[Death_or_glory]

Perfect, thanks!

[Death_or_glory]

No, whether using cm or mm or whatever, what I’m hoping to find is the conversion. For example, 100 cm in Maya = X pixels in AE.

I’m looking into the image plane as a solution as well, no luck yet.

Thanks

[Death_or_glory]

This is something I did awhile back as a quick test:
https://chrisconn.net/parallax/baseball1.mov

Its basically a quick way to bring stills to life. In this case, a Maya-generated baseball was added.
For another good example, look at:
https://media2.mk12.com/mk12_version_five.html

under work for hire/2004: Cartoon Network: ASB

[Death_or_glory]

I won’t go into the physics of parallax here, but this is the basic way to do this effect. The trick is to inroduce parallax where none exists.
The best way to do this is to separate your foreground element (or elements) from the background, and paint in the background ‘behind’ the FG element. (If you have the opportunity to shoot the things you’ll be doing this with, simply shoot a clean plate of your BG)
When you set up your comp, place the elements in z space and scale the BG and FG to visually match the original (use snapshot feat. if precision is involved)
Camera trans reveals the gag. Most effective with more than 2 depth levels, ie. FG, Mid, and BG.
Good luck!

[Death_or_glory]

Of the 3 tabs in the upper right hand corner of the app, (minimize, max/window toggle, and exit )Try clicking on the ‘window’ tab in the upper right-hand corner of ae. Then click and drag the edge of the application across to the other monitor.

[Death_or_glory]

I just had this come up, and this tutorial was a good one.
https://www.trapcode-people.net/filedetails.php?fileid=15
Uses trapcode shine and some masking. I’ve also been looking into doing a more ‘columns of light’ look with Sapphire EdgeRays. Nothing spectacular yet, but fun explorations.

“particleIllsuion also has some Aurora Borealis effects as well.”

https://www.wondertouch.com

[Death_or_glory]

Indeed, it’s that and nothing more. My personal opinion is that what makes this technique successful is imaginative planning of the reveals teamed with well timed, elegantly animated camera moves. In the Shilo Gap spot, they’ve also tracked some of the graphics to the models’ bodies which makes the illusion of substance that much more successful.
I’ve seen some cool stuff lately where an approach like the one you’ve identified is combined with a ‘real’ 3D camera, and actual geometry. This tends to bring it past the ‘Mtv-ness’ of it, because like you said, it’s well out there. MK12 (for one) has been doing it for a number of years now.

[Death_or_glory]

From what I’ve heard, it IS great – but you’d better invest in a bunch more RAM. Apparently, it boots up several iterations of AE, some of which run in the background. We all know AE will hog any RAM it can, so you can imagine the possibility of affected performance.

[Death_or_glory]

>file/import

import as composition if you want to keep your layers.

This sort of thing is pretty well covered in the handy ‘AE help’ directory, in the future it might help your workflow to check that first.

[Death_or_glory]

Perf, thanks all