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

Anything more to learn?


Yes! If you can, get a hold of a full 3D program. The more you learn about how 3D really works, the better you'll be at figuring out workarounds for pseudo 3D plugins such as Element. For instance, Element has the capability of importing sequential 3D object files exported from real 3D software. (You could animate a very complex scene in Maya and export the geometry for the whole scene frame by frame from Maya for use in Element 3D.) We didn't cover this for two very simple reasons—this is not a book on how to animate in Maya (remember how long just the modeling section was), and it can be bug a bit (for example, normal flipping out). Also, there is no potential for motion blur. In effect, the best you can hope for is a stop-motion look (without a vector motion blur plugin).