As far back as the introduction of Adobe CS3, motion graphics artists have been experimenting with 3D extrusions in After Affects. But if you wanted to create extruded text, you had to rely on a complicated workflow within AE itself or on a set of external plug-ins to do it. Boris BCC Extruded Text and Mettle's ShapeShifter AE simplified the process when Adobe introduced AE CS5 in 2010. Adobe even bundled Digieffects FreeForm, which extrudes 2D layers into 3D space and was created by Mettle's Chris Bobotis, into CS5. But Mettle's ShapeShifter seemed to be a class apart, offering a number of additional graphics tools that AE power users couldn't live without. Now Mettle has just confirmed that its popular Windows-only plug-in is finally coming to the Mac.
A small army of beta testers have been working with the new Mac version of ShapeShifter AE for the past year and half. One of them, Israeli motion graphics artist Eran Stern (who brought you
this Boris BCC tutorial on creating an extruded 3D logo), says there is a lot more in ShapeShifter than simple extrusion. The tool’s 3D engine, 3DNAE, also powers Mettle’s FreeForm Pro (the version not included in CS5) and brings with it the ability to recombine and replicate any number of 3D masks, text and shape layers easily, accurately and quickly throughout 3D space. You can create a scene with some amazing graphics “in a matter of minutes,” Stern says.
Because After Effects still does not support uniform 3D space, Stern points out, any 3D plug-in must first bake the effect in its own 3D space before sending that data to the AE comp. If you want to tweak the effect with additional reflections and shadows, those details can sometimes get lost in translation. He has a nice tutorial that walks you through some of the potential hazards with workarounds he’s considered here: http://www.sternfx.com/tutorials/101.
ShapeShifter, as you’d expect from a 3D plug-in, requires a heavy-duty GPU and a minimum of 512 MB of VRAM. Stern recommends 1 GB or higher.
For more information: Mettle
