PI3 with 3D

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Sure –

I used the emitter called “Drips 1” from the “Color From Layer” library that comes with pIllusion 3.0. I modified it to not get the color from the layer (in the emitter properties, under the particle Tab’s section called “Color.”

Then I just made it so all of the particles were white (Got rid of any extra colors) and lowered the Number of Particles being emitted.

Hope that helps.

Aharon

Aharon Rabinowitz
arabinowitz(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Todd Groves]

So, you mean you changed the settings under Color to what the defaults would be with a regular emitter?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

You got me. I know it exists that way somewhere, but i couldn’t find it when I did the tutorial. I couldn’t remember what it was called, so I just a modified the Color from layer one.

Less than a minute of work to change, btw.

But yeah, if you have the old one, it’s the same thing.

Aharon Rabinowitz
arabinowitz(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Todd Groves]

OK. I’ll try to tweak it. I’ll let you know if I can’t get it to work like yours. Thanks for your help.

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Sorry if I wasn’t clear there.

3 things need to be changed-

1) Turn off get color from layer, and choose to get the color from the gradient.

2) Make the gradient entirely white.

3) Lower the number of particles, using the number property.

Aharon Rabinowitz
arabinowitz(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Todd Groves]

Perfect. Thanks so much, Aharon.

[Jose Burgos]

Question:
The rain on the floor is rendered in 3D using bump mapping and the text is placed using AE in AE’s 3D view using the camera data from Maya and then the rings rendered seperatly are used as a displacment on the text layer in AE?

Thank you,
Jose Burgos

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Render 1 – The 3D environment (Rain, ground).

The ground is actually 2 layers.

Plane 1 (top) – Phong shader – high specualrity, fully transparent. Bump Map is the black and white movie of the rain rings (the particles).

Plane 2 (right below Plane 1) – Lambert (I think). Ground with rock texture.

Render 2 – The Displacement map

In Maya, I Deleted everything except Plane 1, the lights, and the animated camera. I set the lights to 0 intesity (don’t delete them – make their intensity 0 – otherwise, maya uses it’s own fake lighting system which effects the layer making some parts too bright). Replaced the Phong shader with a lambert shader, with everything set to black, except the Incandescence channel (in 3DS max this would be called “Self Illumination”).

In the Incandescence channel I put the same black and white rings movie that I used on the bump map. You can’t see it in the Orthographic view, but if you do a render you will see the rings, and that they are not effected by the fact that there is no light in the scene.

I then rendered out a movie of the same length as the 3D environment render.

In After Effects

Imported the Maya camera data into AE

Imported both renders into AE. Dropped them both in the comp – kept them as 2D layers (remember, the 3D has already been rendered – they are only flat images now).

Made the B&W rings invisible – turned off their eyeball.

placed/rotated the text in 3D so that they appeared flat on the floor. BTW – You can set up null objects in Maya to mark where you want your text layer (or any other AE 3D layer) to be.

Added the displacement map effect to the text, and used the invisible B&W render as the source of displacement. Played with the settings until I got something I liked.

Hoep that helps.

Aharon Rabinowitz
arabinowitz(AT)yahoo(DOT)com
http://www.allbetsareoff.com
http://www.pIllusionFusion.com

[Todd Groves]

Thanks for the step-by-step, Aharon. 🙂

[Jose Burgos]

[Aharon Rabinowitz] “placed/rotated the text in 3D so that they appeared flat on the floor. BTW – You can set up null objects in Maya to mark where you want your text layer (or any other AE 3D layer) to be. “

This is the part I was hoping for more info on.
You import the Maya camera to the AE camera and then load the nulls from the Maya scene?

Sorry if this seems straight forward but I have not used AE since 4.0 and use DFX+ 4 now.
As you know, the present DFX is not a 3D compositor (will be in 5.0).
So was wondering how AE allows you to load the nulls position and how you use them to allign the text.

Thanks again,
Jose Burgos