Zooming in on Big Maps
by alex dinnin
on
Jul 5, 2008 at 8:21:58 am
Hey All,
I am trying to zoom in on a map I have created in Photoshop.. it's quite big, as I have to show the whole of Europe, then the camera zooms into a location in Ireland.
So I have made the map 14000 x 10000. So I can zoom in nice and close with out losing resolution. I am scaling the map rather than using a 3d camera to save on memory.. however it is a 3d layer as I am skewing it a bit..
However poor old AE can't allocate space for a 14000 x 10000 image buffer. So it can't render !!
I am a bit stumped now.. I am thinking the only way for me to do this would be to take it into XSI and do it in 3d.. then try and export the camera.. however I have loads fo these to do and would rather do them in After Effects..
Has any one got any bright ideas.. maybe a different way of doing this ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.. and sorry to bother you on the weekend..
Re: Zooming in on Big Maps by Rhett Robinson on Jul 6, 2008 at 12:46:07 pm
You can make multiple versions of your map, for a quick example, 3. Take your original Photoshop file, and scale a copy to a reasonable size (I suggest 4X comp size)Back to the original file,crop and scale each zoom level as necessary to make the "full view", an intermediate view, and the final zoom, and overlay those, making the pixel dimensions of each up to 4X the size of your final comp. I would personally use "canvas size", then image size, but you can do it in one step by adjusting your crop settings. I'm still not quite sure about why you wouldn't use a camera, but that actually might make that easier. I've used this before with more layers to zoom in from a full earth view to the closest level I could reach via a map. Depending on your final view, you may need more layers, but this should achieve what you are looking for. A very little amount of math will allow you to integrate the sequence seamlessly.
I forgot to mention that you could easily make a Photoshop action on your first round, then apply that to your other maps if you have "loads" of these to do. You can then simply duplicate your first successful AE comp and replace footage.
