Introduction to 3D layers - After Effects Tutorial

- [Instructor] So here I have several 2D layers. When we talk about After Effects and 3D, we're actually talking about enabling a switch that converts a 2D layer to a 3D layer. And so when we look at the interface here, we have this icon for 3D and it's available to us on all layers. So let's go ahead and click on this sun layer. Let's roll this down and look at the transform properties. Anchor point has an X and Y position, position has an X and Y value, scale has an X and Y value and we have a rotation value, one lone rotation value. When we turn on the 3D layer, we gain a couple of different parameters, added values here for our Z position on the anchor point, the position, scale now has an X position and orientation is a brand new parameter and our one rotation value gets split up into X, Y, and Z. And there are also some other differences inside the composition window, so let's select the sun layer again, and you'll notice we have a new interface for our control handle. This is the 3D access handle that we can use to control our X value, our X position and we have a green arrow to control our Y position and the blue arrow that's facing towards us deals with the X position. Oftentimes, when we're dealing with 3D, it helps to have another view to kind of have a separate vantage point than our active camera. So After Effects allows us to switch this up to enable two views, horizontal or any of these other flavors here. I'm going to stick with two views for right now. And because we only have one 3D layer, you'll notice that in my top-down view over here I have one floating layer in space. I can grab that blue handle for the Z space and you'll see it moving up and down or towards us and away from us. Visually, it's the same thing, almost as if we're scaling it up and down. So let's go ahead and introduce some other 3D layers for this guy to have a few buddies with. So let's turn on that 3D layer and that 3D layer. So these clouds now have 3D-ness applied to them. And so I can actually move these in towards us in space and back in space and so you can see the top view now how this represents the floating cards in space. By enabling this, we start introducing another concept and that is to do with stacking order. So let's switch over to composition two, and look at this. What I've got here is two 3D layers. Actually, it's back up here, let's turn this off and let's enable our two views horizontal. So traditionally, when we talk about stacking order, we know that the cloud in this case is stacked on top of the sun. Layer two is on top of layer three, and therefore, that sun is never going to be drawn on top of the cloud. That changes a bit when we turn on our 3D layers. So let's re-enable our 3D layers. And when we take our sun layer and move it forwards in space towards us, you see that the sun now is drawn on top of the cloud. I can move it back to where it's behind the cloud again. And that's a real important distinction to note is that 3D-ness kind of throws off the stacking order in 2D space, and we have to be mindful and cognizant of that so that we can know where we're at. The cloud layer no longer has priority over the sun when both of those layers are in 3D space now. The Z space now takes over here in this case. We have a 2D layer in our composition. Let's go ahead and turn that on. And 2D layer always supersedes the 3D layer so long as it's on top of the other 3D layers. So regardless of what we do with this sun layer, we can move it forward towards us as much as we want but because that top layer is a 2D layer, it's always going to get drawn on top. So there's another consideration with regards to rotations when we introduce 3D layers. Let's go ahead and go and set up our 2D view again, our two views, horizontal. When we deal with rotation, we're dealing with X, Y, and Z rotation now when that 3D layer's enabled. So as before with the 2D layer, our Z rotation kind of acts as our rotation around as if it were a 2D layer. The Y rotation moves this around from the top view around the Y axis and the X rotation as we rotate this round, you'll see that, yes, indeed it is a flat plane rotating in space. It doesn't have anything to do with depth in this case. And that's where the 2 1/2 D notion comes from. But when we're dealing with 3D layers, we have to be mindful and cognizant that other 3D layers can intersect with the layers in and around their vicinity. So in this case right here, I'm actually... Let's zoom this up to 100%. You can see that my cloud layer is intersecting this sun layer. And if I rotate this around, let's switch over to the Rotate Tool and click this. You see that the planes are now intersecting each other, the 2 1/2D planes are intersecting each other in 3D space. So that's not a desirable attribute and that's something that we want to be mindful of as we compose our animations here inside 3D space. So there's a couple of considerations when dealing with 3D layers inside of After Effects, we saw that making a 2D layer into a 3D layer brings forth a third axis, the Z axis, as well as the rotations. We have to be mindful for stacking them in Z space as well as the intersections of 3D layers themselves.