• Adobe After Effects

  3D Photoshop layer, Particular & Masks

  Posted by Neil Cooke on March 5, 2009 at 2:02 pm

  Thought this would be simple, but how wrong I was.

  I have a 3D object from Photoshop, works great no problem, but I want to use it as an obscuration layer with Particular so that particles can fly in front of and behind the 3D object. Masks can’t really be used because the 3D object is itself rotating.

  Here’s the problem – the obscuration layer has to be 3D, but the 3D Photoshop layer is actually 2D and it’s the null controller layer that makes it 3D.

  Does anyone know a workaround for this? I thought about somehow getting the dropshadow from the 3D object and making a mask on another layer, which is 3D, and then use that for the obscuration layer – is that possible?

  This is the main reason I upgraded to CS4 – please help!

  Mike Park replied 17 years, 4 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

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  Mike Park

  March 5, 2009 at 4:44 pm

  does your camera move?

  Why dont you simply precompose the 3d layer with its animation and then convert the precomp to 3d – it will still be a flat 2d layer positioned in 3d. If you precomposed correctly, it will still rotate fine (assuming you precomped the null as well) If you camera moves, simply parent the 3d precomped layer to the camera. Now use the precomp as an obscuration layer.
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  Neil Cooke

  March 5, 2009 at 5:41 pm

  Thanks Mark, at least I got somewhere with that, but I want to orbit with the camera as well as the animation. The only way then I guess is to have identical cameras in the precomp and the main comp, so that the camera in the precomp does the fly-by on the 3d object, and the camera in the main comp does the fly-by on the particles?? Is there any way to link these cameras, or just copy/paste?
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  Mike Park

  March 14, 2009 at 2:37 am

  Sorry it took so long to get back to you, I did not realize you asked another question. Yes, you can essentially drive the parameters of one camera in a comp off another camera in a comp. It is just a matter of picwipping the parameters from one camera to the other master camera. The easiest way is to drag one of the comp tabs over to the right hand side of the window so that you have both comps side by side. Then simply alt click on the stopwatch of the slave camera and picwip it to the master camera in the other comp. Now when you animate or update the other camera motion, your other slave camera will move accordingly.

  Best of luck

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