Can I export from After Effects a 3D scene to build an app?

fisheronaboat

Hi

I'm looking to design with After Effects and flash and be able to export from AE a 3D scene to use to animate and interact when designing my animated children's app? I just can't figure out the process from AE to actually embedding it into the app and be able to interact with it. By interact, I mean moving the app and the layered AE background moving to give a 3D/depth effect.

This was done with Maya, but can I do it in AE?
http://nosycrow.com/apps/cinderella

I hope you can give us a ray of light

All the best

Mike

The_Gamesalad_Guru

I do it in Motion and with motion you have to export as a series of still images PNG. I would keep the frame rate very low 10FPS or less because GS doesn't handle large frame animations well. I usually only export the stuff I want to animate as seperate actors and make what always remains still as a single image and then layer it in GS outherwise it bogs down the processor.

fisheronaboat

Thanks for your answer. Motion sounds good, is it better than using AE then, any reasons why? I was watching the making of cinderella and they used Maya but was the whole scene exported as one 3D file or like you said as separate layers?

andrewm2211

Hi @smellyKat75 , I think After Effects vs. Motion is a matter of taste/preference and skillset.

So you made an after effects scene, and you want to export it to GS great! There is no way to just 'import' the scene from AE, motion or any other software. You are going to need to render them sepratley as .PNG files with alpha. And re layer them all in GS , same for parralax etc.

fisheronaboat

Hi Andrew, thanks for your comment! what about the perspective changing as I move the iPad which you can see in Cinderella? Which gives more of a 3G feel without being real 3d? From what you mention, does it mean I need to layer this in GS aswell? If you look closely at Cinderella, the perspective of the floor, objects, etc, change when the iPad is moved or the characters are moved from one side to another. So in GS, do I need to layer the floor, the sides of the objects,etc... and then GS is capable of making it feel 3D when interacting? Am I able to do this with no programming experience and if so, are there tutorials for this? Also regarding the PNGs, I read about having all graphics together in one sheet, is this how I need to do it or bring every single element separately?
Many Thanks!

andrewm2211

GS has no 3d at all what so ever. So you can't have any perspective changes unfortunatley.

What you can get is parallax. So when the camera is moving the things farther away move slower, and the things closest to camera move faster.

Every element needs to be separate and crop it to the very pixel you need.

Look in the cookbook and take the basic tutorials, go to gshelper.com best of luck!

fisheronaboat

Great, thank you Andrew!