Tutorial: 3D Object Tips in After Effects

Here are some tips for creating 3D objects in After Effects.

The 3D system in After Effects does have more limitations than a full 3D package, but sometimes you don't need all of the power that something like Cinema 4D has to offer. Simply put, if you need some quick and dirty 3D you might be better off staying in After Effects.In this tutorial you'll learn some helpful tips and tricks to use when setting up a 3D scene in After Effects. We'll also take a look at some animation principles that will help make your work look even better. Hopefully even you veterans will learn something new.

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Tutorial Full Transcript Below 👇:

Joey Korenman (00:19):

What's up Joey here at school of motion and welcome to day seven of 30 days of after effects today. What we're going to talk about is something that's a little bit back to basics and after effects and something. A lot of you probably already know, which is that after effects is sort of a 3d program, you can create 3d objects by taking two and a half D cards and kind of arranging them to create maybe a box. Now, why would you want to do that when maybe you already own cinema 40? Well, I'm going to get into some of the reasons why you might want to do stuff like this in after effects. I'm going to show you some cool tricks. We're also going to talk about animation principles, which is a big deal to me. It's kind of the secret sauce that makes your work feel good.

Joey Korenman (00:59):

It's kind of hard to put your finger on why it feels good if you don't understand animation principles. And unfortunately we can only cover so much in just this one lesson. So if you really want in-depth animation training, you're going to want to check out our animation bootcamp course. Not only is it several weeks of intense animation training, but you also get access to class only podcasts, PDs, and critiques on your work from our experienced teaching assistants. Every moment of animation bootcamp is designed to give you an edge in everything you create as a motion designer. Also, don't forget to sign up for a free student account so you can grab the project files from this lesson. All right, that's enough. Let's get to it. So what I'm going to show you guys is a really simple trick to, uh, you know, kind of get a nice 3d object that you can use inside of after effects using all native after effects stuff, you know, no fancy plugins, no elements, um, no plexus, nothing like that.

Joey Korenman (01:55):

Um, and you know, this isn't always that useful. And of course, if you're, if you're great with cinema 4d, then a lot of times, if you need a 3d object, that's what you'll use. But you know, this example here, I thought it would be kind of appropriate because it it's a look that it's just easier to do an after effects. Um, so I thought that that would be kind of a good way of showing you guys something that, um, you may not think to use after effects in, in this way. Um, and sometimes it's useful. So let's start a new comp real quick, just, uh, you know, standard HD comp, uh, 24 frames a second. And I'm going to show you a super fast trick. This is really easy. I'm sure there's a million tutorials out there that show you how to do this, but I'm going to show you how to put together a 3d cube, a really quick and easy way.

Joey Korenman (02:40):

So let's make a new solid, and let's just kind of pick some red color here. Um, and let's make it a square just to make it easy. So let's make the width a 1000 and the height 1000. So there you go. Um, so we'll make it a 3d layer, right? So obviously now we can, uh, we can rotate it around and we can sort of move it in 3d space and put together a cube. So let's just call this side one. Um, and then I'm gonna duplicate it. I'm gonna change the color of this. So I'm just going to hit shift command. Y brings up the solid settings and we'll pick a different color. All right. So this will be side too. And, uh, and then we'll just keep doing this. We'll make six sides. We can make a cube and I'll try to do this quick. So you've got red, green, blue, I'll duplicate it. Why don't we make this one kind of yellow?

Joey Korenman (03:38):

We'll make this one. I don't know how a pink, pink so hot right now. It's like one of those in colors and then six is going to be, let's go orange. Great. All right. So we've got six sides. So one of the, one of the things that, uh, is cool about after effects is that if you kind of make a 3d scene in a comp like this, right? So this is comp one, why don't I rename this? Uh, why don't we rename this cube? Underscore PC PC stands for pre comp. Okay, I'll put this in my comms folder. So if I make a 3d scene and this comp, and then I drag it into a new comp like this, um, it comes in as one layer, but using a couple of tricks, I can actually turn this into a 3d object, which is really sweet.

