Projection Man

ProjectionMan is a helpful resource to hopefully make camera mapping in Cinema 4D more attractive to you.

So, what advantages does camera mapping offer?

Camera mapping is a relatively intuitive, non-technical method of projecting a texture onto an object. You don't have to be an expert in 3D to achieve good camera mapping results. This is one of the reasons that this type of texturing is preferred for the "matte painting" projection method used in film production. Traditional matte painting consisted of painting photo-realistic backgrounds for film sets.

Since the introduction of 3D graphics technologies to the film industry, matte painting has steadily evolved from a background element and is increasingly being used on foreground objects, resulting in more and more 3D objects that need to be painted on. Camera mapping was developed so that matte painting artists can continue to work in a 2D environment with familiar tools (e.g., Photoshop). This is where Projection Man comes in. ProjectionMan offers the following advantages:

• Simple setup of working environment: Automatic generation of materials with correct channels (e.g., Illumination, Alpha) and corresponding Material tags
• Seamless porting of rendered image files, including alpha channels, for subsequent editing, e.g., in Photoshop
• Multiple cameras and their projections can be easily managed
• Easy selection of Photoshop layers to be displayed or rendered