COW Tutorials: After Effects Create 3D Reflections

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Roland, Andrew,

as soon as I saw the tutorial, I thought the same thing: use transmission to get a faux shadow that looks like it’s a reflection.

The expression for having the shadow fall towards the camera by having a spotlight orbit inverse to the camera is not that hard.
Fact is however, you just don’t get what you want:
the shadow always radiates out from the ‘casting layer, instead of being parallel like a reflection would, a nice effect, but it definitely doesn’t sell as a reflection.

cheers,

Filip

btw, here’s the expression:

code for the position of a spotlight:

poi=thisComp.layer("Camera 1").pointOfInterest;
campos=thisComp.layer("Camera 1").position;

p=2*poi-campos;
[p[0],campos[1],p[2]];


the point of interest of the spotlight should be the same as that of the camera:

thisComp.layer("Camera 1").pointOfInterest


[Mike Clasby]

Nice fish, but who’s been chewing on his caudal fin?

There is a bigger one out there… dun dun…

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Maybe it’s got “ick?”

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Aharon Rabinowitz
aharon(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
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Creative Cow Master Series DVD
particleIllusion Fusion Volume 1
available @ http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Jimmy Brunger]

Great tutorial.

I noticed however that by pre-comping the text it means that if you zoom or move the camera closer in the text goes soft, as oppossed to if it were just a 3d text layer. Obviously it needs to be pre-comped for the grad blur to work, but is there any way it can be pre-comped like that and still retain the text layer’s vector/constant rasterizing data?

Thanks.

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Andrew Kramer] “I bass fish for sport, so we let them go”

Kinda different here – we like to eat what we catch. I wonder what it’ll feel like if you caught the same fish twice. 🙂

Filip’s got his point – thanks Filip, that put some sense into something I was trying to suss out over on this end. I had a feeling that something was wrong with using the Light Transmission for reflection purposes. It’s actually fine as long as the camera doesn’t do an orbital move. Straight on moves and 15-30 degree camera moves are quite alright but anything more and things go wacky.

And as for the recipe, by all means send it over but Yellowtails are hard to come by. They’re only widely available here as Sashimi. But Seabass, ehmmm … those are great for steaming, ala Chinese style. I’ll see if I can

Kathlyn would readily welcome your recipe too. I hear that Ron’s working up quite an appetite for fish these days – over to you Ron … .

Cheers dude! Great tutorial and keep up the great work. Imust say that being here from the early days, we’ve seen lots of folks come and go and each and every one has been a blessed addition to the COW. I just hope that those that visit us here are just as appreciative of the work that’s come on since, day ZERO-ONE.

I knda miss the inputs from Rick Gerard, Mark Simpson, Philip Hodgetts, and David Bogie. Argh!, I reminisce too much. But it’s been great seeing you guys contributing as much as you have.

But I’m still curious to know what you’d do/how you’d feel if you caught the same fish twice.

Cheers!
Roland Kahlenberg

[Andrew Kramer]

Catching the same fish in a fresh water lake seems very unlikely. But if I did hopefully he would be a couple pounds bigger then I would be happy. But having the same fish in every picture but with different clothes would seem a little fishy.

Jimmy,
Yes but there are consequences.

To do what you are suggesting, simply turn on the “continuous rasterize switch in the final comp, then inside the “text” comp make the 2 text layers 3D.
Now the way the effect is setup is based on raster effects (linear wipe, compound blur linked to static gradient), so in the final comp when you zoom into the text the blur and opacity fall-off will not stay relative to the size of the text when zoomed in.

So what you need to do is turn off the effects and add a feathered mask to the reflection text layer and match what the linear wipe was doing. You can’t really have the compound blur linked to the gradient map in a continuously rasterized comp and expect things to work correctly.

However, the opacity falloff is the most important thing and with a feathered mask, this is zoomable and scales relative to the text layer size.

When I get up i’ll re-read this and see if it makes any sens…

Cya guys,
Andrew

[Yoondo]

Hey, I don’t mean to make this thread 2 miles long, but I’ve noticed that you can’t cast shadows with this divider(adj.layer). If you switch this layer off, then you get the cast shadow working for you.

It looks as if you need to choose either the reflection or the shadow. Or, am I missing something here? Maybe someone has an answer.

Very nice tutorial, indeed.

[Andrew Kramer]

This was something I was going to put in the tutorial but I wanted to keep some focus…

However casting shadows with this method can be done fairly easy.

1. Turn on the cast shadow function for the “text” comp or you reflective comp
2. Duplicate the floor layer and put it directly under the “text” comp and above the Adjustment layer divider
3. Change the color to white and the transfer mode to “multipl”
4. Make Sure the Light “casts shadows” and the new white floor layer “accepts shadows” and your all set.

Basically by puttin the white layer under the text it renders with the text in 3D but because it is white the muliply transfer mode leaves the shadow.

The tricky part is getting the lighting to look right. Having a shadow and reflection in front may look busy or sloppy so you can duplicate a light and move it towards the camera and in front of the text layer casting the shadow back behind…

Here is a screenshot of my comp,
http://www.videocopilot.net/shadow.jpg

Great question. Don’t worry about long posts so long as they help you and other people. Personally I appreciate people getting interested.

Thanks,
Andrew

[Yoondo]

[Andrew Kramer] “Great question. Don’t worry about long posts so long as they help you and other people. Personally I appreciate people getting interested.”

Hey Andrew, I appreciate your quick reply. That will work great for me.
After working with AE for a couple of years, you learn something new everyday.

Thanks again.

[Jimmy Brunger]

This is all good stuff! Thanks Andrew/all. What I’d do without this forum right now I do not know!

RIGHT – now to get my system upto spec, so I can do all this cool stuff with a client breathing down my neck! (Ohhhhh for realtime!! 😉