After Effects CC comes bundled with the 3D application CINEMA 4D Lite. But many new users are intimidated by 3D space. After Effects Apprentice offers three training courses just for C4D beginners. In this installment, After Effects expert Chris Meyer shows you how to create, extrude, and animate 3D text in C4D Lite, and believably composite it over a 2D background inside After Effects. The tutorials cover creating 3D text from scratch, animating with effectors, texture mapping and lighting the text, working with 3D cameras, and rendering. Chris also shows a workflow for extruding Illustrator artwork for animation.
The first course in the series, , includes an overview of the C4D Lite user interface, as well as important setup information you need to know whenever you use live C4D layers in After Effects. We recommend you watch it first if you have no prior experience with C4D.