Stereoscopic 3D Camera Rig in After Effects
For those of you who aren’t a fan of node based compositing here is another stereo 3D post. This time in After Effects. This tutorial shows a much more interactive and robust method of creating a stereoscopic rig than the Shake script you can find and download on the Scripts page. Mad props have to go out to the Jan 2010 issue of 3D World, and Andy Davenport from Mediastation for which if not for them I would still be stumbling around with figuring out how to make this easily customizable along with the expressions in his article.
This is an expression heavy way to create a 3D stereo rig, so if things don’t seem to be working right triple check to make sure you typed in all the expressions correctly. Also, it may seem like I jump around a lot in between the different comps, but don’t try and streamline it so you do all the work for one comp, then move onto the next. I tried doing this, and ended up spending an extra hour fixing all the problems I created, and still some of the expressions did not seem to be valid. For this tutorial I have also typed up some bullet pointed notes that you may want to print off to follow along with. WARNING NOT FOR NOVICE USERS OF AFTER EFFECTS.
note: I noticed, after reviewing the video tutorial, I neglected to add the expression for the Left_Null X Rotation. Don’t make the same mistake our your camera won’t update correctly in the final comp. I fixed this problem in the final AE project file that is available for download.
Here is a link to the finished product: http://www.visfxschool.com/STEREO_RIG.mov
Again the focus in this VFX tutorial is on the camera rig that is created, and not the video itself. The underlying comp is something I spent about 5 minutes on, so ignore the glaring problems in composition, compositing, and camera movement etc. The convergence, and separation on the camera rig could use a bit of tweaking as well to make the stereoscopy spot on.
