After Effects 2.5 Dimension

In this process and production session we learnt about the 3D aspect in Adobe After Effects. In Adobe After Effects 3D is known as 2.5D because as the software focuses on 2D it can't produce the full dimensions of 3D. Our task had us creating art in illustrator with a theme of Huddersfield and then we used 2.5D in After Effects to zoom out of the art board to create the illusion the camera was passing the buildings in a 3D environment.

The first step was choosing a scene in Huddersfield to draw into Illustrator.  I chose a common building seen in Huddersfield but with a very old style which includes very big windows to be the first building at the back of my scene. Next I decided to include the Sainbury's next to the main road  with the store's building, a Sainbury's sign, a street light and a red bus stop, followed by the road. My plan is for the camera to zoom out showing each of these objects to be in a distanced order.

The next step is to import my illustrator file into After Effects and set up the composition. When I have my imported files in to a composition I needed to activate the 3D feature in After Effects. The feature changes the composition depth which allows you to have layers behind each other with controllable distances between them. The button to activate the feature is found in the layer manager next to each layer and it looks like a 3D cube.

Now I needed an additional view which looks down at my project so I can see and organise my layers  on the Z-axis. At the bottom of the composition window there is a drop down box that can split the window into multiple views of the project. I clicked on 2 views and changed the 2nd view to top so I could see my project from above.

This is the top view of my project. The white lines are the different layers I imported from Illustrator. The layers are 2D flat pages so from above they would appear as thin white lines like looking at paper stood up from above. The next step was to organise the layers in to position starting with the old building at the back, followed with the Sainbury's store, then the Sainbury's sign, then a bit more distance in front of that the street light and bus stop next to each other and finally the road.

Next I needed a camera that will do the animation by zooming out of the Z-axis to create the illusion that the layers have distance between them, one by one revealing them into the scene. The camera is a layer of its own so I created a new layer and selected camera. The camera appears as a red triangle in the top view, the point at the bottom is the camera itself and the lines protruding out is what the camera sees. 

Finally I needed to change the position of the camera and put keyframes for these movements on the animation timeline. At the beginning of the timeline I moved the red triangle right to the top past the white line at the top of my "top" view and added a key frame. I moved to the end of the timeline and then moved the red triangle down so it was completely visible and added another keyframe. Now when I played the animation the camera would start zoomed in past all of the layers and slowly zoom out passing each layer while keeping each one in view.

What Did I Learn?

This session in After Effects taught me that the program had a 3D feature that I didn't know about. Working with the 3D feature gave me more understanding with what I should use it for as it isn't true 3D because you can't see the layers from the left or right only backwards and forwards in a 3D space. Additional to this I also learnt how to apply textures to layers and backgrounds allowing me to personalise my projects.