Joey Korenman (04:28):

So why don't we call this 3d test? All right. So back in cube comp, first thing we need to do is we need to actually arrange all of these, um, all of these solids so that they look like a cube. So I'm going to come over here where it says active camera, and I'm going to switch this to custom view one. And this just kinda gives me, um, a, uh, just an easier way of looking at the 3d arrangement of what these layers are, kind of, you know, how they're set up. And it gives me this cool kind of top down view, like a three-quarter view, but I don't have to add a camera to my scene. Um, this little axes over here, if you don't see those, the way you add those, as you come down here to your guide options and you click that and you turn on 3d reference axes, and that can make it easier sometimes if you're kind of confused and you're not sure, you know, if you want to move side six kind of this way, um, and you're using your position sliders here, if you're not sure which way is X and Z and why this just kind of makes it easier for you to see, right.

Joey Korenman (05:34):

So if I want to move it in Z, this gives me a good reference. Alright. So why don't we turn off all of these sides for a minute? And let's say that side six is going to be the front of the cube. Okay. Um, and actually this might make more sense if I just rename it front. So this is going to be the front and side five is going to be the back. Okay. So this is the front, and I'm going to want the anchor point of this cube to be right in the middle of the cube. So we have to start thinking, and again, this happens so often in my tutorials, but we have to think about math a little bit. Um, each of these sides is 500 by 500. So what that means is the cube, the dimensions of this cube are going to be 500, you know, this way, 500 this way, and 500 deep this way.

Joey Korenman (06:25):

Okay. Um, and so a 500 by 500 by 500 cube. The middle of that cube is actually going to be 250 by 250 by 250. So we're starting to get into some funky math here on top of that, the default position of an object and after effects, it is not zeroed out the way it is in cinema 4d or any 3d app. Uh, it's zeroed out according to the composition space, which you can see 9 65, 40 0, right on XYZ. That is the center of the comp that makes it a lot harder to generate a Q because, you know, if this is going to be the front, I need to move it 250 pixels this way. Not that way I need to move it 250 pixels this way. Um, and on Z, that's pretty easy. I would just say minus two 50. Right. Um, but if it was on X, well now I have to kind of do math, right.

Joey Korenman (07:24):

Nine 60 plus two 50 or nine 60 minus two 50. Um, and you can, you know, you can click on, on the nine 60 and come over here and actually type in nine 60 minus two 50 and hit enter. It'll do the math for you, but there's actually an easier way to do this. Um, so this is how I do it. I'm going to add a null and I'm just going to call this zero. All right. Uh, make it 3d, select all the parts of your queue, parent them to zero now. Zero, if you look it's right in the middle, the position of zero is 9 65 40 0. Okay. So it's right in the middle of the, of the comp, um, because I've parented all these layers to it. The position of those layers will now be zeroed out. And I don't have to do anything with this snow.

Joey Korenman (08:13):

All this does is it just makes the math easier for me. Okay. So now the front of this cube is going to be minus two 50. The back of the cube is going to be two 50. Okay. And, and this is, it's very easy to look at now, zero zero minus 2 50 0 0 2 50. Uh, let's say that the next two sides are going to be the left and the right. All right. So let's turn the left side on. So if the left is going to be literally the left side of this cube, first thing I need to do is rotate it. So it's facing the right way. Um, and if I'm going to do that, I got to figure out, you know, how do I rotate it? And I always, I always just kind of think of it as you know, which axes is going to be the pole that that's kind of skewered through this thing, and it's going to rotate on and it's going to be the Y axis.

Joey Korenman (09:08):

So I want Y rotation, right. And it'll go like this, and I'm going to see negative 90, and then I'm going to move it. Right. And I know that because it's going to be a 500, this needs to be negative 500. And I can see that I've, uh, I've actually put these two sides in the wrong spot. Um, I need to push this back to 500 or sorry, negative 500. And this one needs to go back to 500. Um, and the good thing is, you know, I saw that I had done it wrong, but it was easy to fix because all I have to worry about is one number per layer, because I have them parented to the Snell. So the Knoll is kind of the key to this whole thing. Uh, we'll turn the right side on and we will rotate this 90 degrees or negative 90 degrees.

