Help with shadows that are moving when they shouldn't be

[brodyb1960584]

I'm using element 3D to create 3D text and suspend it in a scene, looks nice and everything but when I added a shadow it appears to fly around as the camera moves, heres a video:Not working - YouTube

Any help would be apreciated.

[Dave_LaRonde]

What the heck are yu trying to do?  Show us a screen shot of your entire user interface and include any keyframes & expressions.

[Mylenium]

Without seeing your scene and comp setup nobody can tell you much. It simply looks like you didn't match the light source correctly and it's in the wrong place relative to the camera.

Mylenium

[brodyb1960584]

Sorry, been trying to fix for hours and I was a bit exhausted, the only keyframes are on the text that makes the letters slightly rotate, I've used the camera tracker and created a camera through that, I don't see why the shadow would move other than the light source or subject moving.

[Rick Gerard]

Cropped screenshots are almost useless when it comes to diagnosing problems. Camera Tracker does not add keyframes to anything but the camera. If you place a light and a layer in the scene to cast a shadow and the light does not match the position of the light source in the original scene then the shadows are going to move relative to the shadows in the scene when the camera moves. That's just simple geometry. If you rotate the text the shadows are going to move. Camera Tracking gives you the opportunity to stick 3D layers to the fixed geometry in the scene. Making these objects accurate move within the scene as they would in real life is extremely difficult if you have not established an origin and ground plane and accurately oriented the object to the X, Y and Z axis of the original shot.

My guess is that you have not set an origin and ground plane, precisely lined up the orientation of your text layer and that the light is not in the same relative position as the actual light in the scene. A full screenshot with the modified properties of the layers giving you problems would help. Just press the U key twice, PrintScreen and paste to the forum. In your sample rendered footage it is obvious that the light is not coming from the same direction as the light in the scene and that it is way too close to the text object. Any animation of the text layer will also move the shadow. I would use parallel light instead of a spot light or move the spotlight a long way from the text layer and behind it and to the right.

[brodyb1960584]

Here are some screenshots. The text and plane that the shadows are casting on don't move relative to each other, in one of the screenshots I've turned the shadow matte off so that you can see the plane that the shadows cast on, the shadows aren't perfect in the scene as I've moved the light around but it isn't keyframed so even if it's in completely the wrong position I don't see a reason that the shadow would move when the text and light are stationary relative to each other and the plane the shadows are casting on and my spot light is very far away from the subject as it's meant to be replicating the sun

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

Your position and scale values are totally whacky. You cannot have a relatively tiny AE scene (which of course is entirely the fault of the 3D tracker) and then use such large values in Element 3D. This will never line up correctly. You need to fix it somehow by tweaking the values or scaling the scneriy as a whole, which is entirely possible by pre-composing and making use of E3D's unified render mode that works with collapsed transformations. It's just going to be tedious trial and error.

Mylenium

[brodyb1960584]

Ok, I’ll try a few things, thanks for dealing with me and my nooby questions