How to include stroke on 3D letters in After Effects?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
February 21, 2021
4 replies
912 views

Hello!

I'm currently attempting to create a simple letter rotation animation in After Effects, and am running into some issues when trying to recreate the isometric style I used on the forms in Illustrator. I'm assuming the 3D aspect I utilized in AI won't transfer over to AE when I try to animate, but when I recreate the letterform in AE using the 3D option (Cinema 4D render and extrusion), I lose the stroke on the faces of the object that I want to keep.

I've tried using the bevel option, but it only appears on the front face of the letter, and isn't quite the same as the stroke I need. Is it at all possible to achieve what i'm trying to do with AE? I've also tried creating the letterform in Adobe Dimension, but am running into a similar option with the stroke, so I'm not sure what program is my best bet for now.

I've attached some screenshots of what I'm attempting in AI, vs. the problem I'm running into in AE. Basically I'm just trying to do a looping animation of the two letters rotating opposite of eachother, "sitting" in the static chair object (F= clockwise, K=counter-clockwise).

I'm still very new to AE, and have only really done simple 2D movements/transitions; I think however once I figure out the stylization, I can easily do the rotation animation I need!

I appreciate any help at all, thank you in advance!

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Mylenium

Legend

The issue is obscuration/ culling. You will essentially need a new setup for every 90 degree rotation and depending on the actual perspective, you may even have to use more with smaller angles to prevent layers from getting too skinny to produce correct mattes and similar. E.g. in your scenario you may need four compositions alone for the lower letter and the chair because the fron armrest obscures the F in part just liek the F obscures parts of the rear armrest. Those pre-compositions would then again be used as sources to generate the outline stroke, which in and of itself would produce more pre-compositions that again may need to be clipped out by using the source comps again so the strokes match the fills. Rinse repeat with every extra bit of animation you may add. Even for a simple scenario you can end up with tens of compositions. Again, it's not impossible, but requires strategic thinking and patient execution.

Mylenium

Legend

Long and short: No. This stuff is applied as a post effect even in a 3D program. The basic Toon effect is included in C4D Lite if I remeber correctly, but anything beyond that will require either to level up to a bigger 3D program with more options or spend infinite amounts of time manually setting up things like duplicate meshes with custom extrusions or wireframe rendering and then composing them together in AE with the fundamental point being that your 2D iso style goes against how a 3D camera/ program operates (including AE's) and vice versa. It's one of those weird conundrums that to date nobody has solved perfectly and one of the reasons why Pixare keep raking in technical Oscars for Renderman. That said, it's really not impossible and your stuff looks simple enough. It would even be doable in AE, just require tons of duplicate layers to generate mattes that mutually mask out stuff. You just need to make your mind up how you do it and not mix up techniques.

Mylenium

K

kattayfioAuthor

Participant

Thank you so much for the explanation!

It's killing me that this is so much more involved than just a simple rotation of an object lol. And do you mean stacking the text layers for each letter back in space? How would the sides of those turn into their own "faces" with strokes?

K

kattayfioAuthor

Participant