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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects How to make a 3d mask/Motion Path

  • How to make a 3d mask/Motion Path

    Posted by John Winthrop on March 5, 2017 at 9:27 pm

    I want a ball to be “orbiting” a pillar in 3 dimensions. I can do it manually be keyframing the 3d postions and looping those keyframes, but it is very hard to get it to be a perfect circle.

    Making and object circle in 2d is simple enough, just make a circle shape and copy the mask path onto the position of the layer I want to move. I tried to do this in 3d, but no matter how I rotate the layer the mask is on (to be a perfect circle surrounding the central object) when i copy the mask path and paste it it still applies it as a 2 dimensional layer.

    How can I get the mask (or any other “path”) to occupy the z dimension so that when I paste it on the postion layer of another 3d object it will apply that position to the z depth?

    Michael Szalapski replied 9 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Ken Teutsch

    March 6, 2017 at 4:44 pm

    If you really just want the object to move in a circle, and unless I’m misunderstanding, a simpler way would be to just move the anchor point of the orbiting object and then keyframe the rotation. You don’t need a motion path.

  • Michael Szalapski

    March 7, 2017 at 5:34 pm

    Or make a null object, make it 3d, scoot your main object to the side a little bit, parent it to the null object, and then rotate the null object on the y axis.

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