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Need help creating simple 3D effect…
Hey Guys and Gals,
I am VERY new at the 3D realm of AFX…but I need to create an effect in 3D.
I am mimicking the effect used in an ESPN ad…I don’t have a link, but I would describe it as a horizontal line, and still images rotate as if they are attached to that line. Kind of like a cheap state fair game…
I have the layers I want to rotate, I have put my anchor point of each layer on the line that I want to rotate it on. BUT when I use the first value of the *orientation* parameter…I only have the ability to rotate it once…I know in a 2D layer, I can rotate the value as many times as I want, and it will rotate based on keyframes a bunch of times. However, the orient value only goes from 0 to 360 degrees (one full rotation)…if I want it to spin 3 times in 1 second, then slow down and stop in the vertical position, do I have to keyframe all that…then just copy the keyframes created to each other layer? (I am doing the effect to 12 layers) or is there a better way to do this?
Also, I am planning on cutting the layer out and a new one in while the image is exactly horizontal to the audience…so mathmatically, I figured that I would put that value in at 270 degrees, but I have to put the value in at 265.5 for it to be exactly (visually) horizontal, without seeing any pixels of that layer. Why is this? shouldn’t it work in exact 90 degree increments?
Thanks in advance for your help…
-Jason
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6 Replies
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1. Use rotation, not orientation.
2. It’s because your camera is like a real camera, not an orthographic camera. When something not dead center of screen is on edge to camera, it’s not exactly at 270 degrees to a global datum or origin. Create a top view to see what I mean.
And, in case you didn’t know, never work in AE 3D without creating a camera. Don’t use AE’s built-in camera — it may mess you up later.
Steve
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To your orientation problem, always make sure you use rotation if you need to spin things more than 360 degrees. If you are using the rotation tool make sure you are changing the Rotation and NOT the orientation under the drop box in the tool section.
As Steve said, it would be a good idea to also create a camera in your Comp. That might fix your other problem.
Josh
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Thanks alot guys,
The rotation, NOT orientation advice did help…thank you very much.
As far as creating a camera, I had never done this before…and I used a preset for 35mm, and created several different cameras. There didn’t seem to be any difference between any of the cameras I created (as far as the default view), my view looked the same unless I turned on “depth of field”. Is there any magic to creating these…I can imagine that there could probably be an entire forum for this subject…but could you give a short explanation?
-Jason
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Have you tried changing your view to each camera? Look at the bottom of the comp window to select a camera.
Read up on it in the manual, and check the COW tutorials, too. 🙂
Steve
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Just out of curiousity why do you not have your layers parented to a 3d null?
This way they all rotate when you rotate the null. It sounds like you’re having to keyframe them all seperately.– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
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As I said in the original post, I am VERY new to the realm of 3D in AFX…I was trying to get a really good hold on the 2D side of things until I opened the door to 3D…but this project really called for something like what I have created.
And yes, I did rotate each layer individually, I have never used *Parenting*…maybe this project would have been the right time to do that. I am still very new to this program. I don’t get to use it for all our projects, just occasionally.
-Jason
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