drawing a line in 3d space?

[Nicholas Toth]

SO…there is more than one way to skin a cat. Especially with all adobe software.

Personally, I would have just used trapcode particular, and use the motion path of a light, and used that to draw the lines. It would give them depth, and you can use DOF on it. Is it the right answer? Maybe, the concepts brought up above this post are great because they aren’t 3rd party driven.

Nicholas Toth
Freelance Animator
nicholastoth.com

[Ben Weller]

mike your idea to use an audio waveform would have been genius, especially as ive got a character playing the guitar.
i say would have been, because i already spent a couple of hours doing the whole 2d to 3d thing, and to be honest i doubt the cables would be in shot for the bit where he plays the guitar.
But im definately gonna have to try that one day.

Thanks again to everyone for theyre help!

Ben Weller

http://www.keywoundmotor.co.uk

[Darby Edelen]

[Roland R. Kahlenberg] “The script is such –
———-
a=thisComp.layer(“endnull”);
a.toComp(a.anchorPoint)
———-
a=thisComp.layer(“startnull”);
a.toComp(a.anchorPoint)
———-“

You can also apply this to the beam size properties to get the correct perspective:


a = thisComp.layer("endnull"); //The end of the beam

cam = thisComp.activeCamera; //The active camera

p = a.toWorld(a.anchorPoint); //The world position of the end of the beam

c = cam.toWorld([0,0,0]); //The world position of the camera

v = p - c; //The vector between the camera and the end of the beam

cv = cam.toWorldVec([0,0,1]); //A unit vector pointing down the z-axis of the beam

d = dot(v, cv); //The vector between the camera and the end of the beam projected onto the vector pointing down the z-axis of the beam (d is the distance along the camera's z-axis to the plane that the end null resides on)

value * cam.zoom / d; //Multiply the current size value by the ratio of the camera's zoom property to the distance from the camera (as d, the distance between the camera and the null, increases the size decreases)

Also, note that the expressions that Roland supplied above require that they be applied to a comp sized solid.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

A wise decision, much easier 🙂

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Kevin Camp] “since it is a 2d effect, there won’t be any change is size from one end of the beam to the other as it moves back in space…”

The beam effect allows you to accomplish this with another couple of expressions. It’s still a straight line, but this technique can be invaluable for certain purposes.

I posted on it later on down the thread.

Darby Edelen

[Rusty Shackleford]

I am using the video copilot sure target plugin.
So I have some 3d layers arranged in 3d space and comp camera made by the plugin.
I need a line to run from one 3d layer to the next to make it look connected.

I made 2 nulls for the start and end points, and I aligned them in 3d space with the corresponding 3d layers.
I made a black solid at comp size and added the beam effect. I applied the expressions, but it’s not lining right.
Am I missing something?

Brandon Morris
http://www.brandonmorris.com

Canon T2i
13″ Macbook Pro (Mid 09) 8GB RAM 10.6