• Adobe After Effects

  arrange 3D layers according to layer order instead of z axis

  Posted by Joris Bergmans on March 16, 2011 at 1:40 pm

  Hey there!

  I’ve created a project with some 3D layers. Now, usually After Effects follows the coordinates along the Z axis to calculate the order of how the layers appear in the render. But I want to use the layer order and not the Z coordinates to do this.

  So if layer “A” is behind layer “B” in 3D space, but on top of layer “B” in the layer order, I want layer “A” to be shown in front of layer “B”, and not behind.

  I know you can achieve this by splitting up the 3D space with 2D layers between the 3D layers, but I was wondering if there’s also an option to just switch this on and off.

  Sorry if this has already been posted before. I’ve only found topics that deal with this thing the other way around…

  Thanks!

  Matthew Keane replied 15 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Joris Bergmans

  March 16, 2011 at 2:25 pm

  hmm.. just saw somebody with exact the same question/problem. so yep, it’s a repost, my appologies.
  https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/978232#978284

  Still no decent solution though, except the “breaking up 3D space” thing.

  But I was thinking that it might be achieved by using the standard 3D render engine? I don’t have it here (not even sure if I can use it in CS4), so I can’t test it…
• 

  Matthew Keane

  March 17, 2011 at 1:13 pm

  Is the Z position irrelevant to your animation? If so, maybe you could use an expression on each layer to set the Z position according to the layer order (layer.index, I think), so each layer in the stack would be slightly further away from the camera, and sort in the ‘correct’ order. If you use a small increment on the Z axis, the change in scale might not be apparent (or maybe you could also adjust the scale in the expression?). Just a thought…

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up