Creation Effects: Landscaper

Create stunning 3D landscapes in Adobe After Effects

The Landscaper template allows you to build and animate 3D nature scenes in After Effects. With a library of 1,000 landscape elements, you can create virtually any kind of landscape – from winter wonderlands to tropical beaches, and arid deserts to epic fantasy worlds! Easily place 3D titles in your scene, and animate your camera to bring the scene to life. Enhance your landscape with custom effects like waterfalls, fog, rainbows, haze, 3D titles, and more. Included are 30 finished landscapes, ready for you to edit, or render and use in your projects.

Everything is all set up so that you, the landscaper, can focus on the fun stuff and creativity. Simply draw a mask to create a lake. Just turn the clock to set the time of day and change the lighting. Or… keyframe the clock and create a time-lapse! Designed for ease of use and total customization, Landscaper is an all-in-one package that turns imagination into animation, with striking results!

Make custom landscape animations – from anywhere in the world!

Landscaper Key Features

• Element Library. 1,000 high-resolution images of various landscape elements, ranging from individual flowers to large mountains. Elements have transparent backgrounds and built-in lighting effects and are ready to copy and paste into your landscape. The images are easily searchable by category, keyword, or similarity. Search directly in After Effects, or browse the Element Library online.
• Finished Landscapes. Landscaper includes 30 finished landscapes covering a variety of settings and using a variety of effects. These are the landscapes from the demo video above. They’re great for learning new techniques, or, just render them out with your own title and use them in your project.
• Effects Library. 24 custom effects that you can copy and paste to your landscape, including a variety of weather effects, clouds, atmospheric haze, floating pollen, shooting stars, rainbows, 3D titles, and “3D warp” – a way to make 2D elements look 3D.
• Total customization. Everything is customizable using convenient slider controls, with the exception of several pre-rendered elements (see list of effects below). A Control Layer at the top of every landscape comp allows you to easily customize the fundamental features of every landscape – the ground, water, sky, atmospheric haze, sun, moon, and lighting.
• Realistic 3D Ground. Your landscape uses Camera Projection Mapping to get the most realistic 3D ground that can be achieved in After Effects. Everything is set up, so all you need to do is choose one of the 68 included ground images (or add your own).
• Easy Water. It couldn’t be any easier to add 3D puddles, rivers, lakes, or oceans. Simply draw a mask with the Pen tool on your ground layer in the shape of your body of water. Your water will appear, and your background elements will be realistically reflected in the water. Customize the reflections and ripples with slider controls. Add the included “Beach” effect to create custom beach scenes.
• Auto-Sky. The Auto-Sky feature allows you to change the lighting and mood of the scene with a single “Clock” control. Set the clock to midnight to darken your scene and bring out the stars. Set it to 7 pm to see warm colors and a sunset. All of the colors can be adjusted with easy-to-use controls.
• Time Lapses. With Auto-Sky activated, simply keyframe the clock control to animate a time lapse. The effects in your scene will automatically speed up, including the water ripples, elements blowing in the wind, and clouds.
• HD or 4K. HD (1920×1080) and 4K (4096×2160) comps are included for all landscapes. Change the comps to any resolution by following the instructions in the tutorial.
• Detailed Instructions. In addition to the video tutorials, detailed written instructions are found throughout the template.

How it Works

Landscaper is built entirely in After Effects and is designed for easy customization using slider controls. Landscapes are composed of 2D images, called “elements”, arranged in 3D space. 3D modelers/animators would probably refer to this as 2D animation, but After Effects users would refer to this as a 3D scene. Technically, it’s 2.5D.

As you start your new landscape, it will have several default features – a ground plane, optional water, a sky, stars, sun, and moon. After choosing your image for the ground and sky, you can start populating your landscape with elements and positioning them in 3D space. Lighting effects and atmospheric haze are built into the elements, so their brightness and colors are affected by their distance from the camera, and whatever time of day you set the clock to. Once you have built up your scene, add some finishing touches from the Effects folder, such as 3D titles, fog, wind, heat haze, insects, birds, falling leaves, auroras, and floating pollen. Add subtle camera movements to create parallax and show off your 3D creation.

Effects Library