Wow, this video got some serious responses from you all! I'd like to say just a few things. Firstly, thank you for not directing your frustration at me :). I am doing my best to present the information and show how you could able to make use of it. I do agree with a lot of the frustrations that have been brought up, and fully admit that basically any alternative is a better choice for 3D work than this beta feature which is very much a work in progress. I'm generally a very optimistic guy, and I've been using AE long enough to remember non-dockable workspace panels. I've been seriously impressed by how far it's been pushed as a software and what's capable using it now versus when I first started using the program. At the same time, it's incredibly frustrating to have to rely on third-party tools to make AE tollerable to work with. Every piece of software is going to have downfalls; every program crashes, is missing a feautre, or does something absurdly complicated for no apparent reason. But the fact that AE has virtually zero competition in the scope of it's application makes it difficult for me to be pessimistic. Yes there's Cavalry, but that's not going to replace compositing work. Yes there's the Grease Pencil in Blender, but that's not going to replace text animators and shape layers. Yes there's Resolve, but I use AE for more than just VFX and compositing. If there were an alternative that could do all of the things I use AE for, I'd be much less likely to stick with Adobe. Learning softward like UE5 and Blender for FREE is making it difficult to be satisfied with some of AE's pitfalls, but I've made a career out of working with and teaching others how to use After Effects, so I won't be jumping ship any time soon. One final note! I realize how hacky the Calculations matte layer technique is, but that's exactly what it is -- a hack! This is a beta feature of After Effects, and it will not be long before that hack is completely uneccesary. I showed it to teach a technique, and to make use of a beta feature that is not ready for primetime yet. Keep being awesome, and thanks for all the comments.
this is interesting but to be honest I just wish Adobe would properly re-code After Effects instead of adding more stuff to make it slower and even less stable there are plenty of decent options when it comes to 3D Mograph/Animation but no decent alternative when it comes to 2D Motion Graphics
In my opinion Apple Motion is a pretty great alternative to AE, you should give it a try. You can do most of the things you can do in AE with it. The only downside is its plugin ecosystem which is really poor.
i couldn't like this comment more....how long did it take adobe to fix layer masks? ten years? why becuase they cant change one line of their code without breaking their old legacy software. they need a complete rewrite.
@@julienriesen3535 it's only available for MacOS so it's not viable as long as Apple keeps gatekeeping it many like me prefer to have good hardware at a decent price instead the overpriced stuff that Apple sells 😬
Take a look at Cavalry, total focus on 2d motion graphics. I use both AE and Cavalry for motion graphics but some things that takes a couple on minutes in AE to prep and do, takes like a second in Cavalry when you learn the layout.
Although this is great, I think it’s absurd that the AE team spends its time on these kind of things. As if the software is mature… meanwhile a lot of the basic things don’t work or are annoyingly complicated. Timeline folders? That’s way overdue right? How about a normal way to loop a layer without having to go ‘enable time remapping > shorten by one frame > option click on a stopwatch > write a case-sensitive expression that you always forget’… I mean, how can you explain that to anyone… the software is made by developers, not by designers. There’s still no real alternative (mainly because of the plug-in ecosystem), but jeez, I would switch in a split second.
@@TheKoolcat but you can’t fold out precomps in your timeline, they’re a separate composition. I just mean groups like in the photoshop layers panel, or any other timeline video editor. Being able to collapse and expand several layers to tidy things up. You know what I mean.
Jake! this is beyond my ken at the moment - and not at all what I want to do as an artist - But that you are here - everyday(ish) - with the goods and the explanation and the energy is what makes this community The Thing. Thank you for what you do and all that you give. Many many many of your videos have improved my understanding of AE and desire to learn much more - technically and artistically - Much Thanks!
I do a lot of animations with cameras within AE to show maps on a virtual table. I’m so excited to be able to introduce the odd 3D element like a compass or something say on the table.
Clearly After Effects will never replace Blender or C4D. But even still, this new feature might be a great option when the workflow needs to be a little faster than a full traditional 3D pipeline.
Blackmagic Design recently added USD support to DaVinci Resolve 18.5. How does it compare to Adobe's recent changes? Can Blackmagic Design keep up? The main reason why I like DaVinci Resolve is you only pay once and you get to use it forever, including updates. Adobe is by subscription only, and a single year subscription is more than a lifetime license for DaVinci Resolve.
Sometimes when working with 3D its frustrating when I want to do a small thing (like adding a photo of a cherry to the ice cream) and I have to do so many tedious steps(like importing a plane, adding a material, making sure the size of the image matches the plane, adjust the orientation and so on) and I wished there would be a feature where I could just import a png and place it there. After Effects is already good with 2D layers, I think if they develop 3D features that could produce even decent renders, it would make AE so powerful. I don't know of any tool in the market that has a better 2D 3D workflow transition than Blender(With its Grease Pencil). Let me know if you guys know of any better tools for this. Thank you Jake for explaining these features.
