hey everyone!
so after some hours on working on an edit, i suddenly can't do a cube anymore or even use any of my 3d presets. whenever i change active camera to custom view 1, nothing happens and it still looks like active camera, but as soon as i pause the clip, it looks like shown in the picture.
i already tried restarting after effects and my computer, but it didn't do anything.
this is really urgent so it would mean so much to me if any of you guys could help me out.
thanks so much already 🙂
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hey, thanks so much for your reply!
i'm kinda scared to purge everything since i really don't want to lose my whole project.
also the 'bug' with custom view 1 only happens in this project, which is pretty weird.
if i open 2 or 4 views, it looks like shown in the picture (i used a solid to exhibit that).
yes, most of my 3d comps have 3d activated in the comp itself since they're made of
multiple 3d transitions that preoccupied multiple compositions.
i'm not animating a camera, i am doing an edit consisting of pictures and overlays with
transitions in between the files. i hope this made sense. as well do the 3d toggle switch
button and the other 3d view popups work normally, it's just the three custom views that
mess up the process of my editing.
also i'm pretty new to after effects, that's probably why this happened to me, so i wanted to
apologize in advance if the solution is pretty obvious or my question sounds dumb.
Going to the Edit/Purge/All Memory & Disk Cache will not have any effect on your project. You should have autosave turned on and every time you start having any problem at all with a comp or you think you may have a problem you should perform a Save As and give yourself a version of your project that works to this point. On my complex projects, I often have a dozen or more versions that I have saved as I am working through the project.
I see a couple of workflow issues that can make a lot more complicated work on 3D projects than it needs to be. Here are some basic guidelines:
- Limit your composition length
Most comps in After Effects are only one shot - leave the editing to an NLE
Only combine multiple shots in comp is the only way to transition or between shots - If you are working with 3D layers add a camera and lights to the comp even if you are not going to animate the camera
Camera position controls perspective, focal length (zoom in AE) controls framing - If you have 3D layers that need to be grouped or tied together use parenting as your first choice and pre-compose as your second option
- Keep any lights and cameras you add in the main comp
Collapsing transformations in a nested comp (pre-comp) makes the lights and camera
in the main comp work on the 3D layers in the nested comp - If you are animating individual 3D layers in a nested comp (pre-comp) and you also need to animate the entire group of 3D layers in the main comp, the most efficient workflow is to parent the 3D layers in the pre-comp to a master 3D null and animate the null
- Make use of the flow chart to quickly navigate between compositions and keep track of where the layers are
- Use a pencil and paper to storyboard and organize your animations before you start a project even if you can't draw - it will help you keep the project efficient
- When checking the timing and framing of your animation set the comp to fast draft so your ram previews will render faster
Animating 3D layers in a nested comp then collapsing transformations and if needed animating the transformations of the 3D comp can be an effective workflow and will maintain the quality of your 3D layers. Not collapsing transformations make your pre-composed 3D layers a 2D plane that cannot fully integrate with the 3D space in the main comp.
I threw together this animated cube where the sides fly in to form a cube with an open-top:
Then I put it in my main comp, added some lights and a camera to give me the perspective I wanted, then collapsed transformations on the nested comp and got this.
Turning off Collapse Transformations (continuously rasterize - same switch) gives me this mess.
Adding a comp camera gives me an easy way to change the framing and the perspective of the shot by simply changing the zoom value and moving the camera a little bit. I went from a 28MM lens to a 15MM lens and got this new view in about 10 seconds.
If I didn't have a camera in the scene it would have taken 15 or 20 minutes and I never would have achieved the same perspective without changing everything from the size of the cube to the position of every layer.
I believe your comp view is getting fouled up because of the workflow. I hope this helps you figure things out and work more efficiently.
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