Making a 3d Speaker?

[Ron Coy]

yeah.. you pretty much have to use a 3D app..

blender is free, quite powerful, and there are TONS of resources online to learn to use it.

[Malcolm Desoto]

Thanks for the suggestion. I guess I should have learned Blender by now. I just don’t know if I’ll have time to learn how to use it in time.

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” –Albert Einstein

[Jason Milligan]

Have you tried using distortion filters like bulge or liquify on the flat tweeter layer?
It may give better results than you’d anticipate.

[Chris Wright]

If you mirror, orientate, and parent the 3 parallel sides of the box to one side, they will follow each other precisely, automatically. rotation, size, etc. Then you just only have to animate one layer and the rest follow by relative motion.

After Effects wins again!

[Malcolm Desoto]

Thanks! Those are some pretty good ideas. I’ll try em out.

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” –Albert Einstein

[David Bogie]

> My main concern is trying to create a moving tweater. composing a tweeter out of ps layers and moving them around seems insufficient and probably won’t look so realistic.

No, it won’t look real in the slightest but neither will your box.
Creating a speaker isn’t all that difficult if you don’t mind the stylization. You have two or more flat or concentric circles that are expressed so their z-spaces respond to amplitude from an audio layer.

Impossible to describe here but the Trish and Chris Meyer book “After Effects in Production” has a realworld example, see page 250.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[Mike Clasby]

Here is an earlier thread to sync scale (of a speaker) with audio via an expression:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/919313

Mu mood of Dan’s expression will make it pop from 85 to 100% scale with the audio, so if the wolfer has concentric rings they’ll expand/contract with the audio.

You could do something similar with Bulge, ask if you want to go there.

[Mike Clasby]

1) An expression for Bugle would look something like this (on Bulge Height):

Audio = thisComp.layer(“Audio Amplitude”).effect(“Both Channels”)(“Slider”);
minAudio = 0;
maxAudio = 25;
minScale= 0;
maxScale = 10;
b = linear(Audio,minAudio,maxAudio,minScale,maxScale);
b

It assumes an Audio Amplitude layer via the old Animation>Keyframe Assistant>Convert Audio to keyframes. Twirl down to the effect>Both Channels, then set you minAudio and maxAudio to match the high and low keyframes.

2) Methinks the easiest way to build a 3D speaker in AE 3D space is with this script, that creates a 3D cube, from your own 6 layers (all equal sides), or with new solids. The box is a unit, the sides are parented to a Null for movement/rotation:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/227/10249

[Bart Winckers]

I just wanted to note that I had to do the same thing last year, and the bulge effect really did the trick.

[Malcolm Desoto]

This is all really helping. I’ll give a go at these techniques.

For the record, When I said. “It probably won’t look very realistic.”

I was really trying to sya that it would look bad or cheesy. I don’t care if it looks real. The entire commercial is highly stylized anyway.

Thanks again!

“The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” –Albert Einstein