Camera and Lights in Pre-Comp are lost

[Steve Roberts]

Did you check the AE Help section on 3D and “collapse transformations”?

[Mike Hayes]

YES! (no…)

Thanks, It was the opposite to what I expected, I had set ‘Collapse Transformation’ instead of having it unchecked. Sometimes I just do these things without understanding why they work…

Thankyou.

M

[Darby Edelen]

[Hazestudios] “I have created a composition with an animation incorporating a light and camera and dropped that into another comp which contains the lower third I wish to use.

However my camera and lighting have disappeared!”

If you have ‘Collapse Transformations’ turned on for your pre-comp then any cameras or lights in that pre-comp will not apply when that pre-comp is viewed in another composition.

If you don’t need your pre-comp to maintain its 3D-ness in your final comp then don’t enable ‘Collapse Transformations’ (it will, of course, still ‘look’ 3D because it is made of 3D elements, but it will be displayed on a 2D plane).

If you still want to use ‘Collapse Transformations’ then you need to move your lights and your camera into the final composition and they will properly affect your pre-comped 3D elements (assuming that they are set to accept lights in the pre-comp).

The other thing to check is that you don’t have ‘Draft 3D’ enabled in the composition (I think it’s 2 buttons left of the ‘Motion Blur’ button above the timeline).

Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA

[Steve Roberts]

[Hazestudios] “Sometimes I just do these things without understanding why they work…”

Heh … you and me both. 🙂

(Oh, what a giveaway…)