[Hafeez Zainalabidin]

Sorry a bit of a goof for Option 1:

1. A large diffused soft key in the centre that wraps around all the subjects, with one light at camera RIGHT* near the backdrop to act as fill for Subject 1 and backlight for Subjects 2 and 3, and one light at camera LEFT* near the backdrop to act as fill for Subjects 2 and 3 and backlight for Subject 1. Finally, 1 additional light for the backdrop as described earlier. This is the cheaper solution; I’m guessing the centre key will eliminate the need for a backdrop light but I will have other scenes that make use of the backdrop light so I’m just thinking about continuity here.

Too much typing, not enough checking 😛

[Hafeez Zainalabidin]

Well that’s one way to do it. I guess I was hoping for a method that could both automate and randomize said rectangles so it wouldn’t be quite as resource-intensive.

[Hafeez Zainalabidin]

Or if you have some coin to spare, you could get the Overlord plug-in from BattleAxe: https://www.battleaxe.co/overlord/

I use it a lot because I work closely with illustrators and it’s been a dream to transfer their artwork into AE and have them fit just as intended in the frame.

*full disclosure: this isn’t a sponsored post.

[Hafeez Zainalabidin]

Hey Kalleheikki,

Appreciate your help with the expression but I’m afraid it wasn’t quite what I was looking for. The right face ends up detaching from whole cube as the slider value increases. I came across one of Dan Ebbert’s posts while trawling through this forum which sort of detailed an expression for diagonal movement. Had a trigonometry brainwave and adapted it as seen below. I put this in the layer’s position property and managed to make it work!

spd = thisComp.layer(“Iso Control”).effect(“Z Movement”)(“Slider”);
angle = 20;
d = spd;
r = degreesToRadians(angle);
x = d*Math.cos(r)-93.9692;
y = d*Math.sin(r)-34.2020;
value + [x,y];

Anyway, thanks again for the help!

[Hafeez Zainalabidin]

Ahhh flubbed the link, here’s the new one: 12622_dimetriccubetest.aep.zip

For reference, I want to animate the cube like the background bar elements do in this video: Watch video

[Hafeez Zainalabidin]

[Kalleheikki Kannisto] “Yes, having the project file with one cube like you have it set up currently would be the best starting point. Otherwise we’ll be stabbing in the dark.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer”

Okay I managed to recreate the cubes from home. The link to the project file is here: Dimetric Cube Test

The comp appended with “Negative Z-Axis” works just the way I want to, I just need the comp with the “Positive Z-Axis” to work like that but growing positively along the Z instead of negatively, if that makes sense. To achieve that, there needs to be an expression that technically enables the Right face of the cube to move both horizontally and vertically. My guess is that it’s some sort of Math function that makes use of the Pythagoras theorem but I left most of my math knowledge in high school ☹

Just to be clear, the cube isn’t a 3D object – each of the faces of the cube are 2D layers that are scaled, skewed and rotated to fit a into a ‘cube’ in dimetric view.