Joey Korenman (09:56):

It doesn't really matter in this case because these, these are just solids with just the collar on it. Um, so it doesn't really matter which way I rotate it and then I'll position it. Right. And if you're ever unsure, just kind of move it to where it looks right. And then look at the numbers. Oh, okay. I know this needs to be 500. So now I know which one to change. Cool. Um, so now I've got four of the sides and now I need the top in the bottom. So this can be the top. This can be the bottom turn on top, rotate it.

Joey Korenman (10:31):

And this time I need to rotate it on the X axis. So X rotation can be negative 90 and you know, I need to pull it up here. And now this is one thing that can kind of get confusing. I'm actually pulling the Z axis, uh, this blue arrow of this layer, but it's not moving in Z, uh, in terms of its position, right? If I look at the position of this layer, it's moving on. Y and so that's why having this little access can be handy if you're, you know, if you're just starting out or you're getting used to working in 3d space and after effects, that can be confusing because you're moving it using the Z axis controller, but you're actually moving it on the Y axis. So the position needs is going to need to be negative 500. And then on the bottom, let me rotate that on the X axis, 90 degrees, and that position is going to be 500.

Joey Korenman (11:27):

Okay. And now we have a 3d cube. And if I take this Knoll and I spin it around, you'll see that we have this 3d cube in after effects. And there's really, there's nothing special about that. Um, but once you have that set up, let's come back into this comp here, this 3d test 3d test comp, all it has in it is the cube pre comp. Okay. Um, and on its own, there's nothing great about this. If I turn this into a 3d layer and I rotate it, it just looks flat. Okay. Um, what's cool. Is if I hit this button here, so this is the continuous rasterized button or collapsed transformations button. Okay. And it, if you hold the mouse over, it, it kind of gives you a hint, right. So for a comp layer, a pre-camp, it will collapse transformations. And what that really means is it will just kind of bring all of the depth of this pre-com back into the current comp.

Joey Korenman (12:24):

So I check this, um, now what I have is a 3d cube, and if I rotate it, you'll see, I actually have the full 3d cube, but it's all in this one layer. Okay. Um, and what's great about doing it this way. So, you know, you can obviously move things around in 3d space and you can rotate them and, you know, and that's all, that's all fine. And if you, you know, really the only thing this is useful for is a cube. Uh, you know, there's actually some scripts out there on 80 scripts that can, um, automatically arrange layers in like a cylinder, um, and some other kind of more advanced shapes than a cube. Um, but you, you run into a bunch of problems with edges when you're using after effects for 3d layers in this way. But what's nice about doing it this way too, is you also can treat this comp um, you know, as a true 3d object.

Joey Korenman (13:20):

So I can, I can unlink the X, Y, and Z scale, and you can actually scale this thing on X, Y, and Z. Um, and so, you know, there are plenty of uses for something like this. I mean, if you're doing any kind of, you know, charts, bar graphs, or you just kind of need, you know, you need to draw on some kind of, you know, 3d kind of cube shaped like this. You can do it really easily and after effects. Um, and I'm going to show you guys a trick that I use, um, to get around one of the limitations of after effects, which is something I'm really hoping it goes away sooner or later. Um, so let's take a look. Uh, this is like the most simple version of a cube you can do. Let's take a look, um, at, so here's the comp that I, I set up for the render, you guys saw the B the beginning of this video, but let's take a look at this.

