Adobe After Effects 3D Projection VFX

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April 7, 2013

I have always enjoyed the effect of the camera passing through walls or floors for seamless scene transitions! Today I show you how to create this awesome effect using 3D Projection inside of Adobe After Effects

After Effects Camera Through Floor VFX

3D Projection

3D Projection is a technique where you use a light to shine through a piece of footage and project the image onto any 3D layers in your scene. This works much like an old school slide show projector. If you are clever about setting up your 3D layers in After Effects, this allows you to somewhat re-construct the geometry of the original scene.

Once you have this 3D projection set up, you can add a camera into the scene and move it around and, within limits, it will appear to be moving around in the actual 3D scene

This effect is a bit more advanced so I will assume that you have a basic understanding of how to use After Effects and have worked with 3D layers before. Let's get started!

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8 Comments

Bibekananda Jujharsingh

7 Years Ago

May 6, 2013 @ 1:13 am

Hi,

we want to hire you in our 3d Holographic projection.

You will give us our boss 3d effect & that will live simultaneously 300 places by 3d holographic projection.

Immediate.

Kindly reply me.

gowtham

7 Years Ago

May 15, 2013 @ 2:01 pm

lov it

Mike Sevigny

6 Years Ago

February 25, 2014 @ 10:13 am

Well done, here's a tutorial on how to achieve this with extruded 3D shapes:
https://vimeo.com/87376234

kanoneno

5 Years Ago

August 30, 2014 @ 3:56 am

I've tried this and its not working. I create all the setup and when I get the grid effect, the solids stay white and don't recieve any shadows from the original image. I've tweaked every posible parameter and those layers either disappear or keep being white. When I make them accept shadows only the just dissapear.

I even made it all again from scratch keeping up with every instruction in the tutorial and doesn't work.

Any tips?

Surfaced Studio@ kanoneno

5 Years Ago

September 2, 2014 @ 11:42 pm

Hm, I know a couple of people had the issue. They usually resolved it by ensuring that the light transmission properties were set up correctly, but it's hard to tell what might be wrong given there are so many settings involved.

John-L Voth@ kanoneno

5 Years Ago

January 8, 2015 @ 4:58 am

I just tried this yesterday and had the same problem. So I did it again from scratch and the same thing. However I was able to correct it by double checking the position of my "Scene" layer and was able to correct the floor and ceiling to work properly. Then I had a white feather stripe that took up a 3rd of my screen and was able to correct that by going into my "Light" layer and changing the Falloff to none and solved it. I know I'm a little late in replying but I'm just happy I figured it out.

Williams

5 Years Ago

November 27, 2014 @ 1:00 pm

I've tried all the setup except for the Grid that refuse to expand beyond up and down... No dept was possible for me. What's the reason for this?
The the xy is not working in my case.

Surfaced Studio@ Williams

5 Years Ago

November 28, 2014 @ 0:13 pm

It sounds like you have not turned your grid layer into a 3D layer. Here is a basic tutorial on 3D in After Effects: https://www.surfacedstudio.com/wp-admin/edit-comments.php