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Animating Position in After Effects without using Camera
Hey guys, I’m running into a frustrating situation. I’m creating a motion graphic montage using a lot of camera moves and positional keyframes of various graphics. I’d like to use ProAnimator for 3D text, however I’m finding it difficult to key frame the position of the 3d text. Currently, the only way to keyframe it’s position is to either use the camera within ProAnimator (using “poses” etc) or to “use comp camera” within after effects and animate the camera so that the text flies into frame. Of course this is problematic because I’ve got various other 3D elements *(particles, etc) that I’d like to have stationary while the 3D text comes in. I was hoping that I could just create the the ProAnimator text within a precomp, make that precomp 3D inside of my main comp and then select “Continuously Rasterize” for that precomp layer (which ideally would keep the 3d quality during rotations, etc.) At first glance this seems to work…that is until I try to rotate that precomp in 3D space. The “layer” itself rotates, yet the 3D text remains stationary. I’ve tried every combination I could think of “using Comp Camera”/Continuously Rasterize/ making layers 3D or 2D, etc. Am I doing something wrong or is this simply a limitation of ProAnimator? Is using camera moves the only way I can move 3D text in ProAnimator? Can I not just move/rotate the layer (while maintaining 3D)?
Many thanks!
-Kevin -
1 Reply
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i don’t kow about proanimator, so forgive me if I’m telling you something you know already, but to animate the text in after effects at least you need to asign it to a set (you do this by going into the invigortaor main window and selecting the object button (the cube) the selecting all things you want to belong to the same “set” (ie that move togther as one), and assigning them a set number. Once you have done this, back in your after effects effects window (or underneath the layer) you will see a bunch of sets (up to 8) and here you can animate the motion properly. It’s a little clumsy though as the x,y and z positions are all seperate and you can’t jsut drage the object in your comp window to position it as you can normally in after effects so the best thing to do is assign a “3d track layer” which is a layer for your invigorator object to follow which you can move normally like and other object in after effects. (note there is a weee work around you have to be aware of here and that is that whenever you move your leader it will appear not to have affected your invig layer, you need to purge every time you move it in order to see what you have done. a little annoying but once you learn the leyboard shortcut for “purge” it’s just habit. Well this is really brief cos i’m not sure if this will help you since you’re talking about pro-animator and not AE (though your question title says AE), but i hope maybe it gives you some ideas :=)
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