talesfromthecellar.com Mitch

      This is great, since I’m using both tools. Thanks, Paolo!

    • http://www.blendswap.com matthew

      OH, please let it work… Don’t toy with me. Can’t wait to try it out.

    • Olaf

      That was awesome! I was looking for exactly this kind of tutorial for some time. And now I know|!

      P.S.: He forgot to mention that Serious Magic was bought by Adobe and that Ultra 2 is actually incorporated into CS3.

    • Marcus

      Oh wow,
      not only an exporter but also fabulous documentation. That’s how it should be!

    • comeinandburn

      Nice Work!!!!

      I can’t wait to use this!

    • Seanser

      This looks like it could offer up many great possibilities, well done and thank you very much!

    • http://www.bartsnews.net/ Barts

      Excellent!

      Congratulations on a job well done and thanks for the tutorial!

    • http://www.jarred.co.za Jarrhead

      Rock and roll!

    • Jordan Harris

      Wow – really looking forward to this.

      - J

    • http://pen-pistols.blogspot.com Dabuty

      Does any one know a program like after effects but open source?
      Thanks

    • opes

      FINALY!!! THANX

    • tom

      For exporting to Nuke, see this thread,

      http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=124035

      LetterRip

    • Marcus

      @DABUTI:

      http://ramenhdr.sourceforge.net/

      Is in development, but progressing fast.

      Ironically Blender seems to be the best free compositing app right now, but having an exporter to commercial apps is a nice thing.

    • tom

      For those that need NUKE export, could you please test a current Blender 2.50 svn build and try the FBX export and report what is not working correctly for you?

      According to the Nuke Manual, Nuke uses FBX for importing camera and other data (it can also use .chan for camera only, and bojour for camera only).

      LetterRip

    • Corniger

      I recently bought the whole masters collection, so this is now the icing on that cake :-D Now I also need to learn After Effects. Ok. :)

    • MartianR

      Such an essential addition. Congratulations. I would dearly love to see a similar exporter for Apple Motion 4

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

      So incredibly cool.

    • http://www.mangagothicmedia.com Josh Clark

      Oh this is just fantastic

    • hamza

      nice>>>>>>>>>>

    • http://www.bredewegonline.nl Dreas

      Thats good news

    • okichkoatl

      thats Amazing, really amazing, thanks, it would be nice if there will be for Nuke too.

    • http://www.preta3d.com Paolo

      Just wanted to say thanks to all for the great feedback. I don’t use Motion or Nuke so other exporters will need to be done by other people but the .MGX tag was selected to be non AE-specific so hopefully it will be adopted by others.
      If you have any issues with the exporter please post in the Creative COW Blender forum or at my website.

      Best!

    • MartianR

      @Paolo,

      I’m sure that Motion and other exporter variants will appear over time, as 2.5 moves towards being production-ready, and as the take-up of Blender broadens. I have colleagues who use AE extensively, and they (and many others) will really value your very valuable and generous solution.

      All the best,

      Martin

    • SaphireS

      Great one!

    • Frank Busch

      Wow,

      I saw the Video about AEE yesterday. At the moment I can´t believe that it is so easy to export my Blender Files to AE. – I quickly finish my coment and check it out myself ;-)

      I´m pretty shure it will work out great…

      Paolo, thanks a million times. Fantastic idea.

      Thanx again

      Frank B. from Berlin

    • http://www.preta3d.com Paolo

      Hey Frank.
      You’re very welcome. Let me know how it works for you. We have a great Blender forum on Creative COW, dedicated to the Motion Graphics artists who use Blender. Suggestions are welcome. I’m also going to add an email notification feature from my website to keep people updated automatically of the new developments of the AEE, like the Blender 2.5 version. It will be ready later today at http://www.preta3d.com

      Best.

    • Olav Balm

      Hi Paolo,

      I tried this in AE 4 and took me a while to get it right.
      In the end it worked out allright. It’s great !!
      But….take notice of the fact that you HAVE to make a PLANE in Blender
      I was so foolish to make it from a cube and scaled that one ; with a bad result in AE.
      Took me hours and looking at the video-tut over and over again to finally realize that I
      made a mistake in the beginning by not using a PLANE. So be aware of that folks !!

      Cheers,
      Olav

    • http://www.preta3d.com Paolo

      Hi Olav.
      Yes, the usual method of duplicating the face from a cube will result into a “plane” that is 90 degrees rotated in the X axis. Now, to fix it in the AE comp you can simply open the rotation parameters (press r), Alt-Click on the stopwatch for the X rotation. AE will show you the expression for that parameter. To the end that add “+90″ and the rotation should be corrected for all keyframes.

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      Really useful. Thanks for your efforts. Appriciated.

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