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  • Adobe After Effects

    3D layers and text layers not working as expected

    Posted by Kevin Dearing on September 8, 2008 at 2:19 am

    I’m trying to do a comp of a camera basically flying over some water where some text comes up out of the water.

    I’ve got a sky layer, 3d pushed back in z space
    I’ve got a water layer, 3d, rotated on the x axis and moved down on the Y axis..
    My Text is a precomp of some basic text (3d), I did the old ‘3d’ text trick of making multiple layers each one moved back in z space slightly. I’ve got this layer’s collapse transformations turned on in my main comp and have also made it a 3d layer so I could move it back in z space a bit.

    The plan was to simply move this text down on the Y axis so it was “beneath” the water on the first frame (which I had to do by copying my water layer and using it as a track matte)

    Then the last frame would animate the text comp up on the y axis so it would appear to be rising out of the water..

    My problem is that even though this text comp is closer to the camera in z space than the sky background, the sky background is blocking the text ?!?

    FYI, I started with Andrew Kramer’s tutorial #32 “3D Ocean”

    Hopefully I explained the setup thoroughly enough.. If not let me know what you need – a screen grab or post the project or whatever..

    Thanks in advance for taking the time to read and possibly reply..

    –KTFA

    Mike Browning replied 17 years, 8 months ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies

  • Mike Browning

    September 8, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    I’ve found that even though layers can be composited in 3D, layer order in the composition panel still comes in to play (for whatever reason). Make sure your sky layer is at the bottom of the stack. That’s all I can think at the moment. I ran into this when compositing a cartoony jungle scene… even though some text was, in z-space, in the back, it would still be on top of every thing when it was on top of the layer stack.

  • Kevin Dearing

    September 9, 2008 at 3:28 am

    Thanks Mike,
    That’s what I wound up having to do – though due to – move the text layer below the back sky picture – but that was kind of a pain because I had a bunch of other things going on too – particles dripping off of the text, etc..

    If anyone knows the reason for this, I’d sure be interested in understanding what causes this..

    Thanks again all

    –KTFA

  • Mike Browning

    September 9, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Same here, I’d like to know another work around – the biggest reason being particle interaction as well.

    Good luck.

    Mike Browning
    Vision Quest Media

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