[Edward Wu]

Hi Anastacia,

Right, I understand that animating in ProAnimator may be a concern because you may think that it will be hard to integrate with the After Effects elements, so that is why we have the Editor Background feature.

As for Layer Cycling, we don’t have a tutorial available, but if you check the ProAnimator folder that you’ve downloaded, you will see a Layer Cycling Examples folder. Import the file into ProAnimator, and scrub through the timeline and you will see the objects being animated. Then, you can open the file in Illustrator to see how the layers are set up. It should be a pretty simple process with most of the work done through Illustrator. If you have any questions though, I’d be happy to help.

You can also check out an animation with Layer Cycling objects in action. Check out Eugene Gonzales’s video:
https://www.zaxwerks.com/movies/media/eugene_smart_bid.mp4

It has a nice character that moves and jumps fluidly. Have fun!

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Anastacia,

Wow, this post has really taken off! It’s nice to see all the discussion on the different products that are available in After Effects. Like Brent said, there are so many creative options to choose from and really makes it a lot of fun being a 3D artist.

It’s great to hear that you’re having fun with the stained glass piece you are working with! If you need help with anything, just let me know. One thing you were talking to Brent about was shattering the glass. This is a feature of ProAnimator and is not available if you are working with Invigorator PRO. ProAnimator will allow you to apply fragmentation to any of the Object Tracks you are working with. The great thing is that once you apply fragmentation, it’s very easy to apply a random spread on the Object Track and have the pieces fly out in different directions.

One other thing I wanted to bring up about ProAnimator is that you are not editing blind while you are in the ProAnimator Set-Up window. We have a feature called the Editor Background. This control is located in the Effect Controls Window when you have the ProAnimator layer selected in After Effects. With the Editor Background, you can select any After Effects layer or Pre-Comp and have that act as the “background” in the ProAnimator Set-Up window. If you are using a Pre-Comp as the Editor Background, you can see all the changes of the Pre-Comp while scrubbing the ProAnimator timeline. This means, you can line up your ProAnimator objects with the After Effects elements without having to go back and forth from After Effects.

In addition, as Brent has brought up, you are able to track/parent any of your ProAnimator objects to After Effects layers. The cool thing about this is that even though the ProAnimator objects are tracking After Effects layers, you can still apply some Actions such as rotations, etc.

One other thing is that everything you set up in ProAnimator is completely customizable. So, if you ever need to make changes to the animation, any of your shapes, any of your materials, you can do so without having to worry about re-creating the entire animation. You brought up that you were not sure how customizable the ProAnimator Poses are, so rest assured, you can make any change at any time. You can even make changes while the animation plays back and the changes update on the fly!

You may have already noticed this, but if not, we have over 200 materials that we provide with ProAnimator. This includes a lot of metals, wood, and other textures that may be helpful for your projects. As Brent mentioned, it is also easy to load any image to use as your texture map. Also, you can use Pre-Comps as a texture map as well. What is really nice about using Pre-Comps is that you can load the Pre-Comp as the texture map, and make as many changes as you like to the Pre-Comp. You don’t have to worry about re-loading the Pre-Comp and doing anything to the material. The material will update automatically and you’ll be able to see the changes to the object. So, with your stained glass project, you can also load the stained glass into a Pre-Comp and apply that as a Layer Map onto the object you created. Then, you can animate the Pre-Comp such as applying different color changes to the stained glass, fading/wiping to another image, etc for a really cool look.

Lastly, you mentioned working with a 2.5D character animation. One feature you may not be aware of is our Layer Cycling Object. A Layer Cycling Object allows you to import multiple layers from Illustrator similar to how old school animations were created. This means, you can change the look of your Illustrator object layer by layer and the Layer Cycling Object will change frame by frame. Think of it like the program is flipping through, or playing back your Illustrator layer frame by frame. To do this, simply enable the options “Open By Layers” and “As Layer Cycling Objects” when you are importing the Illustrator file. Then, once you have imported the Illustrator file, simply scrub through the ProAnimator timeline and you can see animation play back. What’s fun is that the Layer Cycling Object is an extruded 3D object so you have a full 3D object with depth and bevel. This may or may not help with what you are looking to do, but is a neat process to play with nonetheless.

