I haven't used cineware but it sounds like you're heading towards headache territory.  What you're wanting to do is z-depth compositing and that's not really easy in After Effects.  Particular has its own 3D world and outputs a 2D image, my guess is that's how cineware works too - there's the chinaware 3D world which is different and separate to the After Effects 3D world.

So basically - you have 3 different 3D worlds and you want to composite them together.  If your camera is either static or not moving much then you can do it manually by splitting layers, but if you have a dynamic camera move then it will get too hard, too quickly.  In theory each 3D world could spit out a z-depth matte and you would use that to composite everything together, but that's not simple.  I haven't googled around but there are probably a few tutorials around on how to fudge it - I know I tried a setup once using the extract plugin to pull luma mattes - so maybe see what you can find.

The approach I suggested is a bit of a fudge that is really using particular as a z-depth compositor.  But that works with only 1 other source, and if you're combining chinaware, after effects and particular then you have 2.

(BTW if your camera isn't moving much then it won't be too bad.  I'm thinking of a project I worked on which involved a 3D particular ribbon being comped into a city flythrough, which was more involved)

-Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Teddy Gage [mailto:teddygage@gmail.com]

Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 02:50 PM
To: 'After Effects Mail List'

Subject: Re: [AE] 3D ribbon with Particular

Nice Chris, I'm gonna try that. Will definitely give sParticular a look as
well. Would there be a way to integrate a 3D element from cineware into 3d
AE layers? dealing with hundreds of photos mixed with video is much slower
in cinema
-TG


On Thu, Feb 20, 2014 at 7:59 PM, Chris Zwar <chris@chriszwar.com> wrote:

> Forget the obscuration layer, you need to create and use a Z depth map.  I
> do this a fair bit with particular within AE.
>
> There are 2 ways - you can buy a plugin (which is accurate but very slow)
> or you can use an expression, which is fast and free but a bit of a pain
> and not always 100% perfect (because the corners of a layer are a different
> distance to camera than the centre).
>
> To do it in AE, you need to duplicate your main composition with all your
> 3D layers and make a Z-depth version.  Strip out everything that isn't a 3D
> layer and isn't going to interact with the ribbon.  Add the fill effect to
> each layer, apply an expression to the colour to fill it with a shade of
> grey based on the distance to the camera:
>
>
> camp=thisComp.layer("Camera 1").toWorld([0,0,0]); // camera position //
> lp=thisLayer.toWorld(thisLayer.anchorPoint); // layer position //
> d=length(camp,lp); // distance from camera to layer //
>
> min=0; // this this number for white in particular //
> max=20000; // use this number for black in particular //
>
> v=linear(d,min,max,1,0); // convert distance to value 0 - 1 //
>
> [v,v,v,1]
>
>
> To keep things speedy I would pre-render the z depth map, import it and
> use it with particular -use the same camera distance value in particular as
> the min and max values in the expression.
>
>
>
> -Chris
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Teddy Gage [mailto:teddygage@gmail.com]
> Sent: Friday, February 21, 2014 10:58 AM
> To: 'After Effects Mail List'
> Subject: [AE] 3D ribbon with Particular
>
>      So I am working for a fashion brand asking for a 3D ribbon effect that
> twists through fields of photos and video, going in front of and behind the
> images. My first thought was 3D stroke, but it didn't work, as I need it to
> have some shading from the comp lights. There's also the issue of painfully
> retiming the stroke moves using percentages of completion, and not actually
> having full "3D" control. (I can't draw a path that goes in all dimensions,
> just postcard transforms on the 2D mask paths, AFAIK.) I may however use it
> for some simple bending and repeating elements.
>
>      My next idea is to use a particular 2.0 layer with 0 emit velocity,
> and having the emitter tied to a null that I can then fully animate through
> 3D space. So far this is working pretty well. Comp lights work, it is easy
> to control.  However I am having some of the classic issues with Particular
> where it crosses other 3D objects in the scene and doesn't respect the
> stacking order. The ribbon is either completely in front of or completely
> behind the images.
>
> - now I could add 1 or 2 "obscuration layers" but it is not reasonable to
> do this for over a hundred layers individually
>
> - Would I need to precomp the entire layout, collapse transformations, and
> THEN use the precomp as an obscuring layer? Is this even possible? It would
> be a difficult way to work, I'd need to have every element layed out in 3D
> first. Doable, but I'd prefer to create both at once.
>
> - is there another solution I'm not thinking of? A good script for
> Particular maybe?
>
> Thanks,
> -TG
>
>
>
> --
> _____________________________
> VFX & Motion Graphic Artist
> teddygage dot com
>
>
>
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>



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_____________________________
VFX & Motion Graphic Artist
teddygage dot com



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