3D reflections - animated following reflection

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suztv
Posts: 7
Joined: October 16th, 2007, 8:41 am

I posted a similar post in the scripts section but after working with one of my programmer guru friends I just have to share this with you. In the video comps that I produce I have to create 3D reflections of items moving around in 3D space with camera moves etc. If I select the continuously rasterize feature on the layer sometimes it works and sometimes, well - it doesn't work so great (camera's seem to get confused and then jump). What I wanted was a way to reflect the object without having to precompose positional information. In other words if I have a phone with a 3D spin brought in and I have it come into my scene with camera moves and spins - it gets pretty confusing and time consuming to pre-compose. Also the reflections don't always work out the way they should. So here is the expression that we came up with that works great! The only caveat is that your anchor point must be at the bottom of your "object" and any z spins you must do in a precompose (but this isn't nearly as intense as keying out an entire positional sequence and then tweaking them for the reflection).

V=thisComp.layer("Voyager-TimeRemapping 3");
VPOS=V.transform.position;
F=thisComp.layer("Floor");
FPOS=F.transform.position;
Distance=VPOS-FPOS;
NEWPOS=FPOS+Distance;
[NEWPOS[0], NEWPOS[1]+(NEWPOS[2]/4), NEWPOS[2]]


You will need to duplicate the object and apply what ever falloff or blur attributes necessary. Also scrubbing through and finding the lowest point that the reflection should touch at and setting the reflections anchor point is a good idea. I cannot tell you how much time this has saved me and I hope that some of you can get some mileage out of it.
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Atomic
Posts: 157
Joined: April 30th, 2007, 5:55 am
Location: United States, Ohio

The "jump" of the pre-composed layer somtimes may be the result of the camera position in the pre-composed layer. This took me a while to figure out.

If I am making a 3D object that I plan on manipulating further up the stack I zero the camera in the comp and use the "Custom View" for examining my object from all sides. Then set the camera back to Active Camera for the final render.
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