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Older AE Plugin for adding dimension to stills?
Hey everyone…
This is a long shot but worth asking.
Years ago I worked with an AE guy on some furniture spots. He had a plugin where you could take a still image, define what the dimensional space was (like drawing cubes around a the shape of a mattress I think?) and from this 3d data you could do small camera moves that would feel a bit more natural than simply panning across a still.
Is anyone familiar with this plugin/technique and remember what it is called? I am not referring to the technique of separating a 2d image into layers and painting in the background behind the lifted layers so you could create parallax, but it’s also not too far from that I think.
Thanks!Motion Graphics Designer / Art Director
Boston, MA -
12 Replies
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There’s a plugin called VoluMax that might fit the bill.
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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too. -
“Projection 3D” is a similar plugin
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
did it only essentially just make enough 2d copies of it …you know…this value+[0,0,index]…
or is the end result better looking than that? Because im interested now -
On VoluMax, the end result was much better than just layers offset in Z-space.
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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too. -
But volumax is not a plugin…its a project template….and it worked for you?
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I did not personally use it, but another guy on my team used it and loved it, and the results were quite impressive.
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It is easier to destroy than to create.
More fun, too. -
I’ve used Photo Animator on Video Hive and it works really cool. It won’t work for every photo.
Stephen Smith
Check out my Vimeo page
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yeah…ive tried it…It doesnt work on every photo and the ones that it does takes an exceeding large amount of work just for 1 photo
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I’m curious if anyone has used both Photo Animator and VoluMax? Otherwise, I wonder if you will just get the same results with both?
Stephen Smith
Check out my Vimeo page
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A quick cheat can be to use the mesh warper effect. This won’t work on everything but we use it a lot for faces that need to turn a little, and it would work perfectly for your mattress example.
Split the mesh into two sections (so 3 horizontal units) and one vertical. Then animate the middle divider left and right a little… voila! Parallax!
If the front “corner” of the mattress or the nose on the face is off center, you often have to use more divisions so you have have a division on the front apex of the virtual geometry. And then then just animate all the divisions in concert. The only thing missing is a shift constraint when you animate the division nodes, so be careful when moving the nodes left and right so you don’t get any vertical transformation.
You can also do this with the reshape effect, but because of its triangular interpolation math (instead of quads) sometimes this introduces curved space in the separate halves. (works for faces may not work for a box with grids on every face – like a skyscraper)
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