• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Fake 3D sphere lighting on non-spheres?

  Posted by Eric Steinberg on May 11, 2005 at 5:58 pm

  Sorry if the subject heading here is confusing, my writing sucks right now after too many straight hours in front of the computer…please bear with me.
  I have 3D layers of 2D images of planets (much like a tutorial that exists in The Meyers book “AE in Production”), and faking 3D spheres in space by auto-orienting the planets towards my moving camera. I also have a light source in the background (a very bright galaxy). As I animate the camera, the lightsource will change its relative position to the planets. Is there a way to make believable shadows on these fake spheres that will look like they come from my light source? (So that if the light source is on the left, the shadow will be on the right half of the planet, but after a camera move the light source will be above the same planet, so the shadow side of the planet would then have to be on the lower part.) Hope this makes sense.

  Kind regards,
  Eric

  Eric Steinberg replied 21 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Scott Spengler

  May 11, 2005 at 6:38 pm

  Eric,
  If your Galaxy Light source layer is 2d, pickwhip the source point of the Radial Shadow effect to the position of your Galaxy. If Galaxy is a 3d layer, first run the 3d space to 2d space expression, then pickwhip RS source point to Galaxy Position. It’ll definately look like a radial shadow though. Slightly cheesey. Maybe some CC Light Burst/Shine set to dark gray or purple with multipy would look a little more “Deep Spacey”. The more I think about it though, as your vantage point through/between the planets changes, would the _shadow_ actually move? I’m thinking it’d stay put.

  Either way, I’ll bet someone else else around here remembers or has that “3d to 2d” expression handy. Fun stuff.

  Oh yeah, I’d think you’ll probably want to apply the Radial Shadow effect to an adjustment layer at the top of your comp, then start monkeying with that crap above.

  Scott
• 

  Mike Clasby

  May 11, 2005 at 7:05 pm

  This might be useful:

  2002: An AE Odyssey
  Dave LaRonde

  https://www.creativecow.net/show.php?forumid=2&page=/articles/laronde_dave/planets/index.html

  I remembered seeing it and it came up with an Advanced Search for “planets”.
• 

  Eric Steinberg

  May 11, 2005 at 7:07 pm

  Thanks for the tip, I actually have never used Radial shadow! I’m not at my AE machine now, but I’ll try it when I get back. Thanks again!

  Kind regars,
  Eric
• 

  Eric Steinberg

  May 11, 2005 at 7:10 pm

  Looks like we posted at the same time, yikesmikes! Thank you for your link also!!

  E.

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