aescripts + aeplugins

lau mo

Hi !

Really cool plugin !

I just purchased it to add this extra power to my element 3D and Cinema4D works..

But i've already one question ;

Is it possible to use the native AE camera's depth of field with your plugin ; i just tested it with a simple Element 3D scene, but it just not work...

Could your help me please finding a way to make it work ?

Thank your in advance,

Fremox

Matt Tillman

Hey Lau,

I'm really glad to hear you like it.

Unfortunately the AE camera DOF won't work for this. There is a way however, which would be to use the workflow you'd use in standard 3D compositing.

Duplicate your Element layer, and set the output to ZDepth and precomp it.

Then use an Adjustment layer (at the top of your comp) with either Frischluft DOF or Camera Lens Blur, and reference your depth precomp.

lau mo

Thanks a lot ; that's what i came with too...

Here is a quick test using only Element 3D and your excellent plugin :

https://vimeo.com/134195520

In future versions, it could be really interesting to have a fix for the native DOF blur of native AE cameras (and why not, a kind of "N-sides" new shape to in order to create a few classical other shapes like triangles, pentagons, hexagons...)

Anyway, if you plan to add extra features in next versions, please tell me !

Thank you again for this great tool !

Matt Tillman

Nice work, it looks great.

Thanks so much for the feedback.

Vladan Miladinovich

hi Matt,

Saw the demo,  it looks quite powerful and promising. Have an issue that needs your help.

my scene has lots of glass. coming from C4D rendering with octane render's position pass i want to put things "behind" the glass sort of speaking in AE/NUKE..

is this possible with position pass+your plugin out of the box or i need more magic ?

thanks.

Vladan.

Pascal Fuerst

Hey Vladan,
first I haven't worked with the plug in yet so I'm not 100% sure but I guess transparency is tricky (as it always is when doing multi pass comping). If I recall it right does the PPass not see through things as it just "fires rays out" and recognizes the underlaying geo.
What might work is rendering it in 2 steps: 1. without the glass elemts and 2. with the glass objects and getting those PPasses. You might have to render several times the Pass with the glass objects and disabling one at a time (starting with the nearest to the cam). After that you might be able to comp behind the glass objects. You probably have to recreate the refraction for those elements you want to put into the scene manually in AE/Nuke using the Bulge Effect or something similar.
At least in theorie this should work but I would have to test it myself :-)

@Matt: in C4d we have different options to output the PPass. I assume World Space is the one that works with the Plug in or am I wrong?

Matt Tillman

Hi Vladan,

Pascal is right. Your only option really is to render another position pass with the glass turned off.

The other trick I have used is to render with Vray and set your refractive material to "Affect all channels". That way it will refract position data as well. This will also work for ZDepth or any other data pass.

You can achieve the same effect with the built-in renderers of most 3D packages, but sadly not C4D (it needs Vray).

Matt Tillman

Hey Pascal,

Yes World Space is the one to go with.

That said, they will all work with Position Matte, but with different results. There are certain scenarios where Local/Object Space would make more sense than World Space. If your camera is inside of a moving vehicle for instance.

Vladan Miladinovich

Thank you both for your imput.

Unfortunately i don't own Vray,  Octane is my preferred gpu renderer..

I am aware that Vray has evolved and that "affect all channel" feature for sure does the trick.

Nevertheless i cant render so many separate glass passes since my scene consist of glass behind glass behind glass and so on.. i will have to cheat big time or render with graphics.

take care.

Miika Turunen

I just bought and tested the plug-in for the first time. I created a simple scene with Element 3D v2 and set the output to world position/color. With this setup I ended up a 3D scene with white & yellow color. Throwed this plug-in over it (tried with and without pre-comping) but nothing else than the image going 100% transperant happens and the plug-in controls do nothing. 

What am I doing wrong here?

Matt Tillman

By default Element will put the scene at coordinates of [width/2,height/2,0].

Position Matte however will default to the matte being at [0,0,0].

So you can either use the matte colour picker to set the matte position to your object, or zero out your Element world coordinates.

I would also recommend setting "Multiply Values" to 100 when working with Element and Position Matte at the default scene scale.

Nobuhiko Nabeshima

Hi matt,

I interested in this plug-in, and bought yesterday.
I puzzled because of tested this plug-in by watching your tutorial video, but it's not in the same result.
I think as the size of all of the parameters have shifted.
For example Position is no longer visible and move more than 0.1, and everything will be white out the scale value more over 10 times or 100 times.

I have been tested using the ELEMENT3DV2.2 and Motion Design2 simple objects.

