After Effects x C4D Racing!

We created a fully animated race course complete with cars, animated crowd, tyre marks and exhaust that can be controlled completely through After Effects. The assets themselves are prerendered in Cinema 4D, but all their position, direction and the tracks and smoke they leave are all controlled in AE.

A closeup of the action, at 8K (the scale the piece is rendered at) you can smell the grease.

An early proof of concept showing a car model rotating tangentially to follow a path set by a spline in after effects. The direction of the null on the spline selects the correct frame from pre-rendered sequence to have the car feel like its turning with the track.

A slightly more advanced set of renders showing how we can attach tyre marks and exhaust can be applied by nulls that follow the path the cars follow.

You can see how responsive the direction and speed of the cars on the track are in this real time screen capture.

A series of classic race car liveries to place the event in time!

Finally a shot rendered entirely in 3D to show a first person map of the track.