Wednesday
Jan202010
A little experiment - Shadow mapping Particular Objects
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 5:23PM
Here's a little test I did while working out how to create shadows for Particular layers.
It uses a duplicate of the main comp to create a "Shadow version" of it, with the camera in the shadow comp linked via expressions to the light source in the master comp. I'll post the AEP on my site if anyone wants to play with it - at http://www.digitaldistortion.net/rsrc_particularShadow.html
Reader Comments (6)
Cool stuff, thanks for sharing!
After Effects would be so awesome if it opened up its 3D space better to plugins, so they could share Z buffers, cast shadows etc. I really like working in the 3D space in AE, but it really annoys me having to create hacks like this to create what should be a simple effect.
Oh - and another basic feature AE's 3D space could do with - an optional fog parameter for 3D compositions. Lightwave had this in 1996. It's such a basic feature, but so useful for adding atmosphere and realism to 3D work. If they add this support in CS5 I will totally forgive them for CS4 :)
Dan: agreed, a full unified 3D space for layers and plug-ins would be awesome. But that very complicated to do.
BTW - fog is available in Form and Particular - use Far Start Fade and Far Vanish (in Visibility) to setup a fade out into distance. I know that's not what you asked for, but I just wanted to share that anyway.
Peder Norrby / Trapcode
There is a plug-in out there called "atmosphere" it will progressively fill your comps depth with fog through 3d space with a number of options.
TC particular 2 does cast shadows on 3d layers.. i made a comp some tima ago and i had polygon particles with two spot lights on it. i recently made a little test video and i was going crazy because i could'nt get the shadows to work... so i guess shadows are only being cast with polygon particles and not the basic sphere particles.. i'm still looking for a good way for creating shadows in P2 .. for now duplicating particular layer is the best way i know of ... thanks for posting!
Ow.. im wrong.. i remeber that i made the particular layer 3d.. so i could cast shadows on a BG layer.. no kick ass camera moves allowed :(