… the limits of After Effects …

All of the animation for the “Demons to Diamonds” music video is being done inside After Effects CS3. The first minute of the video is essentially one long dolly shot that travels at a constant velocity tracking along with the main character.

After Effects is a compositing application, not a 3D animation program. Many people have created 3D sets using its basic lighting and spatial controls. I’m not sure if anyone has tried to make a set this long and had any success. To make things worse, I’m doing this thing in 1080p … so my master comp is already HUGE!

I’ve run into some interesting issues …

1) After effects has a 30,000 x 30,000 pixel limit for solid objects. Waaaaaay not big enough for things like the ground.
2) I have over ten lights in my set so far and my computer can’t render a single frame at 100%. I’ve been working at 25% just to get rolling.
3) After Effects composition view (seen above) is not big enough to see the entire set. This makes it really hard to move through the set and adjust things. The move tool doesn’t even work and I think I may have uncovered a bug by pushing AE to its size limit.
4) Rendering takes a looooong time.

Reinforcements are on the way …