• Adobe After Effects

  Element 3D – Wacky Behaviour

  Posted by Alex Kuzelicki on September 7, 2018 at 3:49 am

  Hi,

  Hopefully it’s okay to post here about Element 3D, from Videocopilot? I figure it’s a popular AE plug-in so someone may have some helpful advice.

  I want to make a very simple yoyo model in Element 3D – two squashed cylinders sitting next to each other in 3D space. I make an Element layer and create a cylinder primitive. Then make another Element layer, create another cylinder primitive. Now the two cylinders are sitting at the same point in 3D space.

  I create Group Nulls for both and then shift one slightly up, and one slightly down so I have my yoyo model. In theory these two shapes are now only offset from each other a little bit along the Y-Axis. When I look in all my 3D views that is what I see, i.e. two exactly the same size and shaped models over the top of each other and shifted slightly apart along the Y-Axis. This seems to be working fine.

  Then I add a 3D camera and orbit around the model a little, and everything looks right, and I orbit a little more and… BAM!, they are suddenly offset so they seem to be sitting next to each other! I double-check all my 3D views and they are still perfectly aligned with each other, just slightly offset along the Y-Axis. But when I use the 3D camera to orbit, they are now next to each other. If I keep orbiting, they visually shift back together again.

  It doesn’t seem to make sense but perhaps I’m missing something? Does anyone have any ideas?

  Cheers,

  ALEX

  Alex Kuzelicki replied 7 years, 11 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Richard Garabedain

  September 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm

  sounds like the old element v1 180 degree limit. as in you could not revolve around an object past 180 degrees without it flipping or messing up like that. maybe you can get past this with 2 comps..one with the revolving fron and one on the back..or maybe just two cameras.
• 

  Alex Kuzelicki

  September 7, 2018 at 11:19 pm

  Oh wow, I didn’t even realise Element had that restriction. How bizarre, seems like something they’d want to fix after all this time.

  In the end, I got too frustrated and made the two cylinders in Cinema 4D then brought them in through Element as one model.

  Thanks for your suggestions though. Appreciated lots. ☺

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