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3D in AE
I am working on a project that requires 3-D characters, however we are flying around these characters using the AE Camera. Is there a way I can use the mesh warp to give 3D curves to my 2D animations?
If not does anybody know if I can import 3D elements (e.g. from Maya) into the AE 3D space?
Thanks
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3 Replies
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As far as I know the mesh is only fake 3D. You need the Zaxwerks plugin which allows you to create 3D text and other stuff right in AE. If you’re not willing to fork out the dough for that, however, take a look at these tutorials:
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/kahlenberg_roland/3d_logo_extrude/index.html
https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/woodall_traylor/3dtypetut2/index.html -
Couple options which depend on the camera move:
1. If your camera is sweeping side to side but not necessarily orbiting all the way around your characters. You can render your characters out always facing the front. Then as a flat 3D layer in AE turn on ‘orient to camera’. That way you won’t ever see the character’s flat side. You’d be surprised how much you can get away with doing this. You see it all the time on TV with greenscreen shot actors added to mograph. Or remeber playing DOOM? The original Doom did this. The characters were flat and just always faced camera. Yet it worked fine enough (at the time) for a convincing game.
2. Create the camera move in your 3D app. Render out your characters with that camera move. Then transfer the cam data to AE. You can import Maya .ma files (check online tutorials on this), but it will take some practice and scale adjustments to get it right. Or if you use C4D and it’s built in export to AE function, it’s a piece of cake.
Chris Smith
https://www.sugarfilmproduction.com -
I was wondering about something similar to this the other day…After looking at an Autodesk Smoke demo where someone was using Smoke’s extended-bicubic warping to add some 3D realism to some 2D cutouts: https://www.autodesk.com/media/Smoke_Fire/NAB_2006_Master_Series/ (Check out CE Raum’s master class in Advanced Compositing & Effects – he does some cool warping with tree branches)
It got me wondering..Is there any 2D app around that has this kind of fuctionality? I’m pretty sure AE can’t do it out of the box (3D warping) but combined with a specific plugin could it be possible? Otherwise, does anyone know of any other apps that support this (other than Smoke of course?)
Thanks and sorry to thread-hop Speel-berg!
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