displacement in 3 d

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vranan
Posts: 13
Joined: February 8th, 2005, 9:53 am
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Hi there,

Is it possible to displace a layer along the z-axis with a grayscale images
or alternatively, is it possible to to control the scale of a layer (ideally just the x-scale) with a grayscale image? any help is very much appreciated. many thanks,
Nino
jovial
Posts: 11
Joined: April 7th, 2006, 4:22 am
Location: London
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Hi vranan,

I'm looking into something like this myself. Aiming to offset layers in time based on a greyscale/displacement layer.

The way I see this happenning is sampling a colour/greyscale value at a specific co-ordinate and feeding that value into an expression as a percentage of your offset. Apparently AE can't do this but Digital Anarchy can. Let me know if you have any break throughs and I'll let you know if I have any luck with DA.

jovial
vranan
Posts: 13
Joined: February 8th, 2005, 9:53 am
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hi jovial,

i think what you are trying to achieve can be done by trapcode particular.

set up a grid and for "Layer RGB usage" use the lightness velocity option.

a grayscale image can therefore drive your layers offset in z-space. hope it

makes sense
Mylenium
Posts: 139
Joined: July 20th, 2005, 12:07 am

jovial wrote: Apparently AE can't do this but Digital Anarchy can. Let me know if you have any break throughs and I'll let you know if I have any luck with DA.

jovial
Yeah, it's possible with the color sampler, but it's still a pretty quirky setup since the color info needs to be baked first. Attempting this on a comp with more than 10 layers is potentailly foolish and futile as the overhead in extra work get's substantial.

Mylenium
[Pour Mylène, ange sur terre]
Mylenium
Posts: 139
Joined: July 20th, 2005, 12:07 am

vranan wrote:hi jovial,

i think what you are trying to achieve can be done by trapcode particular.

set up a grid and for "Layer RGB usage" use the lightness velocity option.

a grayscale image can therefore drive your layers offset in z-space. hope it

makes sense
Yes, that would be the way to go. Beware, though, you will get warnings if your layers are larger than a certain size and it may not work at all (because Particular can't sample the layers and runs out of memory).

Mylenium
[Pour Mylène, ange sur terre]
vranan
Posts: 13
Joined: February 8th, 2005, 9:53 am
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hi Mylenium,

is it possible in trapcode particular to have your particles NOT facing the camera when rotating them let's say along the y-axis? i don't seem to find an option for that.
thanks for any help.....
Nino
Mylenium
Posts: 139
Joined: July 20th, 2005, 12:07 am

vranan wrote:hi Mylenium,

is it possible in trapcode particular to have your particles NOT facing the camera when rotating them let's say along the y-axis? i don't seem to find an option for that.
thanks for any help.....
Nino
Nope. Particular will render its particles as sprites perpendicular to the screen projection. However, you can use "collapse transformations" - animate your particle in a sub-comp and then use that switch. It's slow and not totally correct as the particles will be sampled at their initial orientation (thus you cannot get correct 3D lighting), but better than nothing.

Mylenium
[Pour Mylène, ange sur terre]
Dan Ebberts
Posts: 320
Joined: June 26th, 2004, 10:01 am
Location: Folsom, CA
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vranan,

There's a tutorial on a nice work-around for the particles-always-facing-the-camera issue here;

http://www.graymachine.com/tutorials/

Dan
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