• Adobe After Effects

  Best method? Overhead POV pullback from person on ground to outer space…

  Posted by Greg Neumayer on January 28, 2007 at 9:49 pm

  Greetings Cow’ers. I’ve got a gig doing a 10 sec. shot that starts from an overhead crane of a person, which I’m then going to pull back from until my POV is in space and can see the earth, sun, and the moon.
  I’m having a difficult time making the transition from my 2D AE sequence to my 3D maya model. Currently, I’m just eyeballing the shape of the US as I try to soft transition from AE to Maya. Is there a more accurate work-flow? How would you approach this job? Here are some of the things that rattle around in my mind as I work to make sure I start with my best foot forward…
  –I’ve got a nice smooth move from the plate through 3 digital globe images, until I can see most of the eastern part of the US. I did it by simply accurately scaling the comps and lining them up, then moving my camera on the z axis from aprox. 200 to something like 2,000,000.
  –I’ve got a decent globe model in maya that I’ve built, but for memory/performance reasons, I’ve only been able to apply a texture that won’t let me start much closer than seeing about 50% of the US. Should I be isolating the close-up area and applying a higher-res texture to the earth model? (I’m less proficient in Maya than AE).
  –I’ve read a bit about importing maya camera data into AE, which seems like a great solution, but my initial move from the ground up is so large in scale, that I’m wondering if this is going to be a reasonable way to do it. After all, how in the world would I put my plate photography on a globe that is actually scaled accurately in maya? (Don’t worry. I’ll post this to the maya boards as well)
  –Should I try to hide the transition from AE to maya in a high-altitude cloud? It seems like a good idea, but it’s really a bit closer to the ground than where I was hoping to put that transition, largely because I’m not sure yet how to get such a hi-res map working well in maya.
  –Then there’s the curvature issue… Maybe use a lens effect to start to add some distortion to the end of the AE sequence before I hit maya?
  –And lastly, should I just be build this whole thing in maya from the ground up?! Is there a way to use AE for the compositing of the different satellite images (digitalglobe.com), then import it into maya? Maybe projecting that movie sequence to an object, and not starting my maya cam move until I get to the end of the AE pre-rendered movie that’s been projected on to the maya model?

  Anyway, you can see my situation. I’m not lost without hope, but I’d love some input from some of you who have had to pull this kind of fx shot before. Of course, I’d like to “hide” my transitions as little as possible.

  Thanks for your input. I’ll post a link of the finished shot when I’m finished.
  -Greg Neumayer
  Antifreeze Design

  Antifreeze Design
  https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

  Greg Neumayer replied 17 years, 9 months ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Majorasshole

  January 29, 2007 at 2:16 am

  https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=1&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rippon_richard/cloud_flythru/index.html

  https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=592473&archive=T
• 

  Greg Neumayer

  January 29, 2007 at 4:18 pm

  Thanks, Arson. There’s some good ideas there.

  My most specific issue is with how to coordinate the transition between AE and Maya in a professional (i.e. systematic) way, without just resorting to tweaking until it looks correct. Any ideas?
  -Greg

  Antifreeze Design
  https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com
• 

  Greg Neumayer

  January 29, 2007 at 4:33 pm

  Just for the archives, here’s the actual place I’m going to be getting images. It’s great because I can specify a lat and lon and all the images will line up from that center point.

  https://imageatlas.globexplorer.com/ImageAtlas/view.do?group=digitalglobe

  Antifreeze Design
  https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com
• 

  Greg Neumayer

  April 18, 2008 at 10:35 pm

  Just to follow up this old thread, the project went well, with the transition between Maya and AE being probably the most laborious adjust-tweak-view-adjust-tweak-view part of the process.

  For the AE part, setting up all my layers on top of each other as a basically 2D sandwich then pulling the camera away from the center seemed to work best. Smallest layers were most dense, and largest layers were lower res. I just had to make sure that by the time larger layers came into view I was far enough away to maintain resolution.

  If you’d like to see the final shot, it’s on my reel at:
  antifreeze design . com
  About 1 min in on the reel. Starts with a farmer holding dirt in his hands.

  Cheers.
  -Greg

  Antifreeze Design
  https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com
• 

  Gwendle Murray

  August 21, 2008 at 8:50 am

  Hi all, just wondering if there was a tutorial on how to do this. I looked at the demo reel and it is just like what I want to do for a DVD menu where the globe keeps spinning afterwards. I am an AE and Maya newbie so a tutorial on how to do this would be much appreciated!!! How to.. anyone?
• 

  Greg Neumayer

  August 21, 2008 at 5:19 pm

  Overhead POV pullback from person on ground to outer space
• 

  Greg Neumayer

  August 21, 2008 at 5:24 pm

  Sorry about the double-post. Shouldn’t hit my ‘back’ button to make edits.

  Correction: The program was called “The CALL of the entrepreneur” by Coldwater Media (https://coldwatermedia.com/)

  Antifreeze Design
  https://www.antifreezemotiongraphics.com

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