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My 3D boxes don’t have shadows
Hey
I’ve got a composition containing a pre-composed structure made out of 3D boxes, the boxes are all also pre-composed within that composition. I have then keyframed the boxes to separate from the structure and move around the room.
The problem I am having is that the boxes don’t have any shadows. If they are not collapsed, I can see their shadows on the walls, but when they are collapsed and made 3D, the shadows disappear.
This makes be believe that there is nothing wrong with my settings (cast and accept shadows are on the necessary layers etc).
I ‘think’ the reason for the shadows not showing, is that they are trapped within the boxes themselves, i.e., light is cast on the side of the box that is facing the source, this then creates a shadow INSIDE the cube itself, thus the back of the box, and the other sides receive no light and the shadows are thus not made.
Is there any way around this? Any way I can make these pre-composed boxes display shadows to the walls and floor in the room?
I hope someone can help… this is for a project that needs to be in on Friday.
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12 Replies
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[Nick Hamilton] “I ‘think’ the reason for the shadows not showing, is that they are trapped within the boxes themselves, i.e., light is cast on the side of the box that is facing the source, this then creates a shadow INSIDE the cube itself, thus the back of the box, and the other sides receive no light and the shadows are thus not made. “
This should not be the case. When you collapse transformations on a pre-comp all of the material options on that pre-comp have no effect, the material options on the layers inside of the pre-comp are used instead. You need to make sure that the material options are correct at the lowest level of pre-comp.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Hey, I have looked at everything and still can’t see any problems. I have take some screenshots below of layers in each of the compositions:
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic1.JPG
This is one of the original boxes, cast shadows are on all of the layers, like this. The box was duplicated and then pre-composed again to make this composition:https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic2.JPG
As you can see, cast shadows are still on here too. This composition was made after I assembled all of the boxes within the main composition and decided to pre-compose them to save space.https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic3.JPG
This is the foremost composition. The boxes have no shadows, but everything seems to be alrighthttps://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic4.JPG
Here is a screenshot with the boxes not collapsed. The shadows are visible ;\And below is a screenshot I took a couple of days ago. This was before I pre-composed all of the boxes into one composition. So every box is in the main composition. Here you can see a shadow coming off the structure and onto the back wall:
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/room.PNGIf there are any settings you can see which are wrong, could you please tell me. I still think everything is alright though.
(I’m not a very advanced after effects user by the way… I only started using it last month, so if there are blatant errors, please don’t flame :p).
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go to your save file, then single click and press the delete key. This should solve your problem
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All of these links appear to be broken, except for the last one…
The screenshots won’t help much unless you are showing the material options for the solids in the pre-comp and the light options for the lights in the final comp.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
I’m sorry, the links are as followed. And yes they are showing material options. I’ve added another one with the lighting options on as well.
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic1.jpg
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic2.jpg
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic3.jpg
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/pic4.jpg
https://nick.nickhtbh.com/pics/lights.jpgHope you can help!
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Here’s what I see from pic2.jpg:
You cannot have an effect applied to a pre-comp with continuously rasterize/collapse transformations enabled… Well, you can but you shouldn’t, it results in unexpected problems, the pre-comp doesn’t behave as though its collapse transformations switch is enabled in some circumstances.
Disable the effects on these pre-comps and all should be well.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Ah, yes this has worked! Thanks very much!
Do you know why after effects acts like this with collapsed pre-comps then?
I had a position wiggle effect on all of the pre-comp boxes. But I’d rather have the shadows, as the wiggle wasn’t exactly necessary, and I can probably get around it anyway.
Thanks for all your help!
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[Nick Hamilton] “I had a position wiggle effect on all of the pre-comp boxes. But I’d rather have the shadows, as the wiggle wasn’t exactly necessary, and I can probably get around it anyway. “
You can still wiggle the position with an expression… In fact, I don’t even know what effect you would use to wiggle something =O
Try applying this expression (opt-click the stopwatch, alt-click on PC) to your position property instead of the effect:
wiggle(1, 10);The first value is the frequency and the second is the amplitude.
Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA -
Oh, I was actually using the wiggle preset, not an effect. So I guess presets in collapsed pre-comps also don’t work.
I’ll try that expression though, thanks very much!
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Hey
Is there a way to set the expression to come in at a certain time, and then stop at a certain time?
I had the boxes keyframed to start wiggling at a certain time, and then progress to a more intense “wiggle” (putting the frequency up), and then suddenly stopping.
Is there any way to do this all via an expression? Say they start wiggling on 10 seconds, progress to a higher frequency up until 22 seconds, and then suddenly stop wiggling at 22 seconds as well.
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