[Philip Bowser]

That’s definitely a great way of looking at it! However, it will also do weird things to any adjustment layers or blending modes within that pre-comp. Adjustment layers will not be isolated to that pre-comp and will affect layers in the parent comp. Kind of annoying, sometimes I want the best of both worlds.

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Perhaps move the 3D shape layers within the pre-comp to the appropriate Z space, then you can make the pre-comp a 2D layer with Collapse Transformations?

If that doesn’t suit your needs, you can make a completely separate composition only containing your 3D pre-comps, and duplicate your camera into that composition. Then bring that new comp into your main comp as a 2D layer and apply your blurs. Thats not an eloquent approach by any means, but sometimes its what you have to do to get AE to work for you. One script that will seriously help this approach is using the script Duplicate with Connections. Which will automatically duplicate the selected layers for you and apply expressions on every parameter which target the original. That way as you change the camera move in your main comp, it will automatically update any other instance of that camera in any other composition. I use it all the time for stuff like this.

Hope this helps,
Cheers.

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Hmm.. weird. Not being able to apply effects directly to shape layers which are being 3D Ray-Traced is normal. But you should be able to apply effects to a pre-comp of those shape layers.

There’s one situation where AE doesn’t let you. If you have a pre-comp containing 3D Ray-Traced shape layers, and that pre-comp’s “Collapse Transformation” button is selected as well as the 3D button, then it will not let you add a blur/other effects. Not entirely positive why this is. However, if that pre-comp is only a 2D layer with “Collapse Transformation” selected, then it will allow you to apply effects.

The 3D layers inside of a pre-comp with “Collapse Transformation” selected will still respond to a camera even if the pre-comp is a 2D layer. Are you sure you need the 3D checkbox selected on that pre-comp?

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Great! Glad you figured it out. Definitely not stupid at all, I’ve been stumped by way simpler problems.

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

The Continuously Rasterize button is a little bit weird and has some unintuitive features.
When you’ve selected a single layer it’s called “Continuously Rasterize” but when you’ve selected a nested comp it’s called “Collapse Transformation”.

They do two different things even though the buttons look the exact same and are in the same position. Definitely confused me for a little while.

Here’s a great video tutorial which gives you a great breakdown of the buttons. It will be able to explain it faster than I could in writing:
The Naked Truth About Collapse Transformations

In your situation, when you have 3D layers within a nested comp and you’ve selected “Collapse Transformation”, the camera can essentially “see through” that precomp, the 3D layers will respond to the camera in your master composition. So before when you didn’t have that button selected, even though you still had the 3D checkbox selected, this nested pre-comp was only responding like a 2D piece of footage in 3D space, the 3D layers inside of it were “baked” at whatever viewpoint they are being rendered at inside of that comp. Almost the same as if you rendered out that precomp as a quicktime, brought it back into after effects and pressed the 3D layer switch, the viewpoint that you rendered it at wouldn’t change. Pressing the “Collapse Transformation” button however makes the 3D layers inside become “active” in your main comp… if thats a good way of putting it..

It also does other things.. which are equally as unintuitive.

Check out that video though. Breaks it down fairly well.

Hope this helps!
Cheers,

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Try turning that icon on for your sub-comp in the main comp.

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

4 minutes can be quite a bit for after effects to chug through if it’s an intense project. Dave’s right, that could be perfectly normal if you’re using some processor intensive effects and lots of 3D. It’s just what we all have to live with unless you’re fortunate enough to have a monster computer and a render farm.

However, if you’re just rendering out HD quicktime footage with some basic levels adjustments, then thats a different story and you should probably post your computer specs and project details because that doesn’t sound right.

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Perhaps the Continuously Rasterize checkbox is not enabled?

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Seems like the script Comps From Spreadsheet may be of use to you.

If that doesn’t suit your needs though then to be honest it may be best to just do this manually as it seems this is kind of a one-time thing. I would think it would take more time to generate a script to do this for you. You can make it easier on yourself though by creating a spreadsheet with all of the team photos/names/other text etc. (which can be approved for spelling/accuracy ahead of time) and then its just a matter of copy and pasting into pre-comps which have animation applied to them in some master comp.

Hope this helps!
Cheers,

Philip. Bowser

[Philip Bowser]

Hmm.. Seems like there is something else going on here, because when you check a layer’s “Accepts Lights” property to off, it should show up looking how it normally would. However one thing it could be is the “Accept Shadows” property? Even though light won’t be illuminating the layer, it still has the ability to accept shadows from other layers. Perhaps there is another layer casting a shadow over this one.

If that’s not the case, do you have any effects applied to this layer? Is it a nested comp? What are some of the details about the scene?

Cheers,

Philip. Bowser