Turbulent Displace in 3D?

[laffittestudios]

Hello Forum,

I’ve been working on a project that requires me to stroke on multiple interchanging lines in 3D space and make it look like they’re being painted/drawn on paper. I tried several different techniques (which all work in one way or another) but none of them give me the control and results I need.

1. I tried using shape layers animating them

on with the trim paths animator. This works great for 3D camera moves without sacrificing quality however there are some problems.

• After Effects‘ strokes do not support tapered ends nativly which I need to match the original artwork.

• I cannot make it look as if it’s being painted on organically. It’s always a perfect shape.

•Turbulent Displace is not an option because I dont want the final look of the shapes to be distorted. Just the brush-on effect.

2. I tried using Trapcode 3D Stroke to resolve the taper issue but the same problem of a ‘non-organic’ brush tip exists as well as:

• The strokes are cylindrical, almost like pipes and, in low angled camera shots, are very obviously tube-like.

3. I tried using Omino Snake to stroke on the lines with a custom paintbrush texture, however it doesn’t like being used in 3D space so that’s a no-go. Plus it’s pretty buggy.

4. I tried using the Tapered Stroke script from School of Motion, however it takes a lot of work to setup and render times are extra long in 4K. As well as the same issue with not having an organic painted look.

5. I tried rendering out a VERY high res (20k) 2D version of the entire animation with the intention to turn that render into a 3D plane and just animate the camera. However, our close-ups are so close that even that resolution gets very grainy. Anything higher than that in resolution is incalculable by AE.

6. I finally tried to using shape layers as track mattes for each stroke. I made the track matte shapes wider than the visible strokes so that Turbulent Displace would only effect the edge it is revealing. This made for a great looking effect and is the closest I’ve come to what I’m looking for. However:

•When I make these layers 3D, the track mattes disappear and seem to act entirely different than when in 2D. I’m assuming it’s because Turbulent Displace is not a 3D Effect.

•I’ve used this in 3D before without as many issues but this is a very finessed version of it so maybe I’ve just never noticed the effects as much.

Anyhow, my question is, does anyone know a solution to the issue I’m having? For instance, some way to make Turbulent Displace work in 3D? I’m even open to purchacing any software that is designed for this sort of thing.

Is there anything that has all of the features I’m looking for?

• Organic brush tip

• Vector tracing

• 3D Compatible

It’s time sensitive, so if I can avoid as much gruntwork as possible, I would be grateful. Thank’s in advanced.

-Jeahn

[Towerguy]

Hi Jeahn. Re 6. I presume you have tried pre-composing the layers?

[laffittestudios]

I have, however to keep things from getting grainy, I need to use the continuously rasterize button and that causes some very strange things to happen in 3D. Thanks for the suggestion, though! I'm sure a solution is out there somewhere.

[P.M.B]

Forget turbulent displace.

You can use the roughen edges effect to give your strokes a more organic look.

You might also add simple choker effect or this with this blobbing technique.

It's explained at 04:20

After Effects Tutorial - Liquid Ink Drips - YouTube​

play around with all this and you should be able to achieve a fairly organic inked look.

[laffittestudios]

Thank you for that! Roughen edges does give me a really nice effect, however this effect also doesn't recognize 3D space, so the roughness doesn't scale and transform along with my camera moves. This does get me a step closer to my goal though, so thank you so much!

[P.M.B · Accepted solution]

Hmmm...    maybe you can work out to pre-render the writing on as just a head on shot at a very hi resolution and then bring it back in and composite onto whatever it on?  Glad I could help you get a little closer though.

[laffittestudios]

Very good idea once again, we tried that before and are going back to that route. I’m rendering out 16K files (which is taking ages but it’s the only real solution we are finding with how close up we need to be. I’ll leave this ticket open just in case someone stumbles across it in the future and has more suggestions. This project is going to be the death of me. Wish I knew how to write scripts! Haha thanks again!

[P.M.B]

I once saw a breakdown of a really impressive writing on sequence that an Israeli ad agency did of an advanced stylus for some Apple product.  It was not a simple process.   I tried to find it but couldn't.  It's out there somewhere.

Anyway hope it all works out.

[jasmineb80945795]

I realise I'm late to the party here but I've just had this issue and thought I would share my approach for anyone else who has this problem in future.

I found the best way for me to achieve decent hand-drawn strokes was to create them in Illustrator using an 'artistic paintbrush' then import them to After Effects. I was intending to just 'create shapes from the vector paths' and then use 'trim paths' but the shapes came out as fills, breaking the trim paths. So I just created a mask and used generate > stroke to have them reveal the original image. With continuously rasterize on, my strokes look hand drawn and crisp at a high level of zoom, and work with a 3D camera.