Nickelodeon: Days Of Future Past

Updated for Unreal Engine 4.  Some of the old, some of the new.  Everything is separated out into different fbx files, so it's easily be improved and updated.  Next thing I want to learn and incorporate is Substance Designer and Substance Painter.  Those will really take it to the next level!

Stabilizing footage after tracked

After you have tracked footage (scale and position), you can stabilize it with the following expression:

Anchor Point: (Paste in the tracked position keyframes)
Position: (Paste in the first tracked position keyframe (Single keyframe))
Scale:

start = 300.1255; //(first scale keyframe of track)
temp = (100*start)/(thisComp.layer("BG_Tracker").transform.scale[0]);
[temp, temp]

Rotation:
StartRot = -7.7137; //(first rotation keyframe of track)
r = thisComp.layer("BG_Tracker").transform.rotation;
StartRot - r;

Finding the Global Position in 3d of a Parented 3D Null

Trapcode Particular can use Position XY and Position Z as an emitter location, but it's not possible to just pickwhip a parented null's position, since that's just an offset from the parent layer.


For Particular, paste the following:


Position XY:
the3Dchild = thisComp.layer("Null 2"); posXY = the3Dchild.toWorld(the3Dchild.anchorPoint); [posXY[0], posXY[1]];



Position Z:
the3Dchild = thisComp.layer("Null 2"); posZ = the3Dchild.toWorld(the3Dchild.anchorPoint)[2];



For a plain old 3d Layer, we can use:



Position:
the3Dchild = thisComp.layer("Null 2"); the3Dchild.toWorld(the3Dchild.anchorPoint);


Scale:
the3Dparent = thisComp.layer("Null 1").transform.scale;
the3Dchild = thisComp.layer("Null 2").transform.scale;
[(the3Dchild[0] * the3Dparent[0])/100, (the3Dchild[1] * the3Dparent[1])/100, (the3Dchild[2] * the3Dparent[2])/100 ];

Rotation:
the3Dparent = thisComp.layer(Null 1").transform.rotation;
the 3Dchild = thisComp.layer("Null 2").transform.rotation;
the3Dparent + the3Dchild;

Converting After Effects 3D Camera Tracker to 2D Track

1) Track Camera
2) Select 2 track points and convert them to nulls
3) Create 2 additional nulls (2d)
4) Add expressions to the nulls:  L = thisComp.layer("Track Null 1");(L.toComp(L.anchorPoint))
5) Convert expressions to keyframes
6) Create a dummy 2 point track on layer.
7) Copy keyframes onto Attach Point
8) Apply track to an additional null.

Time to learn new software. Time to update my old model...