Archiving in AE and C4D

Posted June 20th, 2011 / By Joren Kandel in Resources, Tips

There comes a time when you’re either ready to hand  a project off to another artist or ready to tidy it up before storing it in the archives. Knowing the best way to compile and prepare your project is extremely important. It might not be exciting and sexy, but it’s one of the most vital steps when wiping your hands of a project.

After Effects

If you’re in After Effects  you go to “File” and then click “Collect Files.” This gathers all of the assets that you’ve used in your After Effects project into a single location on your hard drive.

When you’re done with a project, or handing it off to another artist, this is a great way to organize everything into one folder.

The other option you have is “Reduce Project.” You can highlight any comps that you would like to preserve, and then click “File” and then “Reduce Project.” This will delete every single asset that is NOT used in the highlighted comps.

If there are only certain comps you want to maintain, this is a good way to tidy up the project. Be careful though, because whatever is not highlighted will be gone for good!

Cinema 4D

Cinema can easily archive projects, just like After Effects, but you need to know where to look.

When you make a new texture in C4D, and load an image, hdri or video into it, a pop up will ask you if you want to create a copy of the image in the document location. I have the habit of clicking no, because I don’t really need Cinema to make more copies and take up extra space on my drive while I’m working. A lot of times I will experiment with a texture and decide not to use it and would rather not clutter up my drives with duplicate images.

When you’re handing a project to another artist, or archiving it, however, gathering all these textures into one folder is essential. If you click “File,” there are a bunch of options you can save with: “Save,” “Save As,” “Save Incremental,” “Save All” and “Save Project.”

If you click the bottom option, “Save Project,” a pop-up will allow you to decide the name of your folder and where it goes.

After saving it to your hard drive, if you navigate to that folder, you will see that Cinema made a .c4d project file and a folder called “tex.” Open the “tex” folder and you will see all of the textures you used in the project. They are all compiled and ready to go.

If you’re archiving, remember to “Save Project” and you will save yourself a lot of headaches later!

Archive Correctly or Pay the Price

We all know that projects do not often die natural deaths but have the nasty habit of resurrecting themselves for updates or for a new version. Proper archival will make this inevitable process much smoother.

My name is Joren Kandel and I’m a motion designer in Minneapolis, MN. I run a website for free AE and C4D training and resources which you can check out at The Pixel Lab. You can also find me on or on . Feel free to e-mail me anytime at .