3D Space (stars and 3D movement)

[Brad Baker]

Maybe try making your stars with CC Particle World and then place your titles in the the middle of your 3D particles.

[Mike Clasby]

Conoa Sphere lets you get inside the Sphere (easily).

I can’t seem to get CC Sphere to do a Starfield as it magnifies the stars when you crank up the Radius.

If you don’t need a real starfield, meaning the same stars we see, here’s another possibility using Fractal Noise. Dan uses Fractal Noise to build a clouds that extends beyond the camera (always). Here is a quote from Dan’s tut “Building the World’s Greatest Cameraman” (mislabeled “Building the World”):

“To avoid having to build an enormous 3D background layer that would fill the comp window no matter which way the camera points, I decided to just use a 2D solid with Fractal Noise applied, because Fractal Noise has an offset parameter that essentially makes it extend infinitely in any direction. The trick is to tie the offset to the

[David Franklin]

Well, I’m relatively new at this myself. But my understanding is that what you’re describing is a kind of 3D environment that AfterEffects won’t do seamlessly.

(I’m about 95% certain, having played with the effect myself, that it isn’t possible to put the camera inside a CC Sphere. Of course, I could be wrong, and please, someone correct me if I am.)

But I have an idea for a “cheat” that might work out to the same idea.

The basic concept is that instead of a sphere, you would build a 3D room, like the one Andrew Kramer did for this tutorial:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/911038

You would make the room quite large, and use star fields for each of the six walls. Rotation in 360 degrees would then be possible, though I’d experiment with masks and blending modes on the wall layers to de-emphasize the corners.

Then you would put “hero” stars randomly throughout the space of the room. You could use simple random expressions to pick x,y, and z coordinates that fit within the perameters of the room. (The manual covers this, or someone could help you in the after effects expressions forum.)

100 or so of such randomly placed stars should be enough to sell the effect. Each could be a small, white solid with a circular mask and a “stylize > glow” applied. And each layer could be “auto-oriented” towards the camera to sell the illusion of three dimensionality.

If you then put your titles into the middle of this environment, you could animate the camera all around them.

Not sure if it will work as I’m envisioning — but it’s a suggestion for how to get around the whole 2.5D vs 3D thing.

Oh, and if you want the titles to have 3D volume, there’s a way to fake that using the shatter effect.

But if you’d rather not take this approach, or if it seems needlessly complex to the group, please won’t someone else feel free to suggest a simpler, more rational solution!

[Mike Clasby]

You can definitely create a sphere that surrounds all with this:

https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=160&highlight=sphere

Unfortunately the link to the project file is down, but all the expressions are there. Also you have to loose the circular masks and put stars where the solids are. If you really want to try this I could upload it somewhere.

[Brendan Thompson]

Indeed, Particular is perfect for this. I just did it the other day and got that Star Trek feel great. The presets that come with the program are the place to start. I’m pretty sure there is a “star” preset.

Andrew Kramer uses fractal noise on his spinning globe tutorial so it would work fine.