I have a problem with Element 3D in After Effect, in the last 3 month I did a lot of 3D text and logos with shadows and I had no problems, but now when I create a shadow a black plane appear, and I don't why cause I didn't change anything in my application, I tried to uninstall and install the app and the plugin and it didn't worked...
If somebody have the solution please help me, or there is no solution can someone explain me how to restore all my settings and presets of video copilot to see if it change something, because I thing I activated something who goes in all of my project and now I can't add shadows....
Chances are you messed up your graphics driver or changed a setting in it, affecting compatibility in E3D. If you recently updated it or e.g. enabled a specific game optimization, going back to an older setting/ version might get E3D back on track. Rinse repeat for other stuff, of course. Impossible to say more because you haven't offered any system information or otehr details.
These are the basic settings required for getting a shadow to appear when using Element 3D. First, inside the Element UI you have to add a plane below the object you have added to cast the shadow and Matte Shadow must be turned on in the Advanced Materials section of the Shader panel. You go from this:
If you are familiar with 3D element, once you have your object ready you know that you just click OK and it imports it to your footage with no problem. However when i do it, the preivew video screen(dont really know the official term) just goes all black. Any ideas on what the problem might be?
If you are loading 3rd party (not VCP) OBJ models in most cases you also have to load image maps or UV maps as well. I would speculate that what you are seeing is just the vanilla polygon model . Send me the model and I can confirm your expereince.
I'm having exactly the same problem! No wonder what .obj i try to import and disply in my composition, it appears all black. even though I could see it like the others in the window where you change the different settings of the object.
I have a similar problem, afer I click ok (in elements) my text comes in if I turn the eye on the text layer but it is behind what looks like a dragged out text box. I can move the text around inside the box but cannot get it to show fully. Setup - Windows 8 64b, Nvidia GT640 (added to the list). Any ideas?
Hi. Did you find an answer? Recently i buy a new workstation with a Ryzen Threadripper and i having problems with Element. I contact Videocopilot support and the said that they have reports of problems wit the DOF pixel blur and this kind of processors.
Whenever the arm of the gun rotates to a different angle, the attachment (ball) should rotate from the same anchor point BUT for the life of me, I can't figure out how to do that. The anchor points always seem super random, and even when they're put in the center of the gun, they make the arm and ball move on completely different axis.
2. Put the Arm & Ball in 1 group (aux channel 1 & 2), and the gun in a 2nd group. Create a null for the 1st group and animate the null directly on the timeline. Yes, both the arm and ball move from the same achor point now, BUT even when I think my anchor point is centered, the entire thing rotates from a weird angle, and again, I just can't get it right.
3. Have element 3D applied to 2 different solids : first one with the arm and ball, second one with everything else, and animate using ''world transformation''. = now I can't get one to be ''inside'' the other, it's always appearing either ''behind'' of ''in front of''.
Am I missing something here? I'm fairly new to element 3D, so please let me know if I need to include more details in order to receive any help! I can also send the .ae project.
Please help me, I'm desperate
My anchor points were all correct in the E3D editor, but I ended up finding the problem! Just posting here in case anyone else has the same kind of issue.
I put the Arm & Ball in 1 group, but instead of assigning each one to a different aux channel (aux channel 1 & 2), I assigned the entire group to a single channel, and then the ball to another channel, leaving the arm without a channel. Hope that makes sense to anyone reading this, but if not, feel free to comm
Well, have you actually checked the anchor points in your 3D program? In the E3D editor? What does the hierarchy actually look like? You need to be more specifc/ provide more useful screenshots. That said, chances are you just need more Nulls to get correct rotation order, but again, impossible to say based on so little actual info.
My anchor points were all correct in the E3D editor, but I ended up finding the problem! Just posting here in case anyone else has the same kind of issue.
I put the Arm & Ball in 1 group, but instead of assigning each one to a different aux channel (aux channel 1 & 2), I assigned the entire group to a single channel, and then the ball to another channel, leaving the arm without a channel. Hope that makes sense to anyone reading this, but if not, feel free to comment here for more details!
