Faux 3D, Pt II

The final shot of the animation has been up in the air for the entire project. Every round of revisions that came in had a new version.

When time ran out, I'd built no geometry for a final, high-rez render of the Tetons. I did have a photo that one of the geologists liked very much: a sufficiently high-resolution photograph taken - I think - from the Space Shuttle, looking down on Jackson Hole and the Teton range.

I pulled it into Photoshop and prettied it up a bit, then brought it into After Effects. I wanted something more than a static shot to end on. I thought about doing a simple zoom out (or in) but that seemed boring too.

After Effects (AE) does have limited 3D capabilities, although it's all based on flat planes. With a shot from space, I figured I could get by without any real 3D geometry to the mountains, but I did want to do a real camera move, rather than a simple zoom.

I've recently watched some great AE tutorials by Andrew Kramer, and one of them was on creating a simple 3D scene in AE. Perfect. Thanks, Andrew.

I created a flat plane in AE and adjusted it to match the perspective of the photo as best I could. Next I projected the photo onto it, from the camera's perspective. Now, when I moved the camera in AE, the perspective of the scene shifted realistically. It's a subtle effect, but it's something the eye notices when it's not there.

I added another 3D plane, just above the landscape, and put some Fractal Noise clouds on it, to give a little parallax as the camera moves and reinforce the illusion.

The results were pretty good and, better yet, pretty fast.