• Adobe After Effects

  Problem Folding 3D Room

  Posted by Eric Olson on October 3, 2012 at 2:19 pm

  Hi all,

  I’m trying to fold up a 2-D object into a 3-D object in AE. It’s a room and each wall of the room is a separate layer. I parented each layer to preceding layer in the folding process and then precomped the layers and changed the anchor point on precomps so it would line up with the fold and behave like a hinge.

  However, the problem I’m having is that when I make the first fold, the axis of the next fold is in completely the wrong orientation, making it impossible to predict where the layer will go. It doesn’t act like a hinge.

  Is there anyway to make the 3D anchor point fold in exactly the direction you want?

  Thanks,

  Eric

  Roland R. kahlenberg replied 13 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  October 3, 2012 at 7:15 pm

  Did you change the anchor point before or after parenting?
  It seems that you changed them after, which would explain a weird behavior. Once parented, any change you apply on the parent layer will affect the parented layer.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Eric Olson

  October 3, 2012 at 8:10 pm

  The “2-D image” is actually a layout.

  https://images.creativecow.net/133405/amesroom.jpg

  I have the layers parented in the order they attach in the layout. But when I start folding it up the axes get all rearranged which makes it difficult to be precise with the angle of fold. I’m thinking I might need to do something with nulls.

  E
• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  October 3, 2012 at 8:16 pm

  Tricky one since not all edges are perpendicular on each other. You need to adjust the Orientation so when you rotate the layer the axis matches the angle of the edge.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Roland R. kahlenberg

  October 4, 2012 at 4:12 am

  The image is all wrong – it’s already in perspective when it should be flat, othorgonal 2D planes from which you construct a 3D room.

  Secondly, you do not require parenting unless you want to animate the entire room as a single unit. For such a scenario, you would parent all the sides to a Null and animate the Null.

  For now, you’ll need to redraw all 6 sides of the room without perspective. Then lay them out as you would, to create a room or a box. Don’t precomp unless it is necessary. Don’t parent unless it is necessary.

  HTH
  RoRK

  Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
  Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer

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