[Edward Wu]

Hi Stef,

Right. Create a plane inside of 3D Invigorator, and position it so that the shadow can fall onto the plane. Then, you can work with either the 3D Invigorator lights, or the After Effects lights. Be sure to turn on Casts Shadows/Shadow Casting and you should be able to see the shadow on the plane.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Amber,

Sorry to hear about the frustrations. It may be a little confusing to integrate After Effects 3D Layers and 3D Invigorator objects, but you’ll get the hang of it.

What may be easier to set up, is to try having all your objects in 3D Invigorator. This means keep everything in Set 1. Put the planet and all your vector objects in Set 1. To put your vector objects in 3D Invigorator, load the vector images as texture maps, and apply them onto Planes.

Keep in mind that 3D Invigorator objects can casts shadows onto other 3D Invigorator objects. So if you want to have have the planet casts shadows onto the vector objects and vice versa, they all need to be in the 3D Invigorator scene.

Lastly, remember to make your 3D Invigorator layer comp-size, and keep the layer as a 2D layer. If you make the layer a 3D layer, your objects may end up looking flat.

If you have any questions, let me know.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Stef,

When working with shadows in 3D Invigorator, you need to create a surface in 3D Invigorator for the shadows to fall on. This surface can either be a plane, or any other 3D objects such as primitives. If you don’t want the surface to show up, you can apply a “Shadow Catcher” material onto the plane. This will allow you to see the shadow without seeing the surface of the object. By doing this, you can have the shadow look like it’s falling onto the After Effects 3D Layer.

If you have questions about this, let me know.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Don,

Thanks for submitting the crash report. We’ll investigate into why you’re running into those issues.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Tim,

3D Flag for Premiere Pro is compatible up to Premiere Pro 1.5, which is why you were having issues running it within Premiere Pro CS4.

Please contact me at ed@zaxwerks.com and I’ll help you upgrade your 3D Flag for Premiere Pro to the After Effects plug-in.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Don,

What I am referring to is that when After Effects crashes, you will be able to click on “Report” or “Ignore”. When you click on the “Report” button, you’ll see a log that contains the After Effects crash information. You can copy and paste the information into a text file, and attach that crash log in an e-mail to me.

My e-mail address is ed@zaxwerks.com

Please let me know what procedure you were doing when the crash occurred. Thanks.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Don,

If you are running into an issue with corruption, try clearing the ProAnimator Preference file. To do this, go into the “Users > Library > Preferences” folder, and delete the “ProAnimator Prefs” file. This should allow you to open projects that have been corrupted.

When you run into a crash in After Effects, it will ask you if you’d like to save the project. However, the crash save file is usually unstable and could cause more crashes. So, it’s usually not a good idea to work from those saved projects.

In terms of crashes and conflicts, here’s what we are aware of. If you have undocked panels within After Effects, this will cause a conflict with the ProAnimator windows. To fix this, dock all your After Effects panels before running ProAnimator. Also, the plug-in Nucleo Pro, and the After Effects Multiprocessing setting have caused conflicts with some of our plug-ins in the past. So, you can try disabling these and see if they help.

I realize that you mentioned you are having crashes randomly. However, if you find that you are having crashes more commonly with something, please save the crash log for that process so we can investigate what you are running into.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Rob,

The Invigorator Pro uses the After Effects renderer. So, you’ll be able to select the Uncompressed 10-bit compressor from the render settings with the After Effects render settings.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Rob,

The current version of ProAnimator allows you to render Uncompressed 10-bit 4:2:2. I’m not sure if I understand your question completely, so let me know if this isn’t what you were referring to.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Joe,

Our purchase policy is as follows:

If you purchase any of our software, and we release a newer version of the software within 3 months of your purchase date, you will receive the update to the newer version free of charge. This means, if you purchase any of our plug-ins today, and we release the 64 bit versions within 3 months, then you are eligible to receive the upgrade for free.

We are working hard to update all of our plug-ins to 64-bit at the moment, but as of now, we do not have a set release date for when the 64-bit versions will be available.

The upgrade fee will vary depending on the product. For major releases such as our 3D Invigorator and ProAnimator products, these new upgrades will contain massive feature updates that will greatly enhance the capabilities of the program. These new releases will be considered full version upgrades. Our other plug-ins that are converted from 32-bit to 64-bit will have to be completely re-written, so there will be small upgrade fees.

If you have any questions, feel free to let me know.

Best,
Edward