Panning across a wide layer
by Paul (paul)
on
Jul 31, 2007 at 9:22:19 pm
Anyone want to offer some insight as to how you set your comps up for an animation that will pan the background continuously for the durations of the comp, say 20 seconds?
I have a wide illustrator file for the background that I can just pan on the x axis, although I'll be dropping other pre-comp elements and want to animate a camera around these elements in 3D space as the background pans, so, I need some depth.
Instead of trial and error on building the background image, could someone offer a height guideline that will allow me to animate in Z space without showing the top and bottom edges of the background (for a 720x480 NTSC comp)?
I guess the other approach would be to make two planes, one for the "floor" on the Z axis and the other for the background giving more latitude to animate the camera in that space.
Any insight as to how you set your comps up for this type of shot would be appreciated!
Re: Panning across a wide layer by Steve Roberts on Jul 31, 2007 at 9:36:15 pm
If I just wanted the BG to pan, I'd leave it as a 2D layer (480 pixels high) at the bottom of the stack and apply the Offset or Motion Tile effect to it.
This assumes that you don't want its motion to reflect camera motion such as tilts. If you just want a steady pan, and you don't want lights to affect the BG, leave it as 2D and apply one of those effects.
But if you want the BG to show tilt motion, it has to be a 3D layer. Now if it's an Illustrator vector file, it can be any size as long as you click Continuous Rasterization for its layer in AE.
But if it's not a vector file, then you'll have to do some tests to find the right size, unless someone knows a formula for distance and camera angle. Anybody?