Great overview Jake! Still not entirely sure when I'd be using this sort of half baked set of features from the AE team but neat nonetheless. Excited to see where we are in terms of development on this in the not too distant future
Big part of 3D model quality is lightning and materials. I would like to know how make this on professional way not just import 3d object and make low quality lightning and materials?
After effects, 2024.0.1. I have Maya MB and MA files. I have OBJs with MLTs and FBXs. Only the MA shows up when I import but it is also just an empty composition; no model. Why?
Bro, that ice cone topology is a nightmare xD, i know this is something some people might find groundbreaking, but we had Element 3D for more than a decade, with proper PBR and texture controls
Oh, I know, hahaha. 3D scanners don't know or care about clean topology 😆. And yeah I agree, we've had much third-party better options for 3D for a loooong time now. But I'm still glad that AE is going to support this stuff because unless I need super realistic rendering, I would love to be able to just drop a model into an AE comp like this. It has a long way to go but the dev team is making progress and that's exciting to me.
Thanks Jake! Great breakdown of the new 3D features in AE! It’s great to know the developers at Adobe are working so hard on this. It does feel like this version is just the very beginning. Does this mean the Cinema 4D renderer becomes obsolete? I’m wondering whether you would ever need to switch from Mercury 3D to Cinema 4D renderers, or whether they just duplicate each other. Also, where does the default HDRI live? I noticed before you imported your own HDRI there was no layer for the default HDRI. What if you want to make adjustments to the settings of the default environment? How do you access that? Also, I’d love to see a tutorial from you where you light a 3D model using AE lights, not an HDRI.
I've tried bringing a GLB file in and in doesn't work, AE 24.1 and on the beta, pls help. It just shows a black composition, I can see the outline, but none of the 3D models are shaking. Any help would be great.
Hey Jake! great tut. Does anyone know if you can import an animated 3D file into AE, for example using the Mograph effectors in Cinema 4D as of now looks like you have to do the animations in AE.
It should be noted GLTF isn’t a format you’d like to use if your materials need multiple reflection bounces and transparent/refractive surfaces are a no go.
Спб огромное за урок - ваш труд - очень интересно. Начал недавно изучать AE и пока что не очень понимаю все /с большим трудом/, но уроки очень нравятся. Низкий поклон вам;
I was super excited for this until you got the part about trying to add a tint. That's a lot of work if you have a bunch of objects in your scene. Will stick with C4D lite, Element or Cinema 4D Thanks for the tutorial though. I look forward to playing around with it, just won't be committing any projects to it
Is there anyone trying to import 3D objects with Cel shade material and shade and toon render setting? The cel shade material didn't come with the import. I have already exported them in obj and glb file type.
it'd be good to see how to integrate this workflow with classic 3D stuff like motion design elements. Are we having to pre-render these and then switch renderers to integrate it into a longer form explainer for instance? is Mercury just a Classic 2.0, making Classic no longer needed? Would be great to get some clarity on that
All standard 3d layers (2.5d) still work in mercury, they just don't support the HDR lighting or shadow casting/receiving yet. I bet you the dev team is working on that though and I hope mercury 3d becomes the standard engine.
Sorry pal, but I do not advise anyone to use beta version of AE. It must be full of bugs. I (and many other users in AE community) still struggling to make the release version work properly. This has a random memory bug that consumes my 128GB of RAM
My case was even worse: I have 128GB and AE consumes almost everything. And it's useless going back to version 22 because it has the same memory leaking issue
That was amazing. Liked and sub’d. Thanks for sharing! Question: if I install an Adobe beta app, do I/can I delete the full version so I’m not taking up unnecessary disk space?
You can have both installed at the same time. I wouldn't recommend uninstalling the public version just in case you start to get crashes on the beta version.
This could potentially be a great thing. I used Element 3D for years and it was great for 3D text and and 3d objects when you are going to have a ton of revisions and a million versions that have to be done quickly. But it has become so buggy as to be unusable. I have been looking for an alternative ever since. Round tripping to C4D just to change text gets cumbersome. The Helium AE plugin doesn't seem that flexible yet from the demos I've played with. So I really have my fingers crossed for this.
I guess my question is why. They already have C4D lite and cineware built in. I'd rather they make that a more seamless integration that would allow you not to have to jump back and forth for simple property changes. They'd have to invest some serious time and money into making this new thing into more than a gimic. Even DaVinci's Fusion seems more usable than this.
