• Adobe After Effects

  3D shadows and nested comps

  Posted by Barry The cat on April 25, 2007 at 12:39 am

  I have made a text title where the individual characters move into a final position. I wanted some light and shadow to play across the characters as they moved, so I put them all in 3D mode and added some lights.

  Heres the first problem: even with all the material options like accepts lights and casts shadows on, there are no shadows.

  So I made a gobo (after reading a CC tutorial) to cast some shadows which worked to a degree in the comp.

  But when I nested the comp, the shadows disappear in the nestee comp.

  any clues?

  Barry

  Darby Edelen replied 19 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Darby Edelen

  April 25, 2007 at 2:25 am

  [barry the cat] “Heres the first problem: even with all the material options like accepts lights and casts shadows on, there are no shadows.”

  What type of light are you using? Where are you expecting to see the shadows (from the text, on the text, both)?

  If you’re Collapsing Transformations on the 3D pre-comp then you’ll need to put your lights in the final comp. This is just due to the nature of the way AE handles the ‘Collapsed’ comp.
• 

  Barry The cat

  April 25, 2007 at 3:24 am

  thanks for yr interest.

  Im using a default spot light from the layer menu and expecting the shadows from one character to be cast on the other characters. Ive moved them in Z space and tried many positions in X and Y but none seems to be catching the shadow of another.

  Yes I’ve got the collapse transformation/ continuous rasterization button on because Im using vector Illustrator text. The final comp is 2D with the nested 3D comp in it, so I dont think the lights would work in the 2D comp.

  maybe the solution would be making over sized raster text and keeping the button off?

  Barry
• 

  Darby Edelen

  April 25, 2007 at 4:42 pm

  [barry the cat] “so I dont think the lights would work in the 2D comp.”

  If you’re using a pre-comped 3D scene with Collapse Transformations on (not on the layers in the pre-comp but on the pre-comp in the final comp) then AE will consider it 3D material and it should respond to lights.

  I have to admit I don’t work with vector graphics from Illustrator all that much, but the text in AE definitely responds the way I’ve described.

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