AE is tried in CS6 both Japanese and English version, but results were the same.

What it can be considered causes of this?

Best regards.

Matt Tillman

Hi Nobuhiko

There are a few things that could be happening.

First, make sure your composition is set to 32bpc, in linear workspace.

Second, set your "Multiply Values" to 100.

Third, colour pick a position value on your Element Position Pass.

If all of that fails, you could try uploading an AE file and I can take a look at it to see what's happening.

Nobuhiko Nabeshima

Hi matt,

Thank you for your rapid response.
But your proposal has been already tried.

I've uploaded a simple test scene.

http://firestorage.com/download/515a7e83105b45362c951f905b09206b0e886a3c
for 3days download password [hc1jh9dh]

I wish help to your verification.

Best regards.

Matt Tillman

Hey Nobuhiko,

Here you go:
https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/72f12631fabb1248f9ecefb8a6dce14620150730221448/9760693cfd6aa87def5190dbfdcc9b7820150730221448/19e52a

You were applying Position Matte to your standard Element layer. The plugin only works with a "Position Pass".
To use it with Element you need to go to your Element "Output" dropdown, and set it to "World Position". Then set the "Matte Type" to "Color".

Also the "Multiply Values" and the ScaleXY&Z do subtly different things. Use "Multiply Values" to adjust for scene scale, and the Scale values to distort your matte, or make your matte orthographic (by setting one or more to 0).

Nobuhiko Nabeshima

Hi matt,

Thank you for your fix file.

Unfortunately AE version of my workplace is only CS6 and my personal AE CC does not installed ELEMENT, then your fixed file was not open.
But Position matte was worked to read your notes.

My most failure was skip the procedure of ELEMENT.

It's awesome! This is a fun!!
I'm gonna recommend in the my workplace after discount campaign. :-)

By the way, my request to you is allowed?

I want to use the Layer Texture Mode of Position matte pattern that controlled Various axes and rotations.
If use own texture animation, it's become more powerful plugin.

Please try to consider it.

Best regards.

Matt Tillman

Ah, sorry about that. It was a CC 2014 file.

I'm glad to hear it is working now though.

Thanks for the feedback

I would love to add support for rotation, and custom textures in the future. But that will depend heavily on if I can find the time.

ありがとう,

Matt

patrick badalian

Awesome plugin, works great with AE CC and Element V2. Endless possibilities when using the effect as a luma matte, amazing!

Miika Turunen

I had some initial problems with Position Matte, but I guess those were because I wasnt running AE in 32-bit colorspace. I guess theres some technical reason why position matte recquires 32 bits. So asking if there would be a way to get this work in 8 or 16 bit is like asking would a car with gas engine run without gasoline? 

I think I have somewhat powerful computer, but most of my Element 3D projects get super sluggish in 32 bit space and turning it to 8 or 16 while animating doesnt work as Position Matte dosent work at those spaces.

I bought Position Matte without knowing if I even need it I havent used it even once for a project, but now when I'm thinking to do something with it I'd rather not use it because what I gain by using PM I lose in the end by making the project super slow to work with.

Matt Tillman

Hi Miika,

Thanks for the feedback.

You are right, 32-bit colourspace is required, Position Matte cannot function at 8 or 16bpc. The reason for this is that the rgb values must be able to represent the full range of 3d coordinates. And 32bpc is the only colourspace that allows for full floating point and negative values.

My workflow with Element 3D (even on its own) is to prerender comps as lossless proxys as I go, as it can definitely slow things down. Especially when piling effects on top (such as position matte). 

Pascal Fuerst

Would it be possible for you to add the option to input a noise map
(precomped turbulence noise, custom black and white picture) as the mode so that we get even more possible matte shapes?
If it wouldn't be possible to add an external file as the mode maybe you could get it to produce a noise map internally
I have seen someting
like this beeing used in Jurassic World where they used it to add some
leaf (gobo) shadows onto the dinosaurs in post

Matt Tillman

Hey Pascal,

Those are definitely possible, and on my list for the next update (when I get the time that is).

Ideally I'd like to include the following:

- Rotation controls

- Procedural 3D noise

- Ability to use a layer or precomp (with UV-like tiling controls)

If you have any other suggestions let me know

Pascal Fuerst

Hey Matt,
sounds amazing. For now I don't have anything to add to the list. But if I come up with anything that would make sense I let you know. Looking forward to the new version

Moss El Mes

How you created the position pass? ( position layer in AFX)

Matt Tillman

Hey Moss,

The position pass can be created as either a render pass from a 3D application, or by turning on the world position settings in Element 3D.