This is really cool, but when I download stuff from Adobe Stock, they are .obj files, and when I put them on a composition, I do not see them, even with Draft and Mercury 3d on
That's strange. I was able to successfully load OBJs from Adobe Stock. Does your machine meet the minimum requirements? You need a GPU with at least 4GB of VRAM.
I'm sorry but this post is going to be a heavy critique and/or rant against adobe (by that I mean the company, the corporate model, the greed... not the employees themselves), so if you think I'm out of line and/or disrespecting you can report or delete my comment. In general I think every word I will type is fully deserved!!!! It might be a little chaotically written and full of errors but it is what it is... Why is everyone so excited about this update? MAJOR UPDATE... sorry. What year is it? Don't we have Element 3D? Or is this any better? More features? Faster rendering? Well probably isn't any of those... So why should I get excited? Why is everyone of you praising adobe for doing this thing so late? Why didn't they just buy E3D and built on it and improve it? Andrew Kramer helped MOST OF US walk, so I think giving him a blank cheque and buying that piece of software should be the next step. You bought most of the competition that WIPED THE FLOOR with your ass... Why not buy E3D? How many more years are going to take to overthrow a plugin that hasn't been updated since forever???? Absolutely laughable... Why not fix the current issues and implement some useful stuff? Whats next? Try to create/update the particle system? Sure lets invent the wheel and learn to use fire, while we observe the new Maxon spaceship get launched to one of the stars 12 parsecs away... Lets all praise adobe for this. EVERY... SINGLE... ONE... OF... YOU... is part of the problem. No!!!! NOOOO! This isn't a huge update. Just buy E3D!!!!! Everyone in Reddit and in forums and in the comments on YT are saying how this is going to be the new next big thing... well no... Its long overdue... Focus on improving what you have!!! Well it's not useless but there are many more pressing matters and this 3D stuff implementation is long overdue... Its a step that has to be taken but its taken in 2023 when every software has a better 3D system than AE. I mean paint probably has a better 3D options... Everyone has problems with how AE runs even on supercomputers. People are saying other programs run like butter while handling heavier renders on their machines... Why? How? Problem with adobe is lack of competition... Even if the software becomes 80% unusable 99% of the time they still won't take any action... They will just wait a year or two to let the community and s**t hit the fan.. then they will take some action and start building it from scratch to fix all the problems this outdated piece of software has. Lets just buy the a$$hole on top a new yacht and then we can talk about the important things... The only thing I love about adobe since the last 10 years is that my boss pays for it... If I had to give even one cent I think I would just switch careers. Respectfully, but treating your customers like beta testers and having no desire to improve on your software is going to be your doom... Lets hope competition arrives soon and starts reaching into adobes pockets so they can finally start going forwards and not let the wind/waves keep them afloat.... Look at Nuke (sorry to the people working at the Foundry for this comparison) they are implementing AI into their software. Last thing I watched, it can roto stuff for you. And in AE we get colored keyframes... Well... ok... thanks? Edit: I forgot to mention how you need to have these RIDICULOUS workaround for the most basic stuff when it comes to the NEW AND IMPROVED 3D system (C4D layers can't have FX on them LOL). I know the answer but PLEASE... please tell me why you didn't just used a curves effect (or whatever) on the background or have an adjustment layer just above the background and you had to use calculations or use 2 comps to have the different elements so you can comp them together, or use another workaround for this.... How can you not have the option for motion blur and effects and the most basic stuff on these C4D 3D layers... WTF is this????? And they were implemented when? 5 years ago? Or even more...
Damn software that cant run a simple animation properly and crash all the time, now it can work with 3d directly... seems great ! but I will stuck with 2020 version. deep down everyone just want stable adobe products
it's all bad, not elementary reflections and refractions of level 1 (, a lot of noise and slows everything down. Even Kramer has simple reflections. Materials cannot be edited. They started fussing after Da Vinci started implementing 3D. And so they would be sitting on their paid subscriptions)
It doesn't support Redshift, but yes, whatever materials were applied are carried over. I used basic properties from the Principle BSDF material shader in Blender and they carried over.
I was never able to get my head around Element 3D so I went straight to C4D and never looked back. But I just tested AE's new 3D feature, for simple animation and textures it's pretty damn good. If AE can implement more texture control then I can see myself using this a lot.
I'm tired of all this bullshit Beta crap. We've been hearing about AI in Photoshop for over a year including over 80 separate tutorials yet I have not seen a single roll out to the general public. I get this is how betas work but it's a little too much fanfare for something that we may never see Because production life cycles shouldn't take over a year from the moment you start advertising it. Especially when we're paying around $650 a year.
It has a long way to go for sure. And yes, you should know how to use a true 3d package. BUT if you could pull off a shot in AE without having to render out of Blender or C4D, I think having the option would be great.
