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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects 3D Planetary Flythrough

  • 3D Planetary Flythrough

    Posted by Yoda_76 on March 16, 2006 at 7:52 pm

    Hi all,

    I am creating a solor system flythrough in AE, but I can’t seem to get the positioning of the planets right in 3D space…

    I am using 2D planets as 3D layers, and staggering their position relative to each other using the X, Y, Z-position fields. I am then animating a camera starting at the sun and whooshing backwards through the planets so that they come flying in from edge of frame.

    My issue is… well, space! I can’t get the planets far enough from each other to create a good effect, and changing the zoom on the camera seems to fix one issue while creating another… wider seems to work better in some regards, closer is more dramatic, but I’ve got to place the layers so far that it’s impractical. When I switch to my top view for my comp, I can’t easily get the screen space to push things further away from each other.

    Any ideas? Is my approach all wrong on this one? Thanks in advance.

    Graham Quince replied 20 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Jim Kanter

    March 16, 2006 at 8:22 pm

    Combine a z-position move of the camera with x- and y-axis scale changes on the planets in view. Make sure the z-value for the anchor point on each planet is 0.

    Jim Kanter,
    Digital Film Institute
    http://www.dfilminst.com

  • Graham Quince

    March 17, 2006 at 9:28 am

    I’ve built stuff like this in the past. I think the secret is going big. I say that because I don’t mean the same thing as scale.

    As this is Creative Calf, I’ll probably be telling you stuff you already know, so apologies…. by holding down the space bar and dragging the comp window, you can move around a huge amoount of space not normally seen in the comp frame. That allows you to position layers thousands of units (pixels ??) apart. Again apologies if i’m patronising you, but I found that out from this forum myself a couple of years ago.

    If you’d like me to take a look at your project, I’d be more than happy to.

    Graham

    https://www.qcit.co.uk – web design
    ——–
    https://www.shiveringcactus.bravehost.com – Free FX for amateur films

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