I've created a graphic in photoshop and have brought it into AE to animate. I have a text layer that I'm trying to duplicate in AE, only I'm trying to put it farther away from the camera in z-space.
When I recreate the text in AE and then position it same size (perceptually speaking), but pushed back on the z axis, the text appears "blurry" along the edges. I do have a camera in the comp, but depth of field is turned off.
Just to see what it looks like, I turned on the original photoshop layer, pushed it back the same distance in z, scaled it up and positioned it and it looks fine. I also tried precomposing my text, using a larger font size, and then putting it the same distance back in z and it looks decent (almost as good as the photoshop layer).
I'd like the convenience of AE text (per character 3d, etc.), but with the quality of my original Photoshop layer. I know this has probably been answered here, I just couldn't find it.
I don't know how to include a jpeg, otherwise I would show you what I mean.
Re: Text "blurry" in z space by Jeremy Allen on May 2, 2008 at 4:39:52 pm
Not really sure what your text problem is.. AE text should stay crisp no matter what size or Z-depth. A jpg might help. You'll have to upload the jpg to a server and in the response box, click the 4th button that looks like a little camera (B, I, U, camera, L).. then put in the location to the pic.
Re: Text "blurry" in z space by Steve Tarlton on May 2, 2008 at 9:00:14 pm
Ok, here goes. The text in question is in the upper right corner. The top is AE text, the next is AE text precomped and the bottom is just a photoshop layer.
Re: Text "blurry" in z space by Steve Tarlton on May 3, 2008 at 7:34:37 pm
I hosted the picture on Flickr. When I right click on where it should be and hit view image it sends me to flickr to see the picture. I'll try again shortly.
Re: Text "blurry" in z space by Jeremy Allen on May 5, 2008 at 6:23:17 am
well, I'll have to admit I stand corrected. I did some extensive testing on different AE text methods and I found that it does soften the text slightly when I push it back in Zspace and scale it up. It also happens when I precomp it, push it back and scale it up. The raw AE text at 100% looks fine.
The one thing I thought might make a difference is if I made sure to position the text on whole pixels (x=300) vs. subpixels (x=300.6), but that didn't seem to make a difference either.
Honestly I guess I've never looked at it close enough to notice the slight softening.
Personally I think the middle text in your example looks better than the photoshop text. I would go with that.
Can anyone else explain the softening on 3D text in AE??
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