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    • Splitting photo into foreground, background for 3D...
      Thread posted May 29 by Dmitri Rodriguez
      771 Views, 3 Comments
      Title:
      Splitting photo into foreground, background for 3D look
      Content:

      Hi,

      I'm working in After Effects (I'm a total beginner), and I'm trying to show a figure walking. I want the figure to walk against a photograph background, and I want to split that photo into foreground and background, which he's moving past at different rates to simulate a 3D look. But I'm having trouble figuring out how to split up that photograph, and any advice would be greatly appreciated. Can this be done in After Effects, and if so how? Or does this need to be done separately in Photoshop? Does it involve splitting the photo into separate layers? 

      Thanks so much,

      Dmitri

    Comments

    • Hi Dmitri,

      You would need to do this separately in Photoshop, and then import into AE to animate. Lucky for you, are next AniMotion NM session will discuss 3D Compositing in Photoshop! Hope to see you there ;)

      elaine

    • Thank you so much, Elaine. I would like to watch/attend that Photoshop workshop you mentioned. When is that?

      Can I ask you two other quick things? No problem if you're too busy. You've been wonderfully helpful. I just don't know of any other way except this forum to try and get some of these things answered! I want to simulate a background moving past a stick figure, who's basically walking in place so he's centered in the screen. But the way I'm doing that now - setting position keyframes for the background layers - is kind of unwieldy. Is there a better way to do that? Right now I'm going to my comp window with the relevant layers selected, pulling them off screen to the left, setting a keyframe, then pulling them off-screen to the right, and setting another keyframe. It seems like there's got to be a better way.
      Also, I'm no artist but I'm having to bone up pretty quick on my anemic art training to try and create things in Illustrator. On that topic how important, for someone who's not a designer but rather an aspiring animator, is a owning a Wacom graphics tablet. I keep hearing these are helpful, but I don't want to invest in something I never use. (I have a lot of those purchases in my past!)
      Thanks so much again for your help to this point!
      Dmitri

    • What you are doing sounds close to being correct. The easiest way is to make your background as one large comp, then pre-compose it. Bring the pre-comp into the animation with your stick figure and move the pre-comp in the background as need be (using position). By pre-composing, all of your background elements stay together.

      good luck!

      elaine