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Losing Reflection
I created a few words of text, sized it to fill most of the frame and turned on 3D.
To create a reflection, I copied it, flipped it 180 degrees on the X axis, lined up the bottom edge, and put a linear wipe on it with the appropriate feather to get the gradient to fall off into the background.Then I did a simple camera animation that tracked from left to right, starting close in on the text and pulling further out to end at the original size. Very straight forward.
I noticed when the camera was up close, the reflection layer seemed to be almost totally transparent, and as the camera pulled further away, the transparency seemed to come back to normal. ???I tried nesting the text layers and trying it with the continuous raster on and off. With it off, the reflection was good all the way through, but can’t be used because of the loss of quality when up close.
How do I keep the reflection from changing? And why is this happening?
Any help is greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Eric -
2 Replies
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if you have a solid “floor” layer, try putting a 2D adjustment layer (no effects – just a blank layer) between the text/reflection layer and the floor. This will force the text to render on top of the floor always, including the reflection. As far as your exact problem, I don’t know if this will help or apply to you at all, but it’s saved me a lot of trouble with layers intersecting in 3D space.
just a side thought, are you using opengl? try turning it on/off, or render a test video to check completely. AFAIK, opengl and After Effects don’t play nicely together (I blame the fact that AE is more complex and powerful than its competitors, so it’s harder for the AE programmers to implement comprehensive features like a different rendering engine, or so I imagine.)
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The linear wipe effect is your problem.
You have it applied to a text layer, which is continuously rasterized. As a result the angle you set in the linear wipe effect is not relative to the text layer’s position or orientation in the composition. Instead it is an absolute angle relative to the composition. This is the case for any layers or compositions that have the continuously rasterize/collapse transformations switch enabled.
For example, a linear wipe with an angle of 90° will always run directly along the y-axis of the composition (not the y-axis of the text layer).
For another method, check my previous post:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/975062
There’s an after effects project there if the description is too difficult to understand.
Darby Edelen
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