Creating a Dynamic 3D Underwater Scene in After Effects

In this lesson, we'll be working with the folder, working with 3D, and we're going to create a relatively kind of straightforward After Effects, basic After Effects 3D scene. This is what it's going to look like. So what it is is a series of layers spread out in After Effects in 3D space, the rings or the little colored blue, um, opening areas.

It's designed to kind of look like you're going into like an underwater cave. It's kind of the idea when I built that, built the project. The fish are moving across, well, technically the fish and the whale's a mammal, but whatever.

And then as the whale moves across, it's got this kind of wipe on effect of the text in the background, that sort of thing. Okay. Now all of these layers are vector based.

They're all made in Illustrator. We're going to import an Illustrator file to this, spread it out in 3D space and then animate it. That's basically what the project does.

And let's get started. So in After Effects, I'm going to close up my welcome screen. I don't really need it for most situations.

I admit I tend to like closing the welcome screen. If you're on a Mac, it's After Effects settings. If you're on windows, it's actually edit preferences at the bottom of that edit menu.

And if you go to the startup and repair, you can disable the home screen function. In most situations, you don't really need it. Everything that you have on that home screen you can do from inside the program and it actually prevents you from getting to the actual program and doing stuff.

Okay. So I'll be using sort of the default workspace. So you'd be using the standard workspace.

I'm pretty sure it's at the default layout, but just in case I'm going to double click on it right here in the list of workspaces. And it's going to ask me, do you want to reset it? And I'm going to say reset. Okay.

They ask you that because reset is an undoable. If you've made a custom workspace and moving things around, if you haven't saved it, resetting it would lose those, those customizations. So it doesn't have anything else except the layout of the various windows in the program.

Okay. That is good. I'm going to make a little dummy comp and import this because when you import from illustrator or Photoshop as a layered file, as a composition, it's going to take the width and height from the imported file, but Photoshop and illustrator don't actually have, um, frame rate.

They don't have any actual video settings. So it doesn't know what to take in that case. So I'm making a dummy comp, new comp.

I allow it to basically populate everything else down here. Not argue the problem. The most important thing here really is the length, but I'll just use like the standard high def video setting.

You can use whatever you want for this, but for the length, the duration, I'm going to make sure it's 30 seconds. In this case, I've been fine. It would have actually been the same length.

So I could have left it. I'll say, okay. I didn't even name it because the only point of this comp is to set the new preset composition settings.

That's it. Those settings that were in that window are now the default for the next comp you make or the next comp you make either manually or by importing. So be careful.

People have actually imported illustrator Photoshop files and then they've been 15 frames long because that was what they had set the last time they were in that dialogue box. So be aware, whenever you open that dialogue box, you are setting the default for all comps. Now it won't affect comps that they already exist, but anything from that point in change forward is what it's doing for you.

So I'm going to import. I like double clicking on the product panel right here, empty space to do it, but file import file would work. Keyboard shortcut to work.

Definitely no problem at all. It's going to go find my class files for this right in there. Working with 3d on open up media images.

And if I want, I can actually use one of the other displays like list or columns if you want, but I'm just in the icon display. And so I find that and I'm not going to double click. So I highlight it, import as, if I bring it in as footage, I get one of two choices, flat, which is not going to be helpful for me in this case, or I can pull a single layer from it.

Like if I wanted to pull one of those like fishes or that whale from it to use another animation, that would be a good use of footage. But comps retain layer sizes. Okay.

Technically composition and competent layer sizes will both give you layered files. Basically. It's how it calculates the physical dimensions of each layer that differs.

So retain layer sizes in most cases, probably what you're going to want to use. In most situations, retain layer sizes is probably what you're going to want to use. So I've got that.

Now I can double click on it or click open. I just want to make sure these two little check boxes are both disabled, which they should be by default. I'll import it.

It imports the layers in that folder, which I'm going to leave right there. I'll double click on the comp it made. And I've got all of my layers laid out the way they were inside of illustrator, all the names, all the appearance, all the positioning, no problem at all.

Okay. Now there is one thing that I didn't mention. Let me click.

Okay. On this coach mark, by the way, that's a coach mark when it tells you information, I'm actually going to go back to my preferences, my settings. This is, I believe in general, I'm going to disable coach marks.

I don't really need pop-ups telling me how to use the program, but if you like them, no problem at all. It basically, whenever you do something new, it'll basically give you a few hints about how to do things. They're not, they're not bad, but if you are even slightly familiar with the program, they can get annoying pretty fast.

Okay. So when I look at in my project panel, I have underwater world highlighted and I look right up here in the little preview, 2160 by 2160. Those are the dimensions.

So this file was made at double 1080 by 1080, which is what I want to use it at when working with files in 3d. Normally you want to make them two to anywhere two to four times larger than you need, because as they're in 3d, as they move, they're going to need to be pushed away from you, which is going to make them smaller. So you're gonna have to scale it up a lot here.

So the larger you make the initial file, the less you got to scale it up to get the normal look of it. This is an illustrator graphic. I could have gotten around having to scale it up.

Um, but usually I wanted to show you how to deal with this situation. So I made it double the size. But if you're working with images, you really do want to make them like two to three times larger, at least because it's vector based.

