Unfolding and flipping a brochure?
by Corbin Gross
on
Jun 6, 2008 at 4:00:12 pm
Here's what I'd like to do:
Unfold a an 8 section accordion folded brochure over about a second. Then pan down the brochure (about 13x36" in real live), flip it and fold it back up.
I have the original .indd, a PDF and a jpeg made from the PDF. I've got CS3 Production Premium and no budget for plugins.
I may have to skip the unfolding effect and just pan and flip. If that's the case, what's the best way to make a two sided document in AE? I'm having a little trouble aligning the assets and rotating them. I'm sure there's an expression or a parenting trick but I either show the reverse of the first side or they go completely cattywompus.
Re: Unfolding and flipping a brochure? by Dave Forrest on Jun 6, 2008 at 4:13:13 pm
I once created an animation where a playing card was rotating and spinning around etc. It's a similar thing.
To acheive the playing card I took 1 jpeg of the face and 1 jpeg of the back. I made sure they were identical in size and shape in Photoshop then brought them into my AE composition and pre-comped them. In the pre-comp I made them both 3D layers and copied the position of one to the position of the other. This essentially placed both jpegs in exactly the same spot. Then, I moved the back layer a few pixels in Z space and parented the back layer to the face leyer.
Now if you spin, rotate or pretty much do anything to the face layer the back layer does the same. (As long as the anchor point of both layers is also in the exact same position.) The two layers essentially move as one, two sided object. And, because I pre-composed it, I could move the whole thing around as one object in the main composition.
I don't really know if it's the 'right' way but it worked for me. It may help.
Re: Unfolding and flipping a brochure? by Amit Zinman on Jun 6, 2008 at 4:52:51 pm
I am currently working on a similar project. I follow these steps:
1. Export from InDesign to PDF.
2. Open PDF in illustrator.
3. Go over all of the pages, convert groups to layers by choosing from the flyout menu - release to layers.
4. have all layers one above each other rather than nested.
5. Export each illustrator file seperatly with PDF compatibility checked.
6. Import them in AE
7. Create a large comp and place the files together.
8. Use the pan behind tool to provide the right folding axes.
9. Use Y rotation to fold.
If you have multiple pages together, precomp, reduce the size of the comp duplicate and place layers to get seperate comps.
This allows for both folding AND some sophisticated animation using the existing illustrator layers..
Re: Unfolding and flipping a brochure? by hunter christy on Jun 6, 2008 at 7:17:54 pm
yeah. the trick is just making the animation interesting. i did a similar thing for an intro to my show, "the defenders of stan"
it's all just about the 3d camera and putting the anchor points at the right place so that the rotation works to your favor. if you then parent things together, you could totally get the accordion thing going on.
