Now I mentioned earlier we are gong to jump back to our original composition, well let us go back and do that. Double click 01 navigation here in the project pane and make sure in the timeline, we double check that there are no key frames currently applied to our compass. There should be no animation in the timeline apart from the background which is actually a movie layer.
Now if we just twirl up compass for a second, we can see there are two Photoshop layers hidden here in the timeline. We go ahead and turn on their visibility you will see that we in fact have two textures. One is a rusty metal backdrop the next one is the circular black shape in the background which is representing a shiny marble.
Let us jump across to look at this from a different angle. Let us hit F11 to go to our custom view, and you will notice that currently the compass is the only 3D layer. Now this is very interesting because we are actually mixing two dimension and three dimensions in the same scene here, and remember it is as easy as having layers selected in 3D and not having them selected in 3D.
After |Effects still renders two dimensional layers in a 3D comp if you choose to do so. This is vey handy for things like color adjustment. You could add an adjustment layer in here and have it affect only certain layers depending on where you stock the adjustment layer on the scene and that can also interact with the 3D elements.
However, we do want these two texture layers here to become three dimensional so let us click one icon there. You will see that the black shape is now represented in the same 3D space as the compass. If we do the same with the background texture we can see all three in the same space.
Now we do want to work a little bit more closely on this so I am just going to hit the C key 1, 2, 3 times to take us to the track Z tool and just zoom on in to this a little bit closer. It gives us a bit more of an extreme 3D as well which always looks very cool. And I am just going to hit a V key for a second to take us out of camera mode. Now we want to make sure that all of these layers interact at the same time. So if we rotate the compass, we want the other two to rotate the same way and that is done through parenting.
Parenting does indeed work in 3D exactly the same way as it does in 2D. We have the parent column here in the timeline if for some reason you have that turned off and it is not visible, just right click anywhere across the top of either of these columns, go down to the columns option and go across and choose parent and it will appear. Now we want to select the shiny marble and the rusty metal, holding down the shift key and clicking both of them will do that. If we choose the pick whip tool now and point that at the compass, we will parent both of those to the compass layer and now they will do whatever the compass layer does.
If we select the compass now and hit the R key to give us its rotation values, we could choose to rotate this now on the X axis and you will see as you do so all three layers are rotating in 3D space at the same time. Remember we are not using a camera adjustment here. We are actually rotating the layer itself. Now the reason I am pointing this out is, as we rotate this beyond the axis of the camera and we look at the underside of it, you will see that it looks as exactly the same as the front. Well it is almost exactly the same.
It is actually the underside. If we had letters or words, or certain shapes organized here, we would see them in reverse because we are looking at the back of the layer, but you will notice that even though the organization of the layers here in the timeline would suggest that the compass is the top layer, and the other two layers are underneath it. Looking from the top, we see an expected result. Looking from underneath it is not quite what we expected, because I would not really expect to see anything but the rust texture here because it is the back most layer.
Well the reason for this is these layers are what are called co-plainer. What that means is, if we come back and twirl up the compass layer, select all three of these and hit the P key to look at their position values. You will see that the Z axis on all three is identical, zero, world center that means they all occupy exactly the same 3D space on the Z axis.
When After Effects sees that it renders all three layers as visible according to their stocking layer, so if we deselect it in this case and took the rusty metal layer and moved it up to the very top of the composition just as if this was two dimensional, the compass and the shiny marble now disappear.
This is almost what I would have expected to see a second ago when we flipped the rotation over. Well let us come up here and select the camera tool and just quickly orbit around the other side. We do not see anything different. This is not adjusted the orders so that the compass always sits on top of everything else. This has changed the visual order of co-plainer layers, so whatever you specify here is whatever you will see from either angle when you rotate around an object.
So this can be very handy for organizing the layers of things if they are to occupy the same space, but if you do want something a little bit more 3D and make sure that the compass is always visible only when we look at it from the top, then you do need to offset the element slightly in 3D space.
So let us put the rusty layer back down where it belongs just slightly above the background and then just twirl this up for one second, come back down so we can see the layer from what was originally the front. Well now select just the compass layer, access its position value and now move it on the Z axis, now when we do remember all these layers are parented together.
Well there are two things we could do here, we could un-parent everything and then we will have the ability to just move the compass on the Z axis, but then we would have to re-parent everything again if we wanted to move them all at the same time, well instead we could just offset the other two layers in 3D space because those have their own settings independent of this position value which is actually controlling everything because of the parenting.
If we select both of these and just hit the P key to show their position values again, let us come up to the shiny marble only and drag this backwards on the Z axis. Now you see that it is actually passing through the other layer at this point in time. That is thanks to the 3D renderer which we will take a look at in just a second. But I am going to drop that about 20 pixels behind the Z axis here and then if we take the rusty metal and do the same but go even further, you will notice that it re-intersects with the other one now and we have offset these three layers completely differently in 3D space.
Once again if we get the camera rotate tool now and move through 3D space, you can see that those layers do have different dept to them on the Z axis, but now if we change the layer order nothing is going to affect it because the layers are not co-plainer anymore. So remember that the layer order is very important if layers exist in exactly the same space in 3D, but once you offset them it is the camera that would then change how the scene looks.
As we move through the back on this one, we now do just see the background texture. Once we come back around to the front, we are seeing the layers as we organize them, so a very important thing to remember there when organizing your layers in 3D.
Now I mentioned a second ago about the 3D renderer that After Effects uses. Let us come up here and select the compass, just hit the R key to go to rotation values and if we were to rotate on the X axis at this point, remember that these layers are parented and that is not the effect that we are trying to look at right not. So what we can do is just come down and selects both of these layers and set their parenting back to none.
Now we are free to come up here and rotate the compass have a look at what happens once it starts to move into the other layers. After Effects actually intersects 3D layers. And we can even go in a
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