This is a very welcome addition, but Element 3D is still king if you ask me. Much faster render time + custom texture from a composition + instancing ability + ability to break down model into pieces etc etc The dream would be for Adobe just to buy and implement E3D
@@jppelc8594 kind of agree with that. Adobe can easily ruin a great product by intoducing it's code and "features" which nobody needs, thus making it work as unstable as AE. Currently if your AE crashes there is a good chance E3D will hold things together just long enough so you can save the project xD Onse Skype was the king of voice chat. Then Microsoft bought it...
I hear ya. But I do agree on what the rest is saying. Adobe is king on crushing competition. I do thing that AE needs to much rework to be a good 2D/3D package. So they will keep fiddling around like this. Keeping us hoping for something excellent.
That “Calculations” is probably the best thing I have learned from AE in years (been also years since I have used it)… so many times that I just ended up pre-comping, duplicating and whatnot just to get exactly what Calculations does 🤦♂️
@@ErinPhoebe my solution may not be yours but it turned out my problem was that I had multiple places on my mesh that I needed to attach my texture to. It would either export my model with a partial texture or none at all.
😬. Honestly I'd love to see the mercury 3d engine pushed to be the default. The extended viewport is so nice to have. If it can transfer over to 2d layers I'd be all in.
I don't see a real future for adobe and 3d outside of substance painter. after effects needs a full re-write they've built on top of junk for too long and now there's way to many better 3d and video editing and mograph options that run faster smoother and are 1000% more intutative.
I agree with you that AE should never try to be a full 3D package, but being able to place 3D models into a comp without the need for any outside tools would be helpful for a lot of users.
Good luck with 3D in after effects. Have this in mind: Native layers like "Shape layers" in 2D take insane amount of computing power to work on Full reso preview. Now imagine all that in 3D.
This seems to be the Ps 3d engine they added years ago. Wth is so hard for this mega corp to hire a few more coders to make a proper comp package instead of a Frankenstein of a software that can do bare minimum. Wanna hear something that most of you ae users have no clue even, there is a node based system already implemented in ae, but they did not evolved it further for over a decade plus they had Nvidia cuda raytracing a decade ago already with 3d objets bu then Adobe and Nvidia got in some arguments and nvidia removed theyr raytracing libraries. Adobe is ridiculous.
I have a problem , please help me out. i will be grateful. if i make logo using 3d models like box, cone etc present in create section of element , then that model is able to be saved and imported into 3D element scene . but when i autotrace any image in after effects and then apply video copilot's E3d effect load image on texture map and auto traced mask in mask map and open E3d scene set up and extrude that model in preview and and load texture on that and save it in folder whose destination is Documents/VideoCopilot/Models , then i am not able to import it . the E3d scene shows it, but E3d preview does not show the model but it is showing the gizmo of that folder which contains model . please help me out.if i make logo using 3d models like box, cone etc present in create section of element , then that model is able to be saved and imported into 3D element scene . but when i autotrace any image in after effects and then apply video copilot's E3d effect load image on texture map and auto traced mask in mask map and open E3d scene set up and extrude that model in preview and and load texture on that and save it in folder whose destination is Documents/VideoCopilot/Models , then i am not able to import it . the E3d scene shows it, but E3d preview does not show the model but it is showing the gizmo of that folder which contains model . please help me out.
Pretty nice -- when I switched to using 3D plugins in After Effects several years ago it changed my work fundamentally. This will really game changing once they incorporate 3D deformations, reflections, or the appearance of PBR materials. One thing to note about Element which I think most people forget, is that it was designed to be a 3D particle/flocking/morphing animation engine, not so much a full 3D scene designer.
This is still a lot of workaround for what feels like something that can be done easily in a 3D software or Element 3D. But... could be promising. But also... Adobe please, stay up to date. This is 2024 not 2014.
Just by hearing about this new feature my intel based Mac decided to render a 3D spinning wheel by itself. Jokes apart, thank you for another great video.
Thank you for making this video, but it seems very primitive to me and not very well integrated thus far. I'm not that impressed. Element 3D is much better.
Why are they putting Andrew Kramer out of business? LOL! This is great especially for quick turnarounds vs. long renders in 3D apps, but 2024 doesn't support all of my plugins, so E3D it is for now. Good info, though. Thanks, Jake.
I still don't get it why you wanna do the 3D processing in AE when doing in other 3D software like Blender or C4D is so much smoother. Adobe should fixed their own After Effect basic issue for example like till today even importing an Illustrator file with gradient when convert into shape layer it still don't works properly lol. Not to mention their re-code is so bad. lol
Who ever creates a chatGTP type object generater wins. Type in what you want to see and the thing creates it then you make modifications on the generation. Amazing no one has done it yet.
