v1.5 Blurrypixel Pixel Cloud

Create a point cloud for 2.5D Relighting in After Effects

The Pixel Cloud plugin for After Effects is a powerful compositing tool that allows you to relight a 3D generated image, make 3D aware selections or displace the pixels in 3D space. Combine the use of a Position Pass and a Normal Pass with the power of After Effects’ 3D lights and cameras and change the lighting of your composited 3D graphics.  You can even use height maps with 3d displacement and alpha selection.

This native plugin for After Effects can use the coordinate information from a Position Pass or depth map to generate a Pixel Cloud in 3D space. This Pixel Cloud can be viewed from all angles using AE’s own cameras. With a Normal Pass, the Pixel Cloud can be relit using After Effects’ own lights or using an image as an Image Based Light. There are a number of uses from 3D compositing to motion graphics!

Features

• Relighting with 32-bit passes
• Use AE Lights and Cameras
• Support for falloff lighting in CS5.5 and CS6
• Diffuse
• Specularity
• Image Based Lighting
• Reflection
• Alpha Lights for matte generation
• Support for falloff in CS5.5 and above
• Pixel Cloud generation with 8bpc to 32bpc
• 3D Displacement
• Pixel Texturing
• Lo-res Preview modes
• Multiprocessor compatible

Generating the position pass can be done in various 3D software packages. In Cinema 4D you may use the PointPosition C4D plugin.

For Maya, you may use the Point World output of a samplerInfo node connected to a surface shader and render an EXR using mental ray and the 32-bit framebuffer. There are also a variety of tutorials available.

For 3DS Max, you may add the XYZ Generator shader to the surface slot of a mental ray material. Set its Coordinate System to 3 and render to an EXR using the floating point framebuffer.