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Building a btter wireframe world?
Hello,
I’m working on a project where I am need to simulate several environments (a mall, a waiting room, a store, ect.). I was hoping to do so in a non-literal way by making wireframe environments and moving a camera through them.
I’ve tried using both Vegas and Trapcode’s 3D stroke. With Vegas I found that the memory requirements got so high that they maxed out my system (despite running after effects with 3G). Trapcode became frustrating because the top, front, back, left, right, views do not work(only cameras) and it’s very difficult to line up walls without that function.
Any suggestions for making this work?
Thanks,
David -
8 Replies
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You could make all of the elements in photoshop and save them as tifs with an alpha channel then bring them into AE seperately and make them 3d layers. Then line them up accordingly and move through them with a camera.
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Or just mask the solids and apply the stroke effect, either in the render menu or the generate menu.
Or you could make them in Illustrator, then use continuous rasterization so they stay sharp when they get closer to camera.
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What Steve said about Illustrator makes more sense. I don’t have Illustrator so I never think of it. I should get it. How much is it?
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Thanks for your responses.
I just tried using Stroke instead of Vegas. Unfortunately, it also slowed down AE just like Vegas. I’m using it on so many layers I think it’s just too much.
The composition is designed to look like a mall and contains 4 Precomped “hallways” constructed of 12 “storefronts” each. And each storefront contains a mask with stroke applied. So that’s 48 layers with the stroke effect rendered throughout 3D space. And it’s my intention to make the “mall” two stories, which doubles the amount of layers.
I guess I’ll try using illustrator to make the various pieces, but I am weary of my wireframes disappearing because the layers are 2D in 3D space.
Any other suggestions?
David
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Yes, the wireframes will disappear if they appear smaller than 1 pixel at a certain point. You’ll have to be clever by placing something in the foreground to hide those lines.
How big are your layers? Are you working with big JPEGs or something? I’m working with 48 masked, stroked 648×486 solids and humming along quite nicely.
2GB of RAM, 2GHz Intel I have. -
My layers are all comp size and my composition is 720×480 DV(NTSC 0.9)
My computer should be able to handle it. It’s has a dual Xeon processor. 4G of ram with with a 3G switch so that AE can use 3 gig. I’m using a Nvidia Quadro FX 4500 graphics card. I have massive storage space. I’m using After Effects 7. Everything suggests that I should be smoking with all the layers too, but unfortunately I’m not.
I should add that am not using Open GL, because I find I’m just as fast with Advanced 3D, and the render quality is better.
thanks again,
DavidI’m giving illustrator a try now(with a 3 point stroke)
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As a workaround, can you work in wireframe mode to speed things up?
(it’s the button at the bottom of the comp window along with OpenGL and adaptive res)
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