Extrusions in nested comp not showing in main comp

[Philip Bowser]

Perhaps the Continuously Rasterize checkbox is not enabled?

Philip. Bowser

[Ryan Hannebaum]

The little sunshine icon is there for all the shape layers, but it’s sort of dimmed, and I’m unable to toggle it.

[Philip Bowser]

Try turning that icon on for your sub-comp in the main comp.

Philip. Bowser

[Ryan Hannebaum]

That worked! I’m not exactly sure why that worked though …. ?

At any rate, thanks again Philip. I don’t suppose you could explain why that was what did the trick? I’m not real savvy with that sunshine icon and its functions.

[Philip Bowser]

The Continuously Rasterize button is a little bit weird and has some unintuitive features.
When you’ve selected a single layer it’s called “Continuously Rasterize” but when you’ve selected a nested comp it’s called “Collapse Transformation”.

They do two different things even though the buttons look the exact same and are in the same position. Definitely confused me for a little while.

Here’s a great video tutorial which gives you a great breakdown of the buttons. It will be able to explain it faster than I could in writing:
The Naked Truth About Collapse Transformations

In your situation, when you have 3D layers within a nested comp and you’ve selected “Collapse Transformation”, the camera can essentially “see through” that precomp, the 3D layers will respond to the camera in your master composition. So before when you didn’t have that button selected, even though you still had the 3D checkbox selected, this nested pre-comp was only responding like a 2D piece of footage in 3D space, the 3D layers inside of it were “baked” at whatever viewpoint they are being rendered at inside of that comp. Almost the same as if you rendered out that precomp as a quicktime, brought it back into after effects and pressed the 3D layer switch, the viewpoint that you rendered it at wouldn’t change. Pressing the “Collapse Transformation” button however makes the 3D layers inside become “active” in your main comp… if thats a good way of putting it..

It also does other things.. which are equally as unintuitive.

Check out that video though. Breaks it down fairly well.

Hope this helps!
Cheers,

Philip. Bowser

[Ryan Hannebaum]

Thanks again Philip. So it sounds like when you check the Collapse Transformation box on a pre-comp layer, it essentially makes the layer like a “folder” to group other layers, rather than a fully editable layer unto itself. Is that a fair summary?

[Philip Bowser]

That’s definitely a great way of looking at it! However, it will also do weird things to any adjustment layers or blending modes within that pre-comp. Adjustment layers will not be isolated to that pre-comp and will affect layers in the parent comp. Kind of annoying, sometimes I want the best of both worlds.

Philip. Bowser