AE Camera tilting invig model?

"Hop on that machine and use invig to do a camera 'fly-in'. You'll be right". Those were the words of a collegue that left me with a machine, invig, and an unfinished project.

Tools: AE 6.5, Invig 3.0.8Pro, Illustrator File containing a single word

Scene: 1 Camera, 1 Spotlight, 1 Ambient light, 1 blue 3D layer tilted 90degrees, 1 black 3d layer with invig effect

Goal: Have the 3D invig word that we're rendering sit on the flat blue layer and we basically zoom in from afar and come up to it so it's 45 degrees to the camera.

Tried...: ...importing the AI file without problems. Clicked on the object and moved it straight up so it sits on top of the wireframe floor. Turned on "use comp light, use comp camera". The AI word we imported should now be sitting on the blue layer that is also in this 3d scene which it does. We switched the spotlight's cast-shadow option to ON and also the layer that invig is using to accept shadows. We want the light to cast shadows of the letters onto the floor as it shines from behind.

Problem: Well, this is all very simple and the front-on default view through the comp camera shows it all sitting quite nice. For some crazy reason the shadows that are cast infront of the letters (rememeber the spotlight is shining from BEHIND) are not touching the actual letters. There's a little gap making it look like the letters are floating above the floor. If we lower the letters or raise the floor, the letters dissapear INTO the floor, so we must be touching the floor alas that's not the problem. Anyway, that's not the main problem.

The MAIN problem: As soon as we move the camera off-center from 360,200,-600 to say 0,200,-600 the invig word rotates BUT it also tilts into the floor on the side closer to the camera as if it had been rotated on it's Z-Axis by -10 degrees. The letters start to disappear into the flat 3d layer the words are sitting on. Now, as soon as I turn off the 3D-Layer option on the layer that holds the invig effect, the letters straighten up and orientate the way they should....but that kills the shadows.

Request: Help a crazy invig noobie....my collegue is so gonna wet himself when he comes back and sees me stuggling with this...and of course he'll forget ALLLL the times I helped him with silly problems when he's forgotten to plug in the mouse or something.

Is it possible to even get invig objects to cast realistic shadows onto other 3d layers or is that the reason this is all screwing up?

Many thanks in advance.

You know...that is a very good question. I didn't even know you could which is what you get when you work on other people's setups.

But having a plane in invig that the word sits on would mean I can't use an AE light to cast a cirular spot onto that plane...or will that still hold true?

I'm going back to try and finish this on the weekend so I might see if I can figure out how to stick an invig-plane in the scene. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks for the the tip, Serge.

I managed to get around to his company last night and jump on the machine to try some of this out. Once I spent a little more time with Invig it's actually quite straight forward as long as you know the things you CAN'T do with it.

My lettering was dipping because I was rotating the camera around the layer AFTER it was switched to 3D. So that meant Invig was redrawing the lettering to match the camera, but then AE was physically rotating the flat invig-plane as well deforming the letters. Seems if you are going to do camera moves you cannot have the Invig-layer set to 3D.

The lighting you suggested works quite well including shadows as long as I don't move the camera due to the above mentioned problem.

I managed to find the 640x480 plane and inserted that instead of having a 3D layer in AE. So invig rendered the letters AND the floor. I have just started to play with the lighting but security is kicking me out of the building. So tomorrow I'll come back for the camera move.

I'm hoping that with the floor and the letters being inside invig, the camera move should go smoothly. I'm not sure how the lights will react....I'll be sure to take some coke and chips as it may be a long night :P