Hey Guys,
This is my first time posting something, but I have been working on an idea now for a long time and I think I need some help.. My idea is to be able to potentially create a full 3D character rig in after effects without using any actual 3D z depth in after effects. I have played with this idea a bit and you can see that I have some pretty convincing effects here with this head turn around test:
I know this isn't perfect, but since this was posted, I have further pushed my theories and concepts and will explain them now. So far, I think I have the idea down as to how to get this 3D effect across the entire body of a rig.
So to get this effect, I am relying on stacked animated shape layers. So if you take a silhouette of a head without hair facing forward, then morph the shape to the profile of a head shape, then the end result will appear as if you have a rotating head. then you add hair, eyes, a mouth etc. utilizing the same effect. I first got this idea from Daniel Gies here:
Now this is all relatively simple to do, just requires some tweaking.. But I wanted to implement this method across the entire body. SO for example, the torso could rotate, the arms would follow around like the ears in my head turn test. With in the arms, you could rotate the forearm to get a twisting effect and so forth.
With this idea, you could potentially create a rig that can rotate a full 180 degrees, if not a full 360 if done right. The only problem, or really restriction, would be the fact that the rig still could not move in z space. So even though you could now rotate every body part, the rig would still be fairly limited in its movement.
I thought about this for a long time and though to myself.. Well..if you can simulate a 3D effect with animated shape paths, then why couldn't you do the same to create a fore shortening effect?
One could animate, for example, an arm that fore shortens upward, thus interacting with a simulated z space. The only problem then would be that one would loose the rotation quality. The linear interpolation created by after effects would only let you animate the shape layer on one timeline.
Let me explain.. So I began to learn how to use Maya about a year ago now, and I was introduced to blend shapes. If you don't know about blend shapes, then they are simply modifications of a base model that you can animate to with sliders. So for example, you could have a model of a head with no expression, so this is your base. You would then create duplicates of this model and change them. So one head could have a happy expression, one with a sad and one with an angry expression. Then you could create blend shapes out of them which would allow you to animate your base head to become happy or sad or mad... but with this, you could also mix them expressions. SO you could have 50% of a happy expression and 20% of a sad expression and 70% of an angry expression to create a weird hybrid between the three blend shapes.
This concept was intriguing to me because what if you could do the same thing in after effects? you could create a "blend shape" for a twist, one for a fore shortening, and really anything else you could think of. So then you could twist your arm shape layer, and then mix in the fore shortened animation and then you would have both a twisting and fore shortened effect.
This theory that I have come up with is very possible with the help of a few plugins, but it is super tricky and takes a lot of repetitive labor.. so hopefully someone here can help me refine this concept to come up with a simpler way of making it a reality.
So at the moment, I have experimented with BAO mask avenger and Duik Tools.
Here are the steps that will get you the "blend shape" effect:
1.create your base shape (Shape A)
2.duplicate your Shape A twice and rename one FS (foreshorten) and one Twist
3.Animate the shape paths of both the FS and Twist to achieve the desired illusion effect
4.Apply the Shape Avenger effect to both the FS and Twist layers
>This will create key-able position points for every point and every tangent (curve handle)
5.For each animated point and tangent, apply the Rot Morph feature in Duik Tools
>this will restrict the animation to only play through based off of another property
6.Restrict each point and tangents animation to a slider controller for FS and a different slider for Twist.
>This will allow you to key the individual effects as a whole, (like you would be able to on the path options that comes with AE)
7. Go to the original Shape A and apply the Shape Avenger effect.
>This will give the original shape a set of points and tangents that can be animated.
8. For each of the new points and tangents of the original Shape A:
8a. define variables for the X and Y properties for the corresponding points or tangents from both interpolations
9. at this point you should be finished and when each slider is adjusted, the two interpolations should be combines, giving you a blended shape.
Okay so I know there are a few steps, but depending on how many points you have on the main shape A, being that you have to define 4 variables for each point and tangent, you could potentially spend hours coding hundreds of position properties...
Hopefully I have made my concept and method clearly. I would love to team up with someone who could maybe even write a script that does all of this without having to use BAO or Duik. If you have any questions, please contact me, I would love to discuss this!
