• Adobe After Effects

  3D box flattens with precomp

  Posted by Daniel Stankler on October 13, 2015 at 9:08 am

  Hey guys,

  So I’ve made a box using 3D solid layers on After Effects, and because I want to make six of these boxes in my composition, I thought I’d precomp them so there’s fewer layers to deal with. But as soon as I precomp them they flatten into squares i.e. appear to lose all their sides and only show the front. Making the precomp a 3D layer doesn’t change anything.

  Does anyone know how to fix this? The idea is that the camera can pan over all six of them… It’s to explain a theory on streets and grid systems in urban design so I really need these boxes to be 3D, not squares.

  Thanks guys!

  PS this is my first post 🙂

  Daniel Stankler replied 10 years, 10 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  October 13, 2015 at 11:54 am

  Hit the continuous rasterization button on the precomp layer. This tells AE to “see”the precomp as 3d.
  That being said, there are instances in which you may want to keep your layers in one comp. In this case, link all cube layers to one Null, select the shy button on the layers that make the 3d box, but not the Null that controls it, and then hit the hide shy layers button at the top of your Timeline window. This will keep only the Null controlling the box visible but hide the other layers creating a cleaner comp.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Daniel Stankler

  October 13, 2015 at 12:58 pm

  Amazing, thanks!

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