Extrude shape, but only as wireframe?

[PierreDaniel]

Hi all.

In Illustrator, there is this neat 3D effect where we can chose to extrude some shapes and have some plastic shading, no shading, or wireframe extrusion. The latter is the one that interests me – I only want to keep the outlined strokes of the object.

Now if I wanted to have the same effect in After Effects – how could I extrude a shape in order to obtain only the "wireframed" strokes, with transparent surfaces on all sides? Is that possible?

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

No easy way to do that. There was a similar thread recently that offered a half dozen solutions. If you really need a wireframe model I would just jump into Blender (http://blender.org), create your OBJ, add a camera to do a move on the model, export the camera and scene and do the final composite in AE.

If I get time later I'll post a link to the thread I mentioned before.

EDIT: Here's the link: Flat, Stroked Graphics in 3D?

[PierreDaniel]

Thanks for the link, I will try this out!

[PierreDaniel]

OK, this comes close, but there still are closed surfaces around the object. It's not a proper see-through-wireframe.
I have never used Blender, but maybe this is the opportunity to learn something new.