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Before I Get Too Deep
Last night I started working on some expressions to reflect a camera across a 3D plane, which gets difficult when you want the reflecting plane to be able to occupy any position and any orientation and you want the camera to reflect its counterpart’s position and orientation.
So I started with the basics that I thought I would need, and managed to get together an expression that gives me the distance between the camera and the 3D plane extended along its X-axis in space. I also have an expression that gives me the angle of incidence of the camera on the plane along the X-axis.
So, before I get too far into this developing expressions for the angles of incidence along other axes and such, I thought I’d come on here and ask if anyone has done anything similar to this before and has some words of advice? Or any suggestions as to the easiest way (using the least information/fewest calculations) to calculate this accurately?
Help? =)
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
8 Replies
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Sounds interesting, but I’m having trouble picturing what you’re trying to do. What exactly do you mean by “reflect a camera across a 3D plane”?
Dan
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OK – I think i get it now. Couldn’t you just convert the camera’s position into the plane’s layer space, put the other camera at the same positon except for z, which would be the opposite value, and then do the same thing for the point of interest?
Or do I really still not get it? 🙂
Dan
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Well, the idea is essentially to create more realistic reflections in an AE comp, and the method I’m using stems from me remembering that a reflection can be considered a view from a camera that is the reflection of your viewpoint across a 3D plane. This picture should help clarify:
https://img458.imageshack.us/my.php?image=reflectedcamerayn3.jpg
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Dan Ebberts] “Couldn’t you just convert the camera’s position into the plane’s layer space, put the other camera at the same positon except for z”
That was the method I started out pursuing… I hate to admit it but I couldn’t figure out how to go from world space to layer space and back to world space =/
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Ah, OK – play around with this for the position of the reflected camera:
c = thisComp.layer(“Camera 1”);
p = thisComp.layer(“reflecting plane”);
myPos = p.fromWorld(c.toWorld([0,0,0]));
p.toWorld([myPos[0],myPos[1],-myPos[2]])Dan
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I just finished a project with the ‘Apple’ reflection look.
Since the ground- or mirror-plane was not moving, I duplicated my Comp, create a Null at the same position of the ground, parented Camera and a Null that was the point of interest to this ‘ground-null’ and the flipped the Null in Y: [100,-100,100]
The angles are not really that important, it should always be a flip along a certain axis.
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I’m working on a project to simulate a mirror reflecting the opposite direction of a 3d “world” in AE. Pretty interesting study. I’ll post my findings…
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Looking forward to it!
Dan
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