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G5CD7
Inspiring
February 25, 2022
Question

Help with 3D spinning plate

  • February 25, 2022
  • 3 replies
  • 376 views

Hey guys!
I need some help getting something to animate correctly.

The setup is, I have a hex plate with 6 tubes on it, that are 2D assets.
I need the hex to spin and for each tube to follow the hex corner points.

I have this done already with the "create nulls from paths" command plus parenting the tubes to the nulls.

Then I positioned the tubes using a top down view in 3D space, and I'm all good.

But, when I actually spin the hex, I have issues because the tubes are on layers and when they spin, the tubes that are supposed to be in the back overlap the front ones as those layers are on top...

It's also doing a weird scaling thing (supposedly, since this is 3D it SHOULD change sizes based on perspective, right), not quite correctly doing the movement.
I'll attach some shots and the project file for clarity.

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

Mylenium
Mylenium
Legend
February 28, 2022

It might help if you actually provided screenshots with the relevant settings and possibly also all relevant properties for the layers revealed.

 

Mylenium

    G
    G5CD7Author
    Inspiring
    February 28, 2022

    I've solved it!
    Started over and did it in a much much simpler way and what do you know, it looks perfect now.
    For future people who might look in here, here's what I did.

    This is the setup:

    TUBE <NUMBER> - These are copies of the same PNG file with alpha of course.
    MASTER - This is a null.
    PLATE - This is a hexagonal shape that's used as the orientation for the position of each tube.

     

    Steps to do this:

    1 - Double click the Polygon tool to make a polygon the size of the entire comp

    2 - Change the number of sides to 6

    3 - Scale it down to 80% so when it rotates it stays inside comp limits

    4 - Place one PNG file, use Snapping to attach it to the first corner of the hex (bottom one in this case)

    5 - Duplicate PNG 6 times, repeat step 5 for each one

    6 - Make all layers 3D

    7- Rotate PLATE 90 degrees on X axis

    8- Rotate each tube -90 degrees on X axis

    9- Set MASTER as PLATE's child

    10- Set each tube as children to MASTER

     

    And then just animate PLATE's rotation on the Z axis 🙂

    Mylenium
    Mylenium
    Legend
    February 25, 2022

    That may indicate an effect or layer style interfering with the 3D-ishness then. Some stuff breaks the depth sorting, which is a known limitation. If that's the case, pre-compose the layer and/ or remove the potentially critical stuff like converted editable PSD layer styles. Likewise, combinations of layer switches such as continuously rasterize/ collapse transformations may affect this, so play around with that.

     

    Mylenium

      G
      G5CD7Author
      Inspiring
      February 25, 2022

      Will do, thank you!

      Mylenium
      Mylenium
      Legend
      February 25, 2022

      Looks correct. Your eyes are probably fooling you due to the transparency in the glass cylinders. the rest is indeed normal 3D behavior, but you can improve upon it by actually creating a camera layer with a very long focal length instead of relying on the default imaginary composition camera...

       

      Mylenium

        G
        G5CD7Author
        Inspiring
        February 25, 2022

        If you look at the bases of the cylinders, you can see they're actually rotating in front of other cylinders when they shouldn't be doing it, right?
        Look at this frame.

         

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