After effects definitely became my best friend these last few months. Animating logos, keying green screen and compositing different footage... The more I work with After effects, the more I get into it. The software is so powerful that the only limitation I can see comes from the user.

I made some research online for my next project for which I will probably use some 3D camera projection. I read that this technique is also called 3D camera mapping. That allows you to use stills and 2D footage in a 3D environment.

Here is a good exemple:

In my research I came across this interesting macaddict interview of Todd Vaziri:

Todd Vaziri is a visual effects artist. He currently works at Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucasfilm, in San Francisco, California.

1.First take with Toby sitting down

Playing around with the green screen and my actor friend Toby.
We shot Toby twice on a green screen background and keyed out the green in after effects.

2. Toby walking in the back

The idea was to make him talk to himself while his "twin" walks in the background. Something you can't really do by shooting the person twice in the same environment and then work with masks in After Effects.
Also the green screen gave us more freedom ( choose any kind of background, depth of field...)

3. The background

We used a picture of a saloon that we borrowed from the internet.

All the layers were imported in after effects in a 3D environment. I also created a 80mm camera inside AE Cs4 and turned on the depth of field to make it more realistic. That way i was able to keep the background soft.

Screenshot of the result scene

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I will post a lot more samples and test that i'm doing in AE soon...