[Kevin Schires]

Thanks for posting this Tom.
Don’t forget Elementary works with most 3D plugins: Trapcode, Mettle, BorisFX, Zaxwerks and some AE effects such as Particle World or the 3D CC plugins. Since I haven’t used all of those plugins enough to be comfortable with them I’d really appreciate some feedback from experienced users to know what works and what doesn’t.
And don’t forget to check out the Elementary channel on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/channels/407911

[Kevin Schires]

I just realised that the issue I had was in fact when I was using the expression for the Rotations (returning only one of the angles instead of the array) and not the Orientation. Does this make sense to someone?

[Kevin Schires]

I feel quite bad/scared questionning Mr. Ebberts’s post, as I learned everything about scripting on motionscript.com. I was wondering if there should be -1 or +1 factor based on the value of b in the lign “a = Math.atan2(u[1],v[1]);”

I slightly modified the expression but I don’t think I introduced any error, here is what I use:


u = normalize(toWorldVec([1,0,0]));
v = normalize(toWorldVec([0,1,0]));
w = normalize(toWorldVec([0,0,1]));
sinb = w[0];
b = Math.asin(sinb);
cosb = Math.cos(b);
if (Math.abs(cosb) > .0005)
{
c = -Math.atan2(v[0],u[0]);
a = -Math.atan2(w[1],w[2]);
}
else
{
a = ( (sinb < 0) ? -1 : 1 )*Math.atan2(u[1],v[1]);
c = 0;
}
[radiansToDegrees(a), radiansToDegrees(b), radiansToDegrees(c)];


Otherwise it seems it would return the opposite of what a should be if b is in the range 270º +/- 0.0005.

[Kevin Schires]

I already corrected a minor issue, to always download the lastest version please download it from this link: Element Shadow

[Kevin Schires]

Concerning the shadows, I agree that the fact that Element doesn’t have built-in shadows is a bit of a problem as Ambient Occlusion cannot always do the tricks.
I made a script yesterday that creates a shadow caster for a layer with Element under After Effect CS6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VbE4PgGGzQ
Here’s the script (v.1): 4428_elementshadow.jsx.zip
Here is a short tutorial on how to use the v.1 of the script:

1) Create a camera, a room or walls and a directionnal light. Here I also added an Optical Flares layer to have a pretty light:

2) Make sure the renderer is set to Ray-Tracer, that the materials of the room accept shadows and that the light casts them.

3) Add a layer with Element 3D right above the layers for the 3D scene:

4) Select the Element layer and the light and run the script:

5) The shadow should appear:

Now for the features:
– the shadow is linked to the light, so if you move the light, the shadow updates.
– the shadow is built from a depth pass rendered by Element, so the objects closer to the light cast a darker shadow.
– you can create one shadow caster per light

However:
– for the moment this is for directionnal lights only (spot, parallel)
– you can get clipping of the shadow if the light is too close to the object, in this case you need to increase the dimensions of the shadow comp and its layers until the whole object is visible in this comp.
– once the shadow is created, it uses a copy of the Element 3D layer you made. So if you change the settings in Element 3D you need to delete the shadow comp and re-run the script

Do write me if you have any issue and if you spot any bug.

Kevin