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Element 3D After Effects Lighting
I am fairly new to After Effects and am using it to do some basic 3D animation with the Element 3D plugin. I have loaded my 3D object into After Effects but it doesn’t seem to be effected by lights. Only the ambient light setting seems to work. When I make the solid layer with the Element 3D object into a 3D layer the lights appear but this means my camera layer doesn’t function properly as when I orbit around the 3D object it distorts and disappears when viewed from the side. I have watched several tutorials for Element 3D and none of them mention needing to make the layer a 3D layer to have lights affect the object so I am wondering if its maybe a setting in after effects that I havent used?
Any help would be fantastic.
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6 Replies
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Element is a 3D effect on a 2D layer, you don’t make the layer itself a 3D layer.
One setting that affects the AE lights in Element is the “Lighting influence” in the Element environment settings. The default setting is 25%, if you want the lighting to affect the scene more (in relation to the Element environment), up this value.
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Hello, i have the EXACT SAME PROBLEM. Did you ever find a solution to this problem?
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If only ambient lights work after you do the above, your video card is probably not a supported for Element. See this list:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kqQP_Okzn_PEJsn0_CstMJUKyXw3VUJPz9-zX85dDag/pub
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
Hello,
thank you very much! Indeed, my Mac came with an Intel Graphic Card. But isn´t it strange then, that when I turn it into a 3D Layer, the lights DO work..? -
[Marina Plotzki] “isn´t it strange then, that when I turn it into a 3D Layer, the lights DO work..?”
No. In that case, Element isn’t rendering the lights, it’s just AE doing what it normally does to an AE 3d layer. The Element effect itself isn’t doing anything with the lights.
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Also worth checking that the solid you’ve applied the Element3D effect to hasn’t had it’s In-point changed. I.e. Frame 1 of the solid needs to sit at the very start of your timeline. I had the same issue and it took me forever to find the solution. The fix is better described here on the Video Copilot site – see the last section on ‘Cameras and Lights not responding’:
https://www.videocopilot.net/docs/element2/troubleshooting/render_problems/
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