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davidp158

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Has per-character 3D "orient towards camera" changed in CS6?

Aug 6, 2012 9:19 PM

Tags: #auto-orientation #per-character_3d_text

I'm working on a tutorial out of Trish & Chris Meyer's book, that shows how to animate 3D text character to face towards a camera. The tutorial works fine in CS5.5, but not in CS6. I am able to make a layer or entire line of text orient towards a camera, but single characters will not animate. I see a red rectangle "bounding box" sort of thing around each character (in both CS5.5 and CS6). When I animate the camera move in CS6, the bounding boxes move as expected, but the text characters are "stuck" in place. When I first enable the Auto-Orientation option (via right clicking on my text layer and choosing from the Transform submenu options), the individual characters partially move into a position that's close to facing the camera, depending on where the camera is in the comp. By this I mean to say that the characters are no longer "flat", but partially rotated towards the camera. However, once I start animating the camera, the characters don't move. Any clues about what I'm doing wrong, or what may have changed in CS6?

527 Views 4 Replies Latest reply: davidp158, Aug 7, 2012 10:16 PM

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1. Mylenium,

Aug 6, 2012 11:08 PM in reply to davidp158

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Are you actually in the correct camera view? Which renderer is set in the comp options?

Mylenium

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2. davidp158,

Aug 7, 2012 6:12 PM in reply to Mylenium

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M - Thanks for your post.

Regardless of which camera view I am in, the individual characters do not animate in CS6. However, I can clearly see the characters animating in various camera views in CS5.5 when I move the camera. The easiest way to confirm this is viewing the text from the default "Custom View 2". If I disable "Orient Each Character Independently...", the entire text will animate in CS6, but as on a flat plane (no individual character rotation). When I return to "Active Camera" or "Camera 1" view, the characters do not orient towards the camera when the camera is moved in CS6...but they do in CS5.5.

I don't have a CUDA video card, so I only use the Classic 3D renderer.

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3. Mylenium,

Aug 7, 2012 8:22 PM in reply to davidp158

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Only now had a chance to have a look at this and it seems broken on a very general level - for any view other than the camera. It works while using the Active Camera, but not in any of the orthoconal views. Could be related to a similar issues preventing 3D-ish plug-ins to work in those views that allegedly was fixed in the 11.0.1 update...

Mylenium

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4. davidp158,

Aug 7, 2012 10:16 PM in reply to Mylenium

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Thanks for taking time to look into this.

I may be misunderstanding your comment, but it appears to only partially work in the Active Camera view. If I place 3D text slighlty in front of a flat solid, and assign "Orient Towards Camera" to it, the text pivots on the Y axis as I move the camera on the X axis, as expected. Doing so will cause the far ends of the text to disappear into the solid behind it as it pivots (rotates on the Y axis). So far, so good. However, if I add "Orient Each Character Independently", the text remains "stuck" in a partially rotated position, and does not move to face the camera as I move the camera.

Compared to CS5.5, this doesn't seem to work correctly for the "Orient Each Character Independently" mode.

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