Composition / save frame as

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Oh, I see. You want to freeze the Particular layer at one point and have it continue from that point on as a 2D layer in 3D space.

It would only match up if the 3D camera was in the same relation to the 3D plane as when the camera was created. Hence, if you have a point in the animation where the camera is in its original position, you could parent the layer to the camera there, move to the “cut” position and unparent it. Or, if no such point in time exists, you could create a new camera with same settings, parent the 3D plane to it and then move the new camera to the “cut” position coordinates or your current camera and unparent the layer and delete the extra camera. Per my logic that would do it.

[Steve Hardie]

Thanks for your thoughts on this. There do seem to be a number of “workarounds” to this issue, although maybe they should not be classified as workarounds. My original post was working under the assumption that I was doing something wrong, when in fact there is no “right” way, but different ways of getting to a solution.

As I mentioned before, the method I adopted was to uncheck (disable) the active camera, which will then create an “ortho view”, I then manually reposition the image by matching the position and anchor point values ( this brings the image to center of the comp ( as otherwise it is randomly at the edge of frame) Once it’s in this position I can then “save frame as” and get the still. By then undoing the position change and reverting to the camera view, the 2d still that comes back in when checked as a 3D layer, aligns perfectly. Any other way seems to bring the 2D still back in as either too big or too small, which requires repositioning and resizing but seemingly by arbitrary measures whereas the other way seems to produce an accurate match.

The reason for this, as you note, is so that once trapcode has produced the lines I need, it is more efficient to replace the constant processing required by trapcode with a still so the continuing animation is more efficient. I also noticed that with the fine detail on these lines that the still image captured looks better (matches more closely) when saved as an RGB (without alpha) and brought in with a blending mode, as the prematted alpha version looks totally different.

Thanks for your thoughts.