C4D or Fusion for Motion Tracking?

What is the preferable method for adding C4D content to Fusion composites on a Mac -

1) Import footage and motion track in C4D R19, then render scene, and import as an image sequence into Fusion?
2) Or import model / scene into Fusion as Alembic, then build up lights there - if I understand, Mac C4D files as Alembic will import, but lights do not come along for the ride.

Which program has the more efficient motion tracker?

Thank you kindly for the opinions & expertise!

Ben Gamble

* Load footage in fusion
* linearize footage
* undistort footage
* 3d track in fusion on undistorted footage
* Export Camera and relevant markers to alembic
* Export a sRGB jpeg sequence for use in C4D as a backplate / reference

In C4d
* Import alembic from Fusion
* Import background if needed
* Set up your scene and render to linear .EXRs

Back in Fusion
* Import render image sequence from C4d
* Apply lens distortion model to Render
* A over B (c4d render over original linear distorted footage)
* Render out from Fusion to target format

C4d Has a more capable render than fusion, fusion's better at faster image based tricks. Don't try to shoe-horn Fu's render to do what you can do in C4d, things like raytracing etc.

Fusion as better pixel inspecting/analysis tools, and more tweakability when it comes to images.

Just seconding Alan's comment above, that's probably the most straightforward way to do it.

Don't try to use Fusion's renderer for realistic lighting or integration of objects in a scene unless you're at a facility that has a lot of custom Fusion tools. If it's a more stylized / motion-graphics-ey element you're compositing you might be okay but honestly it's always going to be more work with more hacks and compromises to get a good looking render in Fusion than it will be in a dedicated rendering environment with true raytracing, deformation blur, GI, true DOF, custom AOVs, etc. -- all stuff that's either hard or impossible to replicate in Fusion.

Can't speak to the C4D tracker but Fu9's camera tracker is okay. Not going to be as easy to tweak as a dedicated package like Syntheyes or PFTrack but you can get the job done.