Pulling element out of a map

[Bret Williams]

Ok, my non expression method… must be a better way. Create an inverted pyramid shape with 5 3D layers. 1 square and 4 traingles. The image is essentially the bottom of the pyramid. Parent the triangular sides to the bottom image. The triangles of course all come to a singluar point. Move the anchor point of the square image in z space to the point. Now, scale just the z parameter of the square image and it zooms forward or back, lengthening the trailing pyramid shape behind it. Maybe it’s 101 but I just haven’t had to do any zspace scaling that I can remember. Very useful.

But there’s gotta be a better way that’s more accurate and automated.

[Michael Szalapski]

You could use multiple instances of the Beam effect. And tie the end points to your photo’s corners.

This page talks about how to do such a 2d layer effect point to a 3d position, basically use this expression.
L = thisComp.layer("Null 1");
L.toComp([0,0,0]);
Where Null 1 is the name of the layer it’s tracking.

You can either put a null in each corner of your pic with expressions (picwhip position and offset them to the corners in the expression + or – however many pixels)

Or you could tie it directly to the picture layer itself and just + or – in the expression.

There are actually tons of ways to do it. Perhaps others will have some alternatives.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I think you may be able to use Zaxwerks Serpentine on this. I know it tracks a layer, so if your layer is the picture, scale the Serpentine to match the pict size and play with opacity/transfer modes.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist
Bucharest, Romania
http://www.ennstudio.ro

[Bret Williams]

Thanks all. Going to follow up on those ideas. Always open for more!