[Tim Drage]

Thanks for the quick reply. Like I said in my original post, the map I’m using to project is 3000px wide (and 2292 high, so it’s taller than 16:9) so in theory it’s much bigger than my 1080p comp. (and I tried an even larger 5000+ wide random image with the same sort of results) It’s 300dpi in photoshop but after effects doesn’t pay any attention to that does it?! :-S And i’m using the maximum 4000 shadow map resolution in the comp 3D settings.

I did some more experiments and turns out a AE text layer also casts non-crisp shadows in the same comp.

A wider camera angle definitely seems to improve the sharpness of any of the projection maps/shadows I’ve tried so far. my original problematic attempt was arbitarily a 35mm camera, in my tests I tried a 20mm one to much better effect. Changing the camera angle messes up my original half-built comp of course but I think* it doesn’t really make any difference if I start again in a new comp with a wider camera.

(*it’s too friday afternoon to quite get my brain around whether the camera angle even makes any difference but I think I’m correct that it’ll just mean the grid solids i line up will be a different size/distance from the camera?)

[Tim Drage]

Hmm just did some further experimenting and it seems like changing the camera angle/zoom effects the sharpness of the shadow map! So I might try altering that, tho alas I think that’ll mean rebuilding my 3D wall layers from scratch. :-S

Any other suggestions still welcome, thanks!

[Tim Drage]

I have the iphone app of 123D Catch, it’s pretty magical indeed tho the models it produces can be a bit blobby/mutated if you don’t get great photos. Also it can’t really manage anything shiney/reflective/transparent or very smoothly/plainly coloured at all. Really fun anyway and quite promising for ideas I have for future projects.

[Tim Drage]

If you don’t need it super realistic in terms of perspective etc you could film/stop-motion a 360° rotation of the toy on a turntable against some kind of green or bluescreen, bring it into after effects, key out the greenscreen with Keylight, make the layer 3D and make it always face the camera using this expression – https://timdrage.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/orient-3d-layer-to-camera-properly.html and then animate the ‘rotation’ of it with time remapping keyframes…

I’ve experimented with this kind of technique with interesting results, I also managed to connect the time-remapper fake rotation to the camera position, kind of works like the sprites in Doom or other old first person shooter games 🙂

[Tim Drage]

Good luck, hope it works out for you! Oh, the lens blur gradient solution sounds like good thinking.

[Tim Drage]

I was just having a play with it and I think the problem is that, as I remember every time I occasionally try it again, Time Displacement is potentially amazing but practically useless. 🙁

I have to do some actual work all of a sudden so didn’t get to try this yet but maybe precomposing everything much larger than you need for the resolution of the video and then scaling it all down again would hide/smooth the gritty edges… or try some antialiasing plugin…?

Does anyone know of any third party plugin out there which would do the same thing but actually well, with antialiasing, frame blending etc options?

[Tim Drage]

Is there any particular reason you can’t use effects?

[Tim Drage]

Thanks, that’s really great!!!! I need to figure out Math.floor, wouldn’t have managed to come up with that on my own.

I fixed/modified it to put the freq + amp into the wiggle 🙂 Probably will control all these things with sliders in the end.

freq = 5; // wiggle frequency
amp = 8; // wiggle amplitude
fps1 = 4; // wiggle posterize
fps2 = 8; // keyframed value posterize
t1 = Math.floor(time*fps1)/fps1;
t2 = Math.floor(time*fps2)/fps2;
w = wiggle(freq, amp,1,.5,t1) - valueAtTime(t1);
valueAtTime(t2) + w

[Tim Drage]

Bumping this ancient thread because I’ve been wondering about doing just this for ages, it works a treat, and the missing bit of info is easily explained: just add the expression in the original post to the time remap of your looped render or greenscreen turntable shot, and change the “revTime” number to the length of the shot.

Maybe combine with this technique for making better camera-facing layers than ‘auto orient to camera’ does: ttp://forums.creativecow.net/thread/227/21917#21917

Thanks basilisk!

[Tim Drage]

Useful, thanks!