There were a lot of topics being discussed and I hope I covered each one. If I am missing anything, please let me know and I’ll be happy to help.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Anastacia,

3D Invigorator PRO is the easiest program to jump in. If you are familiar with After Effects and Illustrator already, there is almost no learning curve in terms of working with 3D Invigorator PRO. You would simply import the Illustrator paths, drag and drop any materials or object styles that you like onto the objects, and animate the object using After Effects keyframes. It doesn’t get any easier than that. As we been talking through emails, I mentioned that you can also map different images onto your objects. So if you are working with the stained glass shape you were talking about, you would also be able to apply the stained glass image onto the Illustrator object as well.

If price is an issue, you can also consider 3D Invigorator Classic. It does everything you wanted, but at a much lower price point. Personally, I would go with 3D invigorator PRO because you are getting a much larger feature set such as our advanced lighting systems, ray-trace rendering, and other features such as deformations and the ability to import and export 3D models. If price isn’t an issue, I would go with ProAnimator hands down. It’s simply the fastest in terms of creating advanced animations with all the fancy effects such as lighting, flares, and setting up cool animation paths. It does have a little bit of a learning curve, but the speed of the workflow is much faster than any program out there once you watch a few tutorials about the controls. To watch our video tutorials, visit our training page: https://zaxwerks.com/training/

Hope this helps. If you have any questions, you can reply to the post or to my emails.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Rich,

It really just depends on your workflow. If you are working with the After Effects Plug-in, you would do your rendering within After Effects. With the Standalone Application, you would render the animation out with an alpha channel and you can import the animation into your editor program. The advantage of having one or the other is really just how you prefer to work and where you prefer to render your animation. With that said, the After Effects Plug-in does have a benefit in the sense that you are able to work with the After Effects Camera or Lights and also track your objects to After Effects layers. With the Standalone Application, you can create your animations quickly without having to run After Effects at all.

If you have both, the advantage is that you can work with the Standalone without After Effects. Then, if you need to bring the animation into After Effects, you can always apply ProAnimator in After Effects and load the ProAnimator scene that you created using the Standalone. It gives you a little more flexibility in the way you work.

Hope this helps. If you have any questions, just let me know.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Gary,

3D Invigorator PRO version 4.5.1 is a 32-bit plug-in and is not compatible with After Effects CS5 and above because they require 64-bit plug-ins. If you upgrade to our latest version, which is version 7, it will work without any problems with After Effects CS6 and After Effects CC.

By upgrading to version 7, you get all the new features of our lighting system. This lets you setup an entire stage filled with trusses, lighting fixtures, light beams and flares all with just a few clicks! In addition, use our Ray-traced renderer to generate ray-traced reflections, ray-traced shadows, ambient occlusion, refraction and more. Also, you can use our object drawing window to draw shapes and instantly have them extrude to 3D.

To upgrade, please visit our web store using the link below:
https://zaxwerks.com/price_list.shtml

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Gary,

I’m not sure what model type you are working with, but if possible, try exporting your objects out using the Maya (.obj) format or Lightwave (.lwo). These two formats usually work the best with our program. You should be able to import your models without any problems using these two formats. If you are still having problems, please let me know.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Michael,

You are running into this issue because you are working with OSX 10.5.8. If you upgrade to 10.6 or higher, it will work without any problems. If you are unable to upgrade, please let me know and I will send version 6.1.1 to you. Version 6 will work without any issues on OSX 10.5.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Gary,

Using 3D Invigorator PRO, you will be able to import models such as Maya .obj, Lightwave .lwo, or Cinema 4D objects. Keep in mind that for Cinema 4D objects, we only support up to version 5, so if you are using a newer version of Cinema 4D, you will need to export your objects using a different format such as .obj.

You are able to apply 3D Invigorator PRO to different layers in After Effects. To do this, simply create multiple Solid layers in After Effects and apply 3D Invigorator PRO to each Solid layer. Then, you can import different objects to each instance of Invigorator PRO. Another approach is to import all the objects into the same scene. Since all the objects are in the same 3D space, you can position each object in Z-space and manipulate the Invigorator camera or After Effects Comp camera to “duck” behind the objects.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Eugene,

No problem at all. I’m happy to help. If you or Nico have any questions, feel free to contact me.

Best,
Edward

[Edward Wu]

Hi Theo,

ProAnimator does not export an .obj file with the texture map. It does export the UV mapping coordinates, but you will need to re-apply the texture in whatever 3D program you are working with.

The Collect Files command is used when moving a ProAnimator project file from one computer to another computer.

If you have any questions, please let me know.

Best,
Edward