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Layering of 3D Groups
I have a little conundrum with a Motion project in 3D. I have a color solid as a “floor” for reflections and then a front overlay with a few effects. The overlay and the floor are BOTH in 3D space and don’t move with the camera, they both need to be in perspective.
The problem is, the overlay and the floor intersect, i.e. the bottom of the overlay is cut off where it passes through the floor.
Here’s what it looks like:
As you can see, the floor is reflecting the element and cutting it off. I want to have the element show perspective properly and remain in the same position, but also have it not cut off by the floor.
Strangely, I have another layer with a text logo, and the instant that text logo layer becomes active, the overlay is no longer cut off. This may be a bug, though. I don’t see why that would change anything.
Ideas?
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17 Replies
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You mentioned you had some effects on some of layers. If you disable them does it do what you want? It’s possible that the effects aren’t playing nicely with the floor.
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I’m not sure of what you are trying to do, but thinking out loud, you might get the effect you want by having the floor in a 2D group. Try right-clicking on the floor and grouping it by itself and make sure that group is 2D and not 3D.
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Hey how did you get that sweet effect in Motion?
~AJ
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Nope, it does it even with just a simple generator. I’ve uploaded a file to 5223_testreflectionstage.motn.zip that shows a minimal example. I want the checkerboard layer to cover the whole screen, not get cut off by the floor. Watch when the text starts to fade in, if it works like it does on mine, it’ll fill the screen at that moment. You’ll see what I mean.
I would wait to bring in the stage layer until the text comes in, but I have some other effects I want to have going during that time, and there may be times that isn’t possible so I’d like to figure it out without going that route.
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2D group doesn’t work. See my other post in this thread here for more information, I uploaded a file with an example as well.
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You mean the lighting? It’s a plugin called mFlare. Highly recommended, it’s plenty fast even on my 9400M GPU. It’s similar to something like Knoll Light Factory, and it works with FCPX and Motion 5, where KLF doesn’t as far as I know.
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I’m pretty sure the reason it’s doing this is because you have the blend mode set to ‘Add’ for the checkerboard layer. When it fills the whole screen it is more or less accidental, since having the text layer below it screws around with the positioning (at least in how it is viewed) and the blending. (If you move the text layer above it, it will cut off the whole time.)
You can easily trick it into doing what you want, however. Start the text layer at the beginning, but keyframe the opacity to 0. Set another 0 opacity one frame before the mask starts, and then set to 100 on the next. It will probably achieve what you are going for.
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Actually, moving the text layer above it doesn’t change anything, and neither does the blend mode…
The zero opacity trick works perfectly, though. Now it makes me wonder… what if I had an add blend mode layer that I wanted to have cut off on the floor with a reflection, and then I had another layer that caused the reflection/cutoff to stop working? Hmm… something to investigate further.
Regardless, thanks for the tip. 🙂
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Haha Ok I have mFlare! I LOVE mFlare! I got it half off 🙂 because of black friday. I didn’t see that flare! Is it a preset or did you have to make it?
~AJ
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It’s L_Iris_Horizon, I just made a tiny tweak to the hoop element to keep it moving when the flare goes offscreen (it looked funny when it stopped midway through the animation).
And yeah, mFlare is awesome. I used the After Effects lens flare since way back in CS2 or something, and when I got Motion I was a bit disappointed in the dismal “lens flare” element. But because of that I was forced to look for something else, and even AE’s flare is pitiful compared to mFlare. 🙂
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