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3D Planes is driving me crazy
I know that I lack more advanced 3D theory but here is my problem. I create 3 planes (solids scaled down from comp size).
All are scaled to the same dimensions. I line them up to create a sort of “room” (floor, front wall, side wall for now).
At this point I’m not mucking with the anchor point but using position and rotation (not orientation) to line them up.Just in case you need a reference this is similar to the stuff Andrew Kramer does in a few of his tutorials where he does an alley and a room. Again, I’m keeping it at this point down to the 3 plane minimum.
Once all are lined up, both in front view and custom view I take the rotate(w) tool and use it to get an idea of how things look in 3D space. They are not looking good. Once I start to rotate all the planes start to come apart in alignment from each other (well from the native camera view).
So what’s the secret to getting things lined up just right for view in any 3D angle. Is there a 3D formula ? My geometry skills are probably lacking. Any advice, hints or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
TIA
StuartEdit: I think I had revelation after typing this post. Lining up via the side and top/bottom views help greatly.
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7 Replies
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I am probably answering my own question. After posting I discovered 🙂 that lining them up from the sides and top/bottom improve things greatly.
Stuart
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Dave , yes I knew to do that, just hadn’t thought about lining them up with the orthographic views.
Thank you for the reply.
Stuart -
> Dave , yes I knew to do that, just hadn’t thought about lining them up with the orthographic views. < Over on theanvel.com, Dean has a fabulous 3D light tutorial where he has created two or three hallways with doors that open and close and then flies a camera though the scene. It's a great start on building cubic spaces. However, Dean has pulled most of his best stuff form his freebies section and put them all on disks for purchase. If you are going to spend much time in 3D space, you should go ahead and invest in Dean's disks and buy Angie Taylor "Creative AE7" book. ONe of the best ways to think about room panels and walls is to place the anchor point on the base of the object, whatever you think that should be. It takes a bit thought and planning. A wall's AP might be in the exact center of the bottom sillplate but a picture that hangs on that wall might have its AP on the centerline but just below the top edge so it can be leveled by rotation as if it were hung on a nail. bogiesan
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Wow, yeah Dean has done some amazing work.
https://theanvel.com/free_aeps_detail.php?aeps=153 is the one with the hallway and room. Blows me away. And yep it’s available now through subscription. Something though very useful and am considering it.
Stuart
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[stuartambient] “So what’s the secret to getting things lined up just right for view in any 3D angle.”
The secret is to do exactly what you haven’t been doing =O
[stuartambient] “At this point I’m not mucking with the anchor point but using position and rotation (not orientation) to line them up.”
You should set the anchor points to the corners of the 3D layers, parent all of them to one ‘master’ layer and then make sure that the ‘positions’ and ‘orientations’ line up properly. For example, if you have a 300×300 solid with an anchor point of [0,0] (the upper left corner) as the ‘master’ layer, and you want a 300×300 solid projecting at 90
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Darby, works like a charm (course you already knew that :))
The way you set it up , at this point is without a null, but one master to set up the rest of the panels ? Guess that would be the case I added another 300 x 300 panel and made the anchor point -300,0,0 and the orientation 0,90,0. However somewhere I lost it and the position number are a bit screwy, though everything lines up.
Is there a formula to work from ? I assume the numbers change depending on the comp and solid size (or whatever I’m using as a 3D layer). Doing it by the numbers makes much more sense.
Stuart
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If your using solids, I like this script named “Box”:
https://www.nabscripts.com/Experiments/experiments_en.php
But it uses scale expressions on a slider to control the x, y, z dimensions, so swapping in photos and such doesn’t really work, because when you swap them in, they’re scaled up as per the sliders. But for solids it’s magic, move the slider and the box grows instantly.
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