Mocha Mask to Extruded shape

[Brendon Murphy]

I don’t quite understand the role Mocha is playing here. Are you tracking pre-rendered 3D?

If you have each state as a path (which can be drawn with the pen tool in AE or pasted from illustrator), you can extrude the path by using the cinema 4d renderer. Just go to Composition>Composition Settings. Under the “3D Renderer” tab, choose CINEMA 4D in the dropdown.

As long as your shapes are 3D layers, you can go under “Geometry Options” and then increase the extrusion depth.

By default, AE sees a precomp as a flat plane. Even if it is enabled as a 3D layer, it just becomes a 2D plane in 3D space. If you want the contents to be affected by a camera outside of the precomp, you must enable “collapse transformations”(see image).

[Brett Scothern]

I should have explained it differently. I’ve attached a better image of what I’m trying to accomplish. Basically I’m tracking different shapes (Future Buildings) in Mocha AE. I’m trying to figure out how to make the shape stay locked in place and extrude while the drone footage pans around. I’ve used 3D camera tracker and have accomplished the results I wanted, but some of the footage the shapes go out of the screen causing the Tracked to fail. Thanks for you help. Much appreciated.

[Brett Scothern]

Here is kind of the end results I’m looking for. I just can’t figure out how to make it stay in perspective while the drone footage pans around. Maybe it’s not even possible using just after effects.

[Blaise Douros]

It’s still not clear what your use case is–are you trying to do the map thing, or the building thing?
Either way, this is entirely possible using After Effects.

If you’re doing the building thing, you just need to make sure you’re getting a good 3D Camera Track. Mocha AE isn’t the right tool for this–forget about using it, and focus on getting the 3D Camera Tracker to work. Make sure you enter values that match the FOV of the camera, turn the contrast up, whatever you need to do. If the track is good, all you have to do is drop the mask in, extrude it as Brendon stated above, and you’re good to go. It doesn’t matter if the scenery comes in and out of frame if the overall track is good–once you place it, it should stick.

If you’re doing the map thing, then you’ll need to make the extrusion happen in the pre-comp where that state lives–again, as Brendon stated above. Then, in the main comp, select “Collapse Transformations” so that the rotational properties you apply to the flat plane will propagate down to the extruded pre-comp. No need to use Mocha for this, either, I think.