[Edward Wu]

Hi Jim,

You may be running into an issue where the “Best Geometric Detail” is not set high enough. Try increasing the value to “600 x 600” or higher and see if this works out for you.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Kerri,

In Version 5, we changed the “Offline Camera” feature to the “User Camera”. You can change the camera by open the “Main Camera” drop down menu, and selecting one of the two User Cameras. Like the Offline Camera, the User Camera lets you switch to a different view without affecting your Main Camera.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Jonathan,

If possible, please send me the After Effects project. I don’t need the media files. I’ll take a look at your setup and see if what you’re running into.

Thanks.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Nick,

We’ve been preparing to release 3D Flag for the past week or so, but we’ve ran into a few small issues that needed to be resolved. We’re finalizing the release and putting on the last polish. With any luck, we should be able to get it out this week!

Thanks for your patience.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Chris,

You may be using a linked Object Style. Because of this, when you change the material of one Object, it changes the color of the other Object.

To fix this, go into the “Object Style Swatches” panel, and go into the “Swatch” menu. Then select the command “Unlink Object Style”. This will unlink the Object Styles and you should be able to make changes to one Material without affecting the other Object.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Jon,

The workflow for 3D Reflector is to apply the plug-in to a 3D Layer that you want to act as your reflective surface. So for example, if you want to set up a scene where you have a reflective floor surface, and a reflective back wall, you would create two 3D Solid Layers. One as the floor, and the other as a back wall. Then, apply 3D Reflector to both the floor and the back wall. After this, any 3D Layer you have in After Effects will interact with the floor and wall. If the 3D Layer is close to the floor or wall, the reflections of the 3D Layer will show up in either the floor or the wall!

So, if you’re working with a Pre-comp, the concept will be similar. If the Pre-comp is a 3D Layer, you can apply 3D Reflector to the Pre-comp, and other 3D Layers in After Effects will interact with the Pre-comp layer. The Pre-comp would then act as your reflective layer.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Cliff,

You’re welcome. When you’re talking about slowing down the rendering process, are you referring to the actual rendering when you queue the After Effects for render? Or are you talking about coming out of the Invigorator interface and having the Invigorator graphics render into the After Effects comp window?

If you’re talking about speeding up the workflow, you can try lowering the Resolution of the After Effects project. In addition, you can switch the After Effects layer so that it is in Draft quality instead of Best quality. Also, if you’re working with Motion Blur or Shadows, this could increase the rendering time quite a bit. You can try turning off the both effects and only adding them before the final render. One other thing you can try doing is going into the Invigorator interface, and changing the renderer from the Invigorator Renderer to the OpenGL Renderer. This will also help speed up the previewing, but just remember to switch back to the Invigorator Renderer for the final render.

In terms of using Layer Maps, keep the Layer map relative to the size of the object you’re applying it to. For example, if you’re working with a 100×100 sized plane, you wouldn’t need a Layer map that was 2000×2000.

Hope this helps.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Magnus,

Sorry to hear about the issues you’re running into.

Please e-mail me at ed@zaxwerks.com

I may have different versions of the software that may work better on your computer. I’ll send you the download links so you can try the different versions and see which one works better for you. Also, please let me know where you are having the redraw issue. Are you having issues seeing your objects in the 3D Preview window? If possible, please send a screen shot so I can see the issue. Thanks.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Eric,

There’s currently a compatibility issue with 3D Invigorator PRO and OSX 10.7 Lion.

We are working diligently on a fix and should have a fix available shortly. Once the fix is available, I’ll send you an e-mail that contains instructions on how to install the fix.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Cliff,

We recently just discovered a crasher in regards to working with materials. If you apply a material, use the Undo command, and try re-applying the material to the object again, it will cause a crash. This may be what you are running into when working with or applying materials.

In terms of the map not updating, it may be due to the setting “Keep Textures in Memory Between Renders”. This setting may be what is preventing the image from updating. Try disabling the setting and see if this helps.

In addition, try working with Layer Maps. This will allow you to keep the images as Pre-comps in After Effects, and you can just re-load the image file whenever you make changes to the Photoshop file. This lets you get the updated image immediately as opposed to having to restart the computer.

Best,
Edward