Animated Road

[Simon Stutts]

OK…so try this.

First – take some sort of road-like texture. Bring it in to your comp. Make it a 3D layer. then, using the rotation tool (w), rotate it to 90 degrees (flat – should look like it disappeared). Then move that layer down and rotate its z-axis until it about matches up with the perspective of the truck.

Then twirl down your scale options on that layer (press “s”). Uncheck the little chain icon. Then mess with the scale so that your road layer becomes a very long, thin rectangle. You may need to re-match up the perspective on the road layer to fit the truck more.

Once you’ve got the perspective matched up, then its a simple matter of keyframing the position of the layer to make the road look like its moving. Turn on motion blur for a better result.

If you want to make the tires look like they are moving, you could: make a new composition. Make a tire in that composition – then make it 3d. Keyframe its rotation to make it look like its spinning fast – again, use motion blur for a better result.

Then take that comp into your truck composition, make it a 3D layer, and use position/rotation/scale to get it to match up to the size and perspective of the tires on the truck.

Here’s a quick example. I don’t think my perspective is 100% on this, but you get the idea.

https://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=d4b0406c6368b458e7c82ed4b8f0c380e04e75f6e8ebb871

-stutts-

[Matt Korshis]

Thanks heaps for your ideas, I will try that today. Just to clariry a couple of things:

Which setting do you keyframe to make the road move without it sliding off the bottom of the screen?

In your example clip it appears like the back wall of the tire is moving too, it looks great, I was wondering how you achieved this? Possibly the same as the road?

I greatly appreciate the time time you have taken to explain and demonstrate this.

Cheers
Matt

[Simon Stutts]

Which setting do you keyframe to make the road move without it sliding off the bottom of the screen?

You would keyframe the position, and then use the 3d position gizmo (the three-pronged thing on the layer that appears when you click on it) to slide it backwards underneath the truck. Grab only the axis associated with horizontally moving the layer back and forth underneath the truck (I think in my case it was the x-axis). Essentially, you are sliding it off the edge of the screen – but in the example I posted, I had stretched the layer out so much that I could slide it back without too much noticeable movement of the ends.

In your example clip it appears like the back wall of the tire is moving too, it looks great, I was wondering how you achieved this? Possibly the same as the road?

Well – the short answer is that I didn’t. I think that what you are seeing on the back walls of the tires are just compression artifacts from the spinning tires (and maybe some from the moving road peeking through a badly done alpha around the truck – maybe the tires are a little see-through, and the motion of the road is coming through them a bit).

-stutts-