• Adobe After Effects

  How can I make snowflake thickens and achieve 3D and refection effects?

  Posted by Lee Wit on December 19, 2012 at 4:27 pm

  Hello exprts,

  Please watch this very short snowflake rotation cut:
  https://reels.creativecow.net/film/rotating-snowflake

  I want to do something similar and I want to know how. I am an expert graphic designer (2D).

  The little I know is that I have to:
  Illustrate the flake, import it into AE, create an overlay-composition on top of it and mask it according to my snowflake, add some moving lights to the overlay-composition, pre-compose both the snowflake and the overlay-comp into a new composition, enable the new composition 3D and make this composition rotat around its vertical access. This is the way the whole thing rotats.

  If this is a wrong way, or if there is a better way to do it, please teach me!

  But if it is OK, please tell me:
  1- How can I give it a thickness this way? Is it something to do with designing 3D objects inside AE? If yes how can I do that?
  2- For the effects, is there any plug-in or effect that gives me this nice reflection on its surface as the snowflake moves or my long way mentioned above is OK?

  Any more suggestions / solutions will be greatly appreciated.

  This for a real on-budget project I’m working on and I have to finish it before the Christmas! I hope you can help.

  Thanks,

  Lee

  Lee Wit replied 13 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Todd Kopriva

  December 19, 2012 at 4:42 pm

  You could either create the snowflakes as shape layers in After Effects or use Illustrator and then convert the Illustrator graphics into shape layers. Then use the ray-traced 3D renderer in After Effects for thickness and reflections.

  This shows how to convert Illistrator graphics to shape layers:
  https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/converting-imported-vector-graphics-from-illustrator-to-shape-layers

  This video and the ones that follow it in the series show how to use the ray-traced 3D features:
  https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/extruding-3d-text-and-shapes-and-modifying-geometry-options

  ———————————————————————————————————
  Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
  After Effects quality engineering
  After Effects team blog
  ———————————————————————————————————
• 

  Lee Wit

  December 19, 2012 at 7:03 pm

  That was quick and very useful!

  THANK YOU 🙂

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up