How do you anchor a solid layer to a map to illustrate an animated frontline???

[ninose11]

Youtube content creator Boonelovesvideo recently posted this Youtube tutorial about how to illustrate an animated frontline moving across a battlemap. What I'm having trouble understanding is how he sets up the animation with a "map anchor". He uses the Geolayers 3 plugin which I don't have. But can anyone take a look at his video and help me understand how he anchors the Solid Layer to the map. Just asking here because I already asked him, but he hasn't replied yet. Thank you very much in advance to anyone who can help us understand how to do this in After Effects (without Geolayers 3).

[Airweb_AE]

I think just need to create a null layer.

1.  Parent your shape layer to the null layer
2. Parent the null layer to the map layer
3.  (optional) make all layers 3D
4.  Animate your map layer

[ninose11]

Thanks very much for your help Airweb_AE. The only problem is that I like to add "turbulent displace" to my layers as it gives me a more fluid and interesting animated mask. The problem is that adding turbulent displace to a 3D layer causes that layer to vanish. So it looks like either I stay in 2D with turbulent displace on or go 3D and with no turbulent displace, unless I precomp the map with layers, then go 3D. 

What I found quite interesting about Boone's method though is that if you use a Solid Layer (as opposed to a Shape Layer) you can still add the Turbulent Displace effect to that Solid Layer and it won't disappear even after checking it's 3D box. I don't recall if Boone mentioned that, but it's really cool that you can do that with Solid Layers. Thanks again very much for your help, 😀.

[Finn McNeill]

Turbelant displace the layer, pre comp that layer, make that precomp 3d and then the 3d shouldnt interfere with the displace.

[ninose11]

Hi Finn, thanks very much for your help as well. I see what you mean. The only problem is that once I precomp the layer, I can't make any animated adjustments to that layer unless I double click the precomp to get back into it, and then I'm just seeing the layer itself without the map, so I wouldn't be able to see what I'm doing with respect to the map.  

[Finn McNeill]

One of my main gripes with precomps yeah. would be cool if they added a transparency option so you could see the master comp underneath, you can, however, view multple comps at once by clicking new comp viewer, that way you can atleast see the result and adjust at the same time, its not perfect but it may be the only way.

Alternativley, animate everything with the mapuntil youre happy with it in 2d, then precomp the whole thing and then you can work on your 3d camera movement.