3D Countdown Timer

[Justin Productions]

Read yourrrr mannuuallss 🙂

Justin Productions
Tangerin01@hotmail.com
Adobe After Effects 6.5 Professional

[Mike Clasby]

Ok, this works pretty good, it’s just AE, no Zaxwerks, and looks good, if you don’t linger too long on the edge of the countdown numbers.

An easy classic way to add depth to AE layers is to dup the layers many times and offset them in the Z position. This is OK, until you get the 3D camera near the flat edge, then it breaks down since none of the layers have real depth. But if the middle layers are a different color it works better. I’m assuming your number is Red, the Numbers default, Black for the middle layers seems best to me for max contrast, but you can use any color you wish. This would be a little complicated to set up manually, but we’ll use the Index expression and dup the layers. I aplogize it this is too detailed, I just wanted to make it clear.

Take you count down layer (you said you used the Numbers Effect).
Make the layer 3D (Check the little Cube Box).

Now lets add a camera (Layer>New>Camera), you can use the “C” key to get the different camera cursers, the Orbit tool lets you Orbit around the number, and we can see its flat. So lets make more layers.

Back on the Numbers Layer, First, add this expression for Position (Copy the expression below, Alt Click the Position Stopwatch, and Paste):

position+[0,0,(index-1)*1]

This expression just tells the layer to use the X and Y position values, then to add 1 pixel to the Z for each layer down from the top.

Now Dup (Ctrl D) the layer twice until you have 3 layers. And the Number looks 3 pixels thick when we Orbit it.

Select the middle layer and change the Color of the Number to Black.
Dup that layer as many time as you want the Number to be thick (in pixels), so dupping it 8 times will give you 8 black middle layers plus a red on outside and inside. When you orbit now you have a Number 10 pixels thick with red faces and a black middle. If you want the Numbers thicker, just keep dupping the middle layers. This looks OK, and if you like this look STOP HERE, but we can make it a little better below.

I wasn’t crazy about the red fringing on the backside of the Number, so I added this expression to the top Number layer’s Opacity property (click the Opacity Stopwatch, Paste):

r = this_comp.layer(“Camera 1”).position – to_world(anchor_point);
q = to_world_vec([0,0,1]);
a = radians_to_degrees(Math.acos(dot(r,q)/length(r)));
if (a <90){
0
}else{
100
}

And add this expression to the bottom Number layer in the stack (the other red face):

r = this_comp.layer("Camera 1").position - to_world(anchor_point);
q = to_world_vec([0,0,1]);
a = radians_to_degrees(Math.acos(dot(r,q)/length(r)));
if (a >90){
0
}else{
100
}

These two expression just tell the layer to be invisible if they are away from the camera.

I like this better, a red faced number with what looks like black depth (and no red fringing on the backside).

Like I said above this whole many-layers thing looks pretty good if you don’t linger at the edge, and the black middle layers helps reduce that fault.

This Many Layers Depth should work fine for Text layers or any type of layer for that matter, methinks.

Note 1:
If you want to make this easy to change properties on all the numbers layers, like the Size, Make a Null layer, Add the Numbers Effect, then pickwhip your Original Number layer’s Size to the Null Number’s Size. This should be done in step one above. When your done with all the steps, any changes to the Numbers Size in the Null will makes changes in all layers Size. You can do the same for any property with a Stopwatch.

Note 2:
I’m using Size 400 for the Numbers, the look might be different for much smaller Size Numbers. If your going to use small Font size, set up a slider to control the offset. Make a Null layer, then add an Effects Slider (Effects>Expression Control>Slider Control), then the origial Position Expression would be:

position+[0,0,(index-1)*thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”)]

This might be more complicated than you want, but makes for fine tuning, but when you drop the space between the numbers to .5 (slider) you’d need twice as many layers to get the same thickness as the origianl 1 pixel offset in the original position expression. Yikes this is wordy.

[Mike Clasby]

PS. All these are hacks of Dan Ebberts expressons.