Masked object disappears when i add element 3D effect to it ….

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve George] “After i have created a solid and added element 3d to it how can i choose a masked layer that i haven’t made yet ? Please can you give me a step by step guide, so i can follow it please, or just modify the steps i already made above.”

Well, obviously you have to make the masked layer before you can refer to it. I was assuming you already had those as shown in your screenshot.

Import your footage. Put it in your 1280×720 composition. Auto-trace it. Then pick up from where you left off in the steps above.

If you’re new to After Effects, I’d recommend the following link, in which Adobe’s Todd Kopriva pulls together some important introductory materials:
https://blogs.adobe.com/toddkopriva/2010/01/getting-started-with-after-eff.html

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Ridley Walker]

Perhaps this will clarify the process. Walter, you have the patience of Job…

E3D Demo

[Steve George]

Thank you so much for this ridley,

These are the exact steps i have taken every time, the only difference being that when i click ok after leaving element 3d my image is small (half the project size) and yours was large, bigger than the screen.

My initial question was why is my design coming out of element very small when its very big when i put it in there ?

Your logo was pretty small when you put it into element but was twice as big when it came out, this is the opposite of what is happening to me.

When i enlarge my rendered image to fit the screen there is some loss of quality, i was asking how to avoid this ?

Thanks

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve George] “When i enlarge my rendered image to fit the screen there is some loss of quality, i was asking how to avoid this ? “

How are you doing this?

If you are doing this by scaling the Element layer, don’t do that. Use the particle look size as I described above.

If you are doing this by adjusting the particle size and still looks gross, that’s probably because the auto-traced paths themselves are gross, possibly because the source image is gross (undersized), and you just can’t see it when the source is smaller.

Vectorization of a still image is hard. If you have this as an Illustrator source, you should really consider the path workflow I mentioned above — or at least exporting a higher-resolution image to give auto-trace a fighting chance.

There are also numerous options you can adjust in auto-trace that controls how the path-fitting works. The defaults may not be appropriate for your source. You can get a sense of how these controls work by ticking the “Preview” box in the auto trace dialog box and tweaking them.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Steve George]

Thanks for the great advice guys. I have been playing with the settings you mentioned and have found a comfortable level of quality now.

This forum rules 🙂

Stevie