Technically I can get away with the problems that you'd normally have with scaling images, but it's still a good process to get into if you're gonna work with 3d layers. So I want to bring this down actually in size because I need it to be physically smaller. I'm going to still make it and work with it at 1080 by 1080.

I just wanted these larger files. So it was like when I scale it up later, I'm not losing quality. So composition, composition settings.

So composition settings is where I am now. I'm just gonna use the preset for this for social media square. That'll give me a 1080 by 1080 square.

No problem at all. It will also change the frame rate from 29, seven to 30. It's not going to be a problem with this.

The only reason the 2997 is if I was creating content for broadcast television, I'm not. So the standard social media setting is great for this. So, okay, now this does not actually reduce the size of your layers.

It reduces the size of your canvas, your compositions and dimensions. The layers are still the original size, which is why they are now enormous. Okay.

Now I could select all the layers command a or control a select all. I could go to right up here properties and just scale it down. But as I do it, notice how the layers are moving away from each other.

So if I went down to 50% it's like that would actually work pretty well. Okay. But there's a couple other ways of doing this.

I'm going to undo that a couple of times. By the way, you could also grab one of the edges, hold down shift. They'll scale, but notice how they're all scaling towards, towards their own center.

Normally in other programs, when you set multiple layers, they scale towards the center of the group, but that isn't the way AE works. So I'm going to undo that as well. I'm just pressing command Z or control Z. Okay.

So there was a command. I've got all my layers highlighted. I'm gonna go to file scripts.

Scripts are basically designed to run commands in the program. They're designed to automate things you can do. And I'm going to find the one that says scale set of layers.

That's going to give me a dialog box scale about center. And I'm just going to say 0.5, which is half the size. So it'll be smaller.

And I say scale now. I noticed that instead of pulling away from the center, this is actually the way they looked like when they originally were in the larger comp. So this actually gives a single center point for the entire composition and it helps maintain their relative position to each other better than manually scaling them.

I'd had to move around more if I'd manually scaled. So I'm done with this dialog box. I'm cool.

The only problem with dialog box is that unlike scale, which is listed as a percentage, this one, I've got to know the decimal values. So 50% is 0.5. That's what I remember. And the rest I can look up on Google.

Okay. That's good. I like that.

I'm going to deselect these. I use the keyboard shortcut command shift a or control shift a. You can also just click on empty space to deselect them. Fine.

So I've got it imported. I've got it working. That's pretty cool.

I am going to do a little color adjustment. Pufferfish shark and whale are my, well, my sea life. I'm going to click and make those, let's say green, the rings.

I'm going to leave it the default color. I am going to make the text in the background, a different color. I'll make the text a purple and I'll just make the background it's labeled.

Let's go with dark green. And that's again, just to like color code the layers so I can know which is which it's a very quick, easy way for me to like see them on a list. But if you don't want to do that, it's not necessary, but I'd argue it can be helpful.

Okay. That's good. I like that.

Now I want to turn all these layers into 3d. So I'll select them all again. I need to see the layer switches, which is this column to the right.

If you're not looking at this list of switches, it's possible that your blending modes are visible, which would say mode and track mat. If you don't actually see any column here at all, by the way, more likely than not, it's because one of the buttons on the lower left has been disabled. So if I turn off that button, that entire second column doesn't show up at all.

So normally you can toggle between the two blending modes, track mat and the layer switches. But for this layer switch, I click on the little box for one of the layers underneath the little cube and all the layers are now 3d. What that basically means is that their entire properties change.

So if I click on one of the layers, like ring, for example, anchor point position, scale, orientation have four properties. Now they used to have to orientation. It wasn't even here.

Orientation is what happens to rotation. You get a orientation property and an XYZ rotation property. So the orientation would create one key frame for all three orientations, X, Y, and Z. Whereas X, Y, and Z individually would let you keep them separately.

It just depends. They do the same thing. Mostly.

It's simply a matter of do you want to have one key frame for all three or do you want to animate them independently? That's really all it is. The only property unaffected is opacity because it doesn't care whether it's 3d or 2d, it still works the same way. So everything pretty much changes when you do that.

A couple other things. You're also going to get a whole bunch of buttons on the bottom, right here. This one is the 3d renderer.

I should be in classic 3d mode. That's what I need for this. Okay.

And we'll use some of the other views a little bit later. Now I don't actually want to see text. I'm holding down command or control on windows, whale, pufferfish, and shark.

I want to actually hide them from my view of my work with them a little later. So I'm just going to hide them from the timeline. Eye off.

I'm just going to hide them from the comp window, turning off their eye. Then I'll enable their shy switch because I also want to hide them in the timeline. Now to shy the actual layers, you have to enable the shy switch for each layer.

And you turn on the large shy switch at the top of the timeline that hides all layers for which shy is enabled like that. So between their visibility being off, I can't see them in the comp window and they're shy being enabled. I can't see them in timeline.

So it basically just cleans up both areas because I only want to work with the rings right now. Okay. So to make it a little easier for myself, I want to view this comp window in multiple areas like so two views, two views.

