• Adobe After Effects

  3D Compositing advice…

  Posted by Mordy Gilden on July 24, 2008 at 10:05 pm

  Hey everyone,
  Here’s what I’m trying to do:
  I’ve got footage of someone walking along the beach as the camera pans to follow her.
  I’d like to composite a 3D object/character to be in front of her as she walks.

  Now, I know AE can’t handle complex 3D objects, so I have some obscure 3D packages (such as Caligari’s Truespace) that I’m proficient enough in to create and animate my object/character. My problem is, I’d like to composite it and use the motion tracking of AE 7 to make sure the 3D elements follow the camera movements. Should be simple, right?

  Well, Truespace does not reliably output alpha channels into rendered video, and I don’t like chroma-keying since you get slight color borders when the footage is anti-aliased.
  So, I’m exploring other options…
  Perhaps shading all objects as absolute-flat-white and background as absolute black, and using the rendered animation as an alpha masking video?
  I think I’ve seen stock animations with alpha mask videos before, but I never got how those are supposed to be applied…

  Is there a better way?
  I see a lot of 3D content motion tracked on youtube, and I’m not sure how they do it so well… Are there 3D packages that are better suited for this sort of thing that are worth learning? I know truespace, and I’d rather not start over and spend money on something else, but if its significantly better, maybe…

  Mordy Gilden replied 18 years ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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