mikeashbishop
10-27-2003, 10:58 AM
Ok I'm at a point where i want to start learning how to use zdepth with After Effects 6 pro bundle. So I do tons of reading and researching and then try my hand at some test files. But all does not go well and I would really appreciate some help figuring this out.
I started out by reading this page on gnomon's site http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/passes_layers/passes_layers.html
This part in particular was what I based my test file off of. "Therefore if you had a sphere in the middle of a torus where some of the sphere is behind and some in front of the torus, you could render the objects separately and still composite them successfully."
So I make a torus with a sphere in the middle of it in Maya and render them each out seperatly. After researching I find that the RLA format is one that AE will recognize the Zdepth, so i render them both out in that format.
Then I import both pics into AE. Sure enough I can see in the description of each one that it has zdepth information (this shows up at the bottom of the little preview window for the pics.) But when I put them down into the timeline, they just stack on top of one another, just like they would do normally without zdepth information.
So I figure there has to be a trick to getting AE to place the spehere back into the torus like Gnomon says you can, only I have no clue how to accomplish this. I've read for hours now and still havn't been able to figure it out. I've messed around with some of the 3d channel effects and still nothing works.
So if someone could please be kind and steer my ignorance in the right direction I would be forever grateful. Thank you in advance.
I started out by reading this page on gnomon's site http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/tutorials/passes_layers/passes_layers.html
This part in particular was what I based my test file off of. "Therefore if you had a sphere in the middle of a torus where some of the sphere is behind and some in front of the torus, you could render the objects separately and still composite them successfully."
So I make a torus with a sphere in the middle of it in Maya and render them each out seperatly. After researching I find that the RLA format is one that AE will recognize the Zdepth, so i render them both out in that format.
Then I import both pics into AE. Sure enough I can see in the description of each one that it has zdepth information (this shows up at the bottom of the little preview window for the pics.) But when I put them down into the timeline, they just stack on top of one another, just like they would do normally without zdepth information.
So I figure there has to be a trick to getting AE to place the spehere back into the torus like Gnomon says you can, only I have no clue how to accomplish this. I've read for hours now and still havn't been able to figure it out. I've messed around with some of the 3d channel effects and still nothing works.
So if someone could please be kind and steer my ignorance in the right direction I would be forever grateful. Thank you in advance.