The left view is called active cameras is actually what would export what a render the right view currently says default. I'm going to change that because in the right view to top. Okay.

This is a top down view of this 3d environment. That right there is the ring three. It's highlighted.

That's ring two. That's ring one. Okay.

Now you can do this however you like. I'm going to pull ring one a little forward. And if I look in the active camera, I can see it's actually getting bigger.

This outline. Now you can separate them however you want. My goal is to basically have them separate a little bit.

So I've got a ring three top view port. I'm gonna hover over that little blue arrow, put it back a little bit. Okay.

Now, technically you can separate them however you like, you know, different numbers to make it a little more convenient. I'm just going to select them all, press P on my keyboard, reveal the position. And basically what I'm going to do is I'm just going to make them like 500 apart.

So that first ring will be negative 500, which brings it forward. Zero for ring two, ring three will be 500 and so on and so forth. So I'm just going to separate them by like 500 pixels, 1,000, 1,500.

And notice they can actually get smaller as I push them back further here. Ring six will be 2,000 and then 2,500 like so. And if I go in my top view port, I'm just going to zoom out a little bit.

I can do that with my middle mouse button by rolling out or by pressing the comma key on my keyboard. And I can see that the layers are actually been spread out really pretty far. If I press and hold the H key on my keyboard, my cursor becomes the hand tool and I can just use it to pan around to see what's going on.

So each of my layers, I see the color coding right there. That's the background. And the further back they go, the smaller they actually look.

Like so. So when I press and hold Z, I can click and drag to zoom in and out of the viewport. Press and hold H, I get the hand tool.

I click and drag on my mouse to pan around. You can also use dedicated hand tool and zoom tool and toolbar, but it's faster with the keyboard shortcut. That's not bad.

I like that. I'm going to select all my layers. Command A, control A is the keyboard shortcut.

And I'm going to press command tilde. That's the squiggly line above tab to hide all the properties. Okay.

Like so. Okay. Now it's going to be 3D.

Suddenly it is 3D right now. The layers exist in 3D space, but I need a camera that's going to push through this world. I'm going to animate it moving through the environment.

Okay. Camera's a layer. Layer new camera.

Like so. So you can call the camera any name you want. I'm going to leave the default camera one, but I'm going to use the preset of 50 millimeter.

That one basically simulates human vision pretty well. I'm going to leave all the other settings except type. A one node camera is what I need for this.

It can be freely moved and positioned wherever I want. The two node cameras, a camera on a string or a robot controlled camera, it looks at one specific thing on the screen. And if you're trying to move it through the environment, it doesn't work as well as a one node camera would.

So one node, 50 millimeter, call it whatever you want. I'm leaving the default. And then I'm leaving all the other settings at default and just saying, okay.

And if I look at my viewport, my top viewport, that's my camera. That is now the active camera. Whatever this camera looks at, I'll just hover over that little blue arrow and drag it a little bit is what you will see.

I'm going to undo that and put it back where it is. I want to move this back a little bit. I'm thinking instead of negative 15, I'll go back a little about negative 18 maybe.

You can move it wherever you want. I mean, it's up to you. I specifically did that in the position property, the Z position to pull it straight back.

If I grab it, it's a little careful. I'm over to the side. I'm trying to move it straight in and out in this case.

But when I pull it out a little bit, you can see that I can really see the edge here for how this is set up. Okay. There are camera settings we'll work with.

We'll animate the camera a little bit later, but that's the basic idea. So that's my current 3d setup. Okay.

I am going to now need to scale these layers up and I'm going to do it from back to front because it's easiest. So I'll do background first. I'm just going to grab it, hover at the edge of the little bounding box around it.

I'm going to hold down shift as I drag it up. I'm actually dragging up first and then pressing and holding shift because if I press shift first, it'll deselect it. And I'm trying to get it just a little bit outside of the edge of the composition like that.

And I'll just go layer by layer. I can do it up here as well. I hold down, I'm just dragging it right now, right there, 173%.

Each of them because of their different distances, they're going to need a different value. I would have preferred if I wouldn't have to go above a hundred percent for these, but again, I'm only going a little bit and it's a vector based file, so it's pretty decent. So again, I can adjust its scale in the properties panel.

I can reveal it in the timeline if I want, or I can just grab the edge, drag, press shift after I drag to get it up. As long as you increase it, you're cool. So that's 127% at ring four.

And I'm just going to keep doing that too. And actually ring one is actually bigger than the window. So I'm actually going to zoom out and scale that one down.

I'm trying to make this so that it looked like pretty much what they did when it was flat. And that looks pretty good. I like that.

Okay. Okay. Option slash fits the content of the window to the window like so.

And now I've basically been able to recreate this pretty much the way it was when it was two dimensional. And that's my goal. I'm trying to make it look like it was when it was flat.

I'm going to save this file, save it in the main working with 3d window. You can call it whatever you want. I'm calling it Jaren 3d.

My name is Jaren. That's how you spell my name. If you care 3d.

Okay. Like so. So now I've basically taken and imported a flat file and able to 3d switch spread out in space, create a camera.

And now it's ready for some finishing touches, some lights, some animation, and we'll have a scene.