Isometric Projections in Adobe After Effects (SSR Method)

[@TheMrMuzahid]

That's a lot of knowledge packed in a 13 min video. Very useful and informative.

[@Workbenchtv]

Glad to see you're back to consistent posting. I almost did a tutorial on SSR. No need now. :)

[@FLOWTUTS]

ayyy you are here hahaha

[@Workbenchtv]

Wherever I go, there I am. ;)

[@AliGh6990]

I liked and subscribed just for this video. good sense of humor wasn't a boring tutorial...

[@NeonKix]

You can get rid of pixel tearing by using the "Alpha Add" Transfer mode or changing the layer quality to draft.

[@mangeshmahajan4445]

How do I snap edges like 3:30?

[@WarchRus]

Checkbox Snapping on the top Panel or hold Ctrl after start moving. Make sure you move the layer, not the Path of shape.

[@blackswan6386]

@@WarchRus cn you explain more, i hit the box and pust ctrl but it dosent snap to the object, it only snap to one angle, i have to manual correct it...can you help me manage this yuick, would be awesome, thank you

[@user-os8gp7eh2v]

This video explains it well. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rX3TZJudp8iFeNU

[@TheCemeteryDetective]

I came here searching for a method of building 3d graphical representations of the gravestones I study. This video helped a lot. Thank you.

[@MicDoesThings]

Great video. I have just subscribed. I am working on a script that will turn a any layers into an isometric one with one click!

[@ECAbrams]

Wonderful! There are a few scripts and plugins that I think do that currently you might want to check out to see if there are any gaps or ways they can be improved upon. I would much prefer a parallel camera so we can enjoy isometric angles on real 3d objects personally.

[@MicDoesThings]

@@ECAbrams couldn’t agree more. thanks for your reply! Mine is a bit different but it’s a one clock solution. perfect for icons etc

[@AlFooteIII]

Just used this and it worked a TREAT! Thanks!

[@MrSceneNine]

Brilliant working example of using Shape Groups. Also, memorising how to create isometric shapes seems like a must.

[@blackswan6386]

sir, this video opens my brain....its so epic what you can do whith this knowledge !!!! holy moly ! please give thism an an oscar !!!! wow...i need a pause, maybe 3 days !!! astonishing, gerrtz from czech republic !

[@Vicky-cy1ot]

Great to see you're back posting regularly again Evan! Keep up the good tutorials

[@mauroangst]

I’ve been waiting for isometric on after effects for a looooong time 😍 Love you so much

[@bravebanu]

Thank you sooso much for this tutorial the way you framed everything made it so easy to follow with!

[@madhavgopalan4905]

Never stop uploading!

[@kaymotions]

great tutorial

[@tolokaearnmoney4645]

so easy to understand and learn. thanks so much. keep watching...

[@macnetized]

thanks, for give us the chance to watch this awesome videos

[@StankislavKv]

Really like that one. So simple and looking so nice :) Big thanks!

[@NandoTinez]

Thank you Mr Evan like allways an usefull tutorial

[@thenikhilray99]

who wants a collab between Abrams and Mt Mograph 😍

[@sharpspike06]

Nikhil Kumar two basics meet

[@charliecooper3030]

Can do it with Workbench instead.

[@JoeSullivan7]

@Bleach You're basic !

[@sharpspike06]

Joe Sullivan wow u sure got me with that sick (edited) burn wow

[@Claude950]

if Abrams used Motion and MIDAS ït would be too awesome

[@veebordeleau3902]

cool! I've been doing all the rotation, skew and scale steps in AI then importing... this looks easier for simple shapes

[@ECAbrams]

+Vee Bordeleau it can also make animations on the plane a little simpler too :)

[@Euphrosyne00]

Thank you for this tutorial! But how to make them grow?

[@ECAbrams]

As in grow vertically? Changing the size and position of the rectangles will cause the illusion of growth.

[@Euphrosyne00]

@@ECAbrams Oh! I got it!!! Thank you!)))

[@GmanGavin1]

Great, so the acronym for Server Side Renderer now has another meaning for Simple Sequence Repeats.

[@ggxdesign]

You are the best man.

[@josh8644]

This is great, thanks! Also a top tip, you can save the set up of each one as an animation preset so you don't have to keep going in and typing all the numbers

[@ECAbrams]

I probably should have left that part in the tutorial. Ironically, I ended up cutting it for time.

[@josh8644]

Not a problem, still incredibly useful! I'm sure a lot of others will think it too. If not hopefully people see the comment! Keep up the great work!

[@MarioCarbajalPereyra]

Love your tutorials! :D

[@Jorge-ee