Author: Artofwot
Designed for: After Effects 6.0 (But will work with lower versions)
Level: Intermediate
Last Updated: August 27th, 2004

Navigating In 3D: The Concept
Navigating in 3D space is essential to doing 3D animation, yes, even in After Effects. The problem is that your screen is 2D. Thus, you need to see 3D space on a 2D monitor. This is usually accomplished by using views, such as front view to see what their model, animation, etc looks like from different views. In After Effects, the default view once you make layers 3D (see Basic 3D In After Effects: Part 1) is front view. Actually, this is the position of the defaiult camera. As you can see in Figure 1 (I've demonstrated using a 3D version of the Figure 1 in Part 1).

Figure 1: The default view (actually the position of the active camera) is a view from the front of the scene.

Another method (usually paired with the views method) is to orbit, zoom, or track in 3D space. Both of these methods are combined in AE to produce navigating in 3D space quite easy.

Navigating In 3D: An Example
Please load "project.aep" from the sample files folder that you downloaded. This should contain a couple of comps, please open the comp called "Axis Demonstration". In the preview window it should show something lke Figure 1. It is a simple scene that has three arrows pointing in the direction of the axis it represents. In this view you can only see two of the arrows. This is because the "Z" axis arrow is running parellel to the camera, and has no width so it is almost impossible to see.

To switch views, click on the right hand lower corner button, that right now says "Active Camera" (The button hilighted in red in Figure 1), and a menu like the one in Figure 2 should come up.

Figure 2: The view menu.

In this menu, you can select which view you would like. If you select the "Top" view, you can see the Z axis, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Our 3D scene in top view. You can now see the Z axis.

After Effects gives us quite a few tools to navigate in 3D space. They are located in the tool box, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4: The 3D navigation tools, accessed in the tools panel.

The tools sections reveals that there are three tools that can be used to navigate in 3D space. The orbit camera tool, the track XY camera tool, and the track Z camera tool. If you tried to use them now, it would not work, nothing would happen.  This is because you are in a set view.  If you click on the button hilighted in Figure 1, and select either Custom View 1, 2, or 3, these tools become usable. Figure 5 shows me moving around in space using the orbit camera tool.

Figure 5: Moving around in 3D space using the camera orbit tool.

Here's how all of the tools work.
The Camera Orbit Tool - This camera tool orbits the view in 3D space around the origin (center) of the scene. (Click and drag to use it)
The Track XY Camera Tool - This tool pans the camera in only two directions, X, and Y. (Click and drag to use it).
The Track Z Camera Tool - This tool allows you to basicly zoom in on your scene, by clicking and dragging.

By using a combination of all three tools you can easily view your entire 3D scene. Make sure that all your layers are 3D, or else you will get some odd results. The neat thing about Custom Views, is that if you navigate around in 3D space on Custom View 1, and then go back to front view, and then go back to Custom View 1, the position of the viewpoint has been saved in Custom View 1, so it appears just as you left it.

The Camera
If you were to do a render right now, all you would get would be the front view (where the default camera is). This is probably not what you were expecting. It happens because even though you changed the view point, you did no change the position of the active camera.

First, lets add a camera. You can do this by clicking on the Layer menu, and then New>Camera (as shown in Figure 6).

Figure 6: Adding a new camera.

This should bring up a window like the one shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: The Camera Settings window.

Later, we will have a tutorial devoted to cameras, so right now, lets accept the default settings. A layer is added to the timeline called "Camera 1" (or whatever you named it). Please see Figure 8.

Figure 8: The camera in the timeline.

This camera behaves just as a layer does. It can be trimmed, etc, and therefore you can have multiple cameras and switch easily between them. You'll notice, now, that when we go to change our views there is a new option, "Camera 1".

Figure 9: A new option has been added to our view menu, "Camera 1".

If we select this view, our 3D tools become active. You can move the camera around just as you would a view point! If you switched back to the "Active Camera" view, you'll notice that it is the same as Camera 1, meaning that Camera 1 is now our active camera. If you render the scene out now you will get the expected result, and the Camera 1 view will be rendered! All of the three 3D navigation tools can be used to manipulate the camera.

Closing Words
This concludes the second part of our Basic 3D in After Effects tutorial. If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at tutorials@fanfilmengine.com.

More parts are coming, including tutorials on materials, lightings, and more! Stay tuned.

Ronald Hill
artofwot

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