Group Symmetry Mode
In short, group symmetry allows you to designate a reflection of your group within the E3D scene interface. In one of his demos, Kramer uses a futuristic door as an example, and it really makes a lot of sense when describing how Group Symmetry Mode works. If you have one side of a door created and want to simply reflect that side on the X, Y and/or Z-axis, you can enable Group Symmetry by clicking on your group and checking the Group Symmetry box. If you want to animate those individual elements you can jump inside of your group and designate each object to be assigned to an auxiliary animation.
For example, If you have glass in front of your door that is within the same group, you can assign the glass to auxiliary animation channel 1 and the door to channel 2, allowing the glass and door to be animated separately but still operating in the same group. Another benefit of group symmetry is the ability to texture the object and, because E3D processes the symmetry as instances any texture applied to one object gets replicated to each object within your group (with no slowdown). You can even save your group folder as an E3D file to use in another scene.
Matte Shadow With Alpha and 3D Noise
This feature is aimed at anyone doing 3D compositing over live action within After Effects. With Element 3D v2.2 you now have the ability to work with dynamic reflections and dynamic shadows. This leads into creating a shadow of a 3D object while using the alpha channel of a texture to create a more realistic roll-off into your live-action footage. Basically, it gets your composite to look more realistic faster and more easily.
Third on my list is deforming and 3D noise. In E3D v2 you have gained the ability to add primitives directly inside of the scene interface without importing objects, and this makes it extremely easy to come up with organic and often-times wild animations within seconds. Simply drop any primitive object (or anything like text or even an external .OBJ) into your scene, bump up the amount of segments in your 3D model, change your Surface Options > Normal to Dynamic (Deform), as well as check off Optimize Mesh to speed up the rendering, then texture your object however you would like and exit back into After Effects.
Now, under the numbered group that houses your object find the Particle Look and locate the Deform settings. This is where the crazy magic happens. Mess around with the Noise setting a little and you will immediately be looking for some sound effects to complement the weird organic jello-like movement. Check out the MotionPulse Sound Design Toolkit.
Brady Betzel is an online editor at Margarita Mix in Hollywood. Previously, he was editing The Real World at Bunim-Murray Productions. You can email Brady at brady...@gmail.com, and follow him on Twitter, @allbetzroff.
Evening All,
Me again. I am stuck at another point in my ongoing flow. I am looking to click an element within a window and then fill it with data. In this instance it is two separate date fields within a window that unfortunately look almost identical. I recorded myself clicking on each section of the data and filling in values manually. I then went back on that recording and switched out my manual key entries with variables so that the dates can be different for each run of the flow. The issue I am having is that the application correctly identifies and fills the first date box (outlined in Red below) with the correct information, what then happens is that when it should move onto the next date field (outlined in green) and fill in the dates there, instead of detecting this element it seems to detect the first field again and overwrite the information it has entered first.
This is the window I am trying to populate with date field 1 in red and date field 2 in green:
Within power automate I can see two images for the elements that have been taken in order to locate the item within the GUI and although it is clear that the image around the main date element is different in each picture (as can be seen below) because I think it is only focusing on the section within the red outline it identifies the first date element on both instances for data input.
I did do an inspect element selection to see if there was anything I could get from the date fields to identify them from each other and they do have unique ID numbers. Now I am not sure if this is an ID that Power Automate has assigned them or an ID number it is somehow getting from the open application, either way I am not sure this would help me though as if this is ID numbers for my particular application on my machine. If I were to run this flow on another machine even with the same application installed it is unlikely to have the same element ID I would assume. Especially as this particular application (MetaTrader 5) is distributed by a number of companies who white label it slightly and I am not sure if in doing so would make it a unique application with unique element ID's.
This is the flow below as it is, maybe I am approaching this sort of task in the wrong way. If someone could shed some light onto a method that may work it would be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards,
Chris