No replies to this topic

[individeol]

Hi,

Last week I did a job for a yoghurt company that required some tubs dancing on a stage ...etc.

The brief was to animate the dancing tubs (suggested in Flash, 2D). On thinking about the plan of action, I decided to build the stage in After Effects as I am fluent and comfortable with it. Then place the 2D animation into the after effects stage and light the scene. I realized that I was limited to static camera positions, and would have to create the 2D animations over for each camera angle I wanted. I turned to an old version of 3D Studio Max and modeled the tub, animated and lit it easily.

I created elaborate camera pans and jibs (I went to town actually). I exported the sequence in the RLE format (selecting the alpha, material and other options required for the camera data to accompany the file into after effects). In after effects the camera data could be imported and when doing so created a new layer in that comp called (by default) RLE camera 1. It was a proper camera layer and had all the properties I had set in Max. It even had key frame properties for position rotation etc. (It was absolutely marvelous)...... Until.

The camera was operating on a completely different centre axis. Its y187 was nowhere near the y187 in after effects. I tried to 'comp' the RLE camera and find its correct position but it wouldn't travel all the way across the stage and the angle was, well, not!

As a result I had to use the key frames from the RLE camera as a guide (which only confused matters) and manually (have I mentioned painstakingly) key framed another camera to fly around my stage in '3D space' whilst the 3D max layer was ironically the only non 3D layer in the comp.

I checked that my stage was in proportion to the yogurt tubs size.
The front, left and top views were square and centered in both 3D Max and AE

The animation looked great but Im sure there is a much faster and less painless method.
I dont have much 3D experience, Ive been video editing and using after effects for 8 years.

Thanx for any advice,

individeol.