The scope of what can be done with this major integration is talked about in great detail here. (And something this author predicted about 10 years ago and was laughed at for. This, frankly, is awesome, cool, and a general game-changer all around. The real kicker is that AE now even comes with a full version of C4D, absolutely free. What Cineware does is link AE to C4D in even better ways than they had been integrated in the past. It now comes with a free plugin that is called Cineware, from the Cinema 4D (C4D) folks. Now, if you have AE CC 12 and later, you are in for a treat.

The dawn of decent free software is upon us These plugins do far more than just import 3D mesh, offering a great deal of control and features. These applications include Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator Pro, Video CoPilot's Element 3D. If you have AE Creative Suite 6, through any version prior to Creative Cloud 12, there are a number of third party programs that can be added as plugins that will allow you to actually import 3D geometry, and even do varying degrees of stuff with it once imported. Alas, that 'Live Phoshop 3D' functionality was short lived and killed off by AE CS6. If you have a version of AE Creative Suite shortly prior to CS6, you can actually use Photoshop Extended's 3D tools to set up a 3D scene and then import that PS file into AE and voila, you have real 3D geometry in AE. Bring 3D geometry into After Effectsįortunately, there are ways to get around the 2D objects limitation in AE, though it gets a tad complicated, so bare with us. It's okay, and it's a good place to start getting used to things. This is why it's called 2.5D: the world is 3D, but its inhabitants are still 2D. So your animations will have a lot of flat videos and graphics moving in 3D space.

That means no 3D meshes or being able to move around a model. One issue with using After Effects as a 3D application though, is that by default it only supports 2D objects, even within its 3D world. You are now a 3D animator! That wasn't too hard at all, was it? You can then add cameras and lights, and actually work in the XYZ space. When a layer's 3D toggle is checked, that layer (known as an 'object' or 'model' in 3D terminology) will then exist in a space that has X, Y, and Z coordinates, not just the X and Y in 2D. What this means is that AE actually has a pretty good understanding of 3D space. If you're using Adobe's After Effects for 2D animation, then you can push that envelope pretty darn far.ĪE has what is referred to as a two-and a half-D system. Take a beat or two before you jump, and see just how far we can push our 2D program's envelope.

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