Joey Korenman (14:12):

Okay. So here's a texture that I made, and I just drew this in Photoshop using some brushes, and it's just a two frame cycle. And I was kind of going for that really low fi like a stop motion chalkboard kind of drawing thing. Okay. So I took that, um, and I just looped it. Okay. So I have one frame and then another frame, uh, if we go into, uh, the next comp that this is used in, um, I'm going to hit tab to bring up my little flow chart. And I don't know how many of you guys know about this, but this is pretty useful little trick and after effects, you can hit tab, um, and it's tab by the way, only an after effects, creative cloud. And later if you're using after effects, CS six, if you're using after effects, [inaudible], uh, I don't believe it's tab.

Joey Korenman (15:04):

I believe it's the shift key, but, but for CC and up it is tab. So I'll hit tab and it will show me the current comp right in the middle. It will show me any comps that are being used to make this comp, and then it will show me where this comp goes. This comp goes into box underscored techs. Uh, and in this comp I just looped this texture a whole bunch of times. That's all I did. Uh, there are better ways to loop compositions and after effects. However, um, sometimes you get weird errors because what happens is this comp here is 12 frames a second. And I did that. So I could get kind of a more stuttery looking comp here, but I thought, well, what if I want to bring this into a 24 frames, a second, you know, comp, um, and if you do that and you're using expressions to loop layers, sometimes it doesn't work.

Joey Korenman (15:58):

Right. So, um, I just did a, you know, I just did it the old fashioned way. I just duplicated a bunch of times. And then from here, it goes into the box pre comp, and this is where I did the exact same thing I just showed you. Right. You know, I, I set up all the sides of the cube, parented it to a Knoll so that I had a really easy values to work with. So now when I ran preview this, you see it, you know, it's kind of this cool stop motion, any chocolate drawn looking cube, which is great. All right. So this is box pre-com, let's bring this into a new comp and that here's the trick I want to show you. So, first thing we need to do is make it a 3d layer, right. But then also hit the collapsed transformations button.

Joey Korenman (16:43):

So we get a 3d cube. Then now we can rotate around and scale and do all those things with. So here's the problem that I have with after effects, um, which it seems like it would be easy for them to fix, and hopefully they will, if I'm going to animate the position of this cube. Okay. And I really want to get into the curves and make this thing, do exactly what I want. Um, I can control click position and say separate dimensions. And that way I get a separate X, Y, and Z property with scale. However, you can't do that. If I control click it, doesn't let you separate the dimensions. And that's kind of annoying to me. Um, now here's an interesting thing. If I let's say I unlinked these and I put a key frame here, and all I want to happen is for this thing to scale from zero on Y over 12 frames, I want it to scale up like this, right.

Joey Korenman (17:40):

And then I grabbed those, I hit F nine easy, ease them, and I'd jump into the curves editor. Okay. So you can see that I have two key frames and it, you know, because I can't separate these dimensions, I see the change on Y, but I also have X and Z in there too. And so if in the middle of this, I want Z to change. I can put another key frame there and I can start to change Z. And you actually let me switch this over to my value graph, by the way, if any of this is unfamiliar, please watch the intro to animation curves, a tutorial that will get you a little bit more familiar with this, this animation curve editor. Um, and this tutorial may not make much sense without that, you know, that sort of background. Uh, but what's cool is even though, you know, the scale property only gives you one key frame that has all three, uh, directions in it, X, Y, and Z, you can independently move these things around and you can control the curves, right for X, Y, and Z.

Joey Korenman (18:43):

But the problem is I can't independently move these key frames around if I want the Z scale to happen at a different time than the Y. Well, there's not an easy way to do that. You can do it right. I could, I could zero out Z here, right? Excuse me, not zero it out, set it back to 100 and then come back here and then change Z. But then if I wanted, and you can see that the problem is, it also adds a key frame to the Y. So if I move this, now I've screwed up my Y curve. And so they're all connected, and this is the problem with not being able to separate out the dimensions. So there's a good trick you can use, and you can use this, um, on pretty much any property that has more than one kind of piece to it, like an X and a Y property, if you want to control them independently.

Joey Korenman (19:35):

So let's set the scale back to 100, 100, 100, 100, 100. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to add, I'm going to select this layer, and I'm going to add an expression control. I'll add the slider control. And, uh, and if you're not, I'm not going to go crazy with expressions here, but if you're unfamiliar, just watch the intro to expressions and after effects, tutorial on the site. And it will explain a lot of this will make a lot more sense. I'm going to, I'm going to name this slider control X scale, my duplicate that call it Y scale.

Joey Korenman (20:20):

And I meant for this to be an underscore. So let me fix that. Okay. Yeah. I've got, got fat fingers today, and then I'm going to add another one and I'm going to call it Z scale. There we go. Cool. Now, what I'd like to do is link the X, Y, and Z pieces of the scale to these three sliders, because these are all separate, so I can control them separately. So I'm going to add an expression. I'm going to hold option and click the stopwatch and add an expression to the scale property. So I'm just going to do this real simple. I'm going to say X equals, and I'm going to drag up to the X scale. And I'm going to end that line with a semi-colon, as you're supposed to do with expressions, then Y equals that part and then Z equals, and we'll pick quick up to this.

Joey Korenman (21:12):

All right. Then whenever you have a property in after effects like scale, right? It's expecting, you know, when, when you create an expression, you have to end the expression by giving after effects the answer. So all of this stuff up here, this is just setting up the variables that I want to use, but it doesn't give after effects. The answer. And after effects is expecting the answer in a certain format for scale, if it's a 3d layer, it's expecting three numbers, the X scale, the Y scale and the Z scale. So I need to give it all three numbers. And the way you do that is it's called an array. A when you have more than one value in a property, you're, you're actually giving after effects on array, which just means more than one value. The way you type that in is you have an open bracket like this, and then the first value, which is going to be this variable X, then a comma, then the second Y another comma, and then the final number Z.

Joey Korenman (22:16):

Then you close the bracket out. Semi-colon done. Okay. So these variables, these are just making it so that the answer that I'm giving after effects is easier to read. You actually don't even need to do this step. You could just do pick whip way up here, come up, pick whip, appear, comma, and it would just be very silly looking. And this is just easier. If someone else opens your project will be able to tell what's going on. Okay. So we hit enter and we've got this expression set up. Now these are all set to zero. So let me set these back up to 100. Cool. And you can see that now these controls actually control the scale and they're all independent. Okay. So this is fantastic. So what I'm gonna do, um, the first thing I want to do actually, as I want to move the anchor point, um, the anchor point of this layer is right in the middle, but let's say that I had a floor layer. Okay. So here's my floor layer. I'm going to make it a 3d layer. I'm going to rotate it on the X axis, 90 degrees, and I'm to scale it up really big, and I'm going to position it. Let's see here.

Joey Korenman (23:35):

Now here's one thing that's, it's getting a little tricky rate, um, because I have collapsed transformations on the layers aren't intersecting correctly. Um, and it makes it a little bit hard to see. So, and this is one of the things about after effects that you just have to kind of deal with. If, um, you know, if you really are getting into a heavy 3d scene, it might be easier to do it in a 3d app. If you're doing something simple like this, you just have to be careful with your math. Okay. So I, I know if I go to this box comp and I go into one of these sides, I know that this, uh, each little side of the cube is a thousand pixels by a thousand pixels. So what I'm going to need to do is have the floor beat 500 pixels down.

Joey Korenman (24:20):

Okay. So this is going to have to be a, I believe at 40 pixels. Um, and this, this actually might be a good, a good place to, uh, use the camera tool and kind of move the camera around so I can see. All right. So I can see that the floor is not in the right place at all floors going to need to be down here. Um, so if we did five 40 is where it starts right in the middle, and we wanted to move it down 500 pixels. So I had typed in, let me do that one more time. So you guys can see, this is where the floor starts out. I want to move it down 500 pixels, because I know that the each side of the cube is a thousand pixels tall. So half of that's 500. So moving it down 500 would be adding someone type in plus 500 right here, and then hit enter, and it'll do the math for me.

Joey Korenman (25:13):

I don't have to do anything. Okay. Now I can see the cube sitting on that ground looks great. So I want the anchor point of the cube on the bottom of the cube. Okay. So I'm gonna hit a key and, you know, like what I usually like to do, I mean, I could just kind of do the math and I had, but sometimes it's nice to kind of move it or move the anchor point around so I can kind of get a sense of, okay. It looks like it needs to be about there. Right. Maybe there, and if I move the camera on, oh, that's too far. Right. You kind of figure out where it needs to be. And so what, you know, what I'm seeing is that the value of Y is increasing for the anchor point. So I'm going to add 500 right there, do the same thing.

Joey Korenman (25:55):

And now the anchor points should be in the right place. Excellent. Okay. Now that I've moved, the anchor point, the cube has also moved. So now I need the Y position to drop 500 pixels. So now that cube is on that floor. And so the reason I did that is because now here's what I do. I'm going to put some key frames on these expression controls here, and I'm going to set all of these to zero. Okay. And then I'm going to go forward, let's say eight frames. Okay. And I'm going to put them all up to, let's say 30. All right. Now, let me select the layer, hit you and grab my key frames and hit easy ease. And we'll just do a quick Ram preview and see what's happening. Okay. So the cubes just scaling up and I want it to happen a little bit faster than that.

Joey Korenman (26:47):

So let's, let's go like this. There we go. Okay. So it scales up really fast. Doesn't feel very good. You know, there's a lot of animation principles that are not happening. So why don't we make this feel a little bit better? So we've got, you know, let me, let me stretch this out. One more frame. So it takes five frames to scale up. Let's have it overshoot a little bit, right. So I'm going to, I'm going to go forward three frames now, and I'm going to put some key frames here. Then I'm going to go forward two frames, put some key frames here. And so now what I'm going to do is I want this key frame to be where it finally lands at 30, 30, 30, which means that on this frame, it's going to overshoot too big. So I'm gonna select all of these and I'm going to scale, scale them up.

Joey Korenman (27:35):

So it's a little bit too big. Okay. 38 then when it gets to this key frame, I want it to overshoot. But the other way, now, it kind of rebounds and scales a little bit too far down. Okay. And now if I hit Ram preview, you get a little bit of a balance. Okay. But it still feels pretty stiff. And so this is where I like to go into the curve editor and really work on these. Um, and you know, again, watch the intro to the CA the curves editor video. Um, that'll explain a lot of what's going on here. Um, but you know, really like a standard thing I like to do when things have to animate on and look kind of bouncy is I just really like to hit the, hit the eases a little harder. There we go. Now it looks a little more bouncy.

Joey Korenman (28:20):

Okay. All right. And so this is great. And because, you know, I have all three of these properties selected. I can hit them all at the same time, um, and, and adjust them all equally. Okay. Now here's where it gets really cool. And this is why I set up this expression, the next step that I would like to happen here. Right. Have it hold for, you know, five frames. I then want the box to stretch out on X. Right. So I can put a key frame just on X. And I want to, I want this to take, let's say 12 frames. So let's go forward 12 frames and let's have this stretch out to a hundred percent. Okay. All right. So if we just play this right, the box appears and then it stretches out and that doesn't feel very good at all. Right. It's like taffy.

Joey Korenman (29:13):

It's not good. So what we're going to do is we're going to do the same thing. Okay. So I'm going to go to where I want it to end. I'm going to go back a couple of frames, put a key frame, and then I'll go back maybe three frames, but a key frame. Okay. Uh, and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go to the beginning here. I'm going to go forward, maybe a couple of frames, and I'm going to copy and paste this key frame. And now I'm going to switch into the curve editor. I'm going to make this a little bit clear. Now I'm only working on the X scale. I'm not working on the Y or the Z. And what's great about this. If we, if we look at this as if I like how this is working, but I want to change the timing of just the X property, right?

Joey Korenman (29:53):

Just the X scale. It's not going to screw up the wine the Z the way it does, if you do this directly on the scale property. So we're in the curves editor. What would actually want to happen is I want, I want this thing to anticipate a little bit, so it's going to move in this direction. So first I want it to move in the opposite direction. That's what anticipation does. And that's how you can give your animation a little more life. You know, you, you have it kind of fake, like it's going to go in and then it shoots out. Okay. Um, and then I want it to overshoot and then over-correct okay. So it's, it's just kind of doing the same thing as it did before. Right. So anticipates in, I'm just going to kind of go through it. So it goes in anticipation, overshoots over-correct back and then bounces out.

Joey Korenman (30:49):

Um, and along the way, you know, I'm just making sure that I give these things nice, kind of drawn out eases so that they move really fast in the middle. Right? The steep part of the curve is the fast part. Um, and the more I draw these out, the steeper it gets. And then when it, when it's approaching the value, it really flattens out. It really takes a long time to get there. Here we go. Okay. So now I have it pop up and appear, and then it stretches out. Okay. So that's great. And now, you know, I've got, I've got this all set up. It looks great on the why, so why not copy these values and paste them here. Right. And then I can just offset them. And so now, because, because of the way, this is all set up, right. I can even have these things overlapping and play with the timing of them.

Joey Korenman (31:44):

Right. And these are things that would be very hard to do just using the built-in scale property. But if you just take the time to set up a little bit of an expression controller like this, it makes things a lot easier. And then I can copy the same thing onto the Z offset that a little bit. Right. Right. And now you can get these really cool, funky, 3d animations with these crazy looping textures. I mean, you know, the, the big thing I wanted to show you guys was if you wanted to create a texture like this, this kind of fake stop motion, he looking thing and apply it in cinema 40. It's not a big deal to do it. But the great thing is that in after effects, you can do it and then immediately tweak the timing, um, and really easily say, okay, you know what?

Joey Korenman (32:29):

I don't like how this side of the cube looks like a mirror image of this side of the cube. Maybe what I'd like to do is rotate the texture on this side of the cube. And it's just, you know, you just come in and you grab the left side and you rotate it, you know, 90 degrees, you know, and now you've got, and you hop back in and now, you know, you've changed it instantly. And the animation is done. And, you know, again, like one of my big things is sometimes you're in it to get a sick piece for your reel and you want the absolute best quality thing you can get. Sometimes you're just paying the bills. Okay. And we used to have a saying at toil one for the meal, one for the real, uh, and you know, sometimes it's more than one for the meal.

Joey Korenman (33:16):

Maybe it's three or four for the meal. Uh, and it's when you're doing projects like that, and you just want to get the thing done, you know, and you, and you don't, you know, you don't really care about having ambient occlusion and global lumination. You just need a neat look and cube that you can control the animation, get something interesting out of it. This is a great way to do it. And don't forget that after effects can do stuff like this, just fine. Um, in the example that I rendered out, I have lights and shadows and depth of field, and all of it was done in after effects. Um, so you have all of those options. Um, and just, you know, I, I just want to kind of reiterate that, you know, the, the stuff that may feel like, oh, this is beginner stuff. Um, it's very, very useful, and it can save you time.

Joey Korenman (34:02):

And again, you know, time is money, especially when you're a freelancer. So I hope, uh, I hope you guys learned something today. I hope maybe I'm, you know, it, it ha makes you look at the 3d system and after effects a little differently, you know, it's, it's funny how often just making a 3d cube and animating it pops up in motion design. Um, and you don't always need to use a 3d app and you can get stuff done a lot quicker and move on to the next project. Um, so thank you again, uh, and stay tuned for the next episode of 30 days of after effects. Thank you so much for watching. I hope you learned something new or at the very least, I hope it refreshed your memory about something in after effects that maybe you hadn't used in a while. That can be really, really useful. Remember to check out our animation bootcamp course, if you want an in-depth learning experience focused on teaching you the craft of animation. And if you have any questions or thoughts about this lesson, let us know. Thanks again. I'll see you next time.

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