Background goes black when made 3D

[Michael Szalapski]

Do you have any lights in your scene or any cameras? I ask because there are two main causes for this type of thing.

Cause 1: Lights in scene not illuminating your layer. Add lights, move lights, or move your layer so that light falls on it.
Or set your layer’s properties to not accept lights.

Cause 2: Camera not seeing object. When you turn a layer 3d, it pretty much defaults to AE’s world space center. So, if you’re looking through a custom camera or an alternate view you may not be looking at the layer.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Kieren Hutchison]

I don’t think it is either of these as the 3D Object is still shown and I am looking through the active camera.
Here’s two screen shots, maybe they will help

[Michael Szalapski]

Where is your light source? If it’s behind your layer it’s gonna be black. Either move your layer forward in 3d space or your light back.

If that doesn’t work, do as Dave suggested and turn those other layers 3d and/or get them above or below all the 3d stuff.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[John Stanowski]

I know it’s been years since you asked this question, but I’m sure there are others, like me, who got this thread in a search and found no solution. I’m not sure if this is the same thing, but I had 3D text which was animated in a pre-comp. But when I brought it into my main comp, the background went black. And my Y-axis rotations were weird; there was no perspective. After almost punching my screen I realized that my Comp Camera was set to Front. After switching it back to Active Camera, all was well.

2009 Intel MacPro
8 cores
16gig ram
Snow Leopard (up-to-date)
Adobe Master Collection CS4 & CS5

[Zach Landua]

Wow. I feel dumb. My camera was set to “front” as well.

[Frank Weber]

OMG. Thanks.

[Yuri Nunes]

I just created an account… to say.. thank you…

[Jasford Muldoon]

thank you so much

[Karén Melkonyan]

thanks a lot!

[Tristan Convert]

Hi guys,
First post, respect and love for Creative Cow.
Following up on this, I have the same problem and didn’t find any other source on the web.

Last version of AE, on mac. When I import a PNG or an AI with transparency and turn it into a 3D layer in AE the transparency in that layer turns to black.
Following this tread, I fiddled with RGB/CMYK, turning layers to 2D/3D, changing camera view.

I maybe missed something, but I’m still stuck and while I usually find my answers here, I had to register and show up for this one. Could anyone help further? Thank you