Book Image

Lightning Fast Animation in Element 3D

By : Ty Audronis
Book Image

Lightning Fast Animation in Element 3D

By: Ty Audronis

Overview of this book

<p>Element 3D is a plugin for Adobe After Effects, used to create basic, yet stunning 3D visual effects. Some may find 3D to be tricky and downright complex. Element 3D allows actual 3D models to be created from scratch or exported to Adobe After Effects, and rendered and composited at a high level of quality and impressive speed.</p> <p>This practical guide will lift the veil of mystery around 3D animation. It will teach you everything from modeling, preparing, and exporting from various 3D programs to match-motion, texturing, and complex animations using Element 3D.</p> <p>This book is a comprehensive guide to using Element 3D and is appropriate for users of all levels. It will walk you through the basics of modeling objects for Element 3D. Then, you’ll learn how to texture, light, and animate as well as optimize your scenes for quick render times.</p> <p>You will discover some of the limits of Element 3D, and learn how to break through those barriers to create virtually any 3D scene imaginable. You will also learn how to take advantage of other 3D programs such as Maya and Blender to create content and create stunning abstract scenes in relatively no time, and how to composite 3D animation into motion-tracked live action scenes.</p> <p>By the time you complete this book, you will have all the information you need to effectively create professional 3D graphics using Element 3D.</p>
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Lightning Fast Animation in Element 3D
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgment
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Some predictions


Okay, so Element 3D is still in its 1.x generation. What's to come? Excellent question! One can only guess. However, some good guesses would probably include integration with After Effects' shadow engine (much like the integration with the lights), reflections, true refractions, and other ray tracing effects (maybe radiosity).

Some other features that would be cool are ones that have more of z-buffering. Closer integration with the AEX 3D engine, which would include better compositing for other 3D layers flying between objects (without the need for generating world position maps), would be an excellent addition to Element 3D.

More particle features (such as gravity and collision detection) will also undoubtedly come into play. Maybe through additional interfaces to particular, we can replace those particles with objects?

However, these are all just wild thoughts, and all of these come with a price. Render times will go up exponentially with all of these features. Let's be real here. Element 3D is still essentially for motion graphics. So, although all of these features would be welcome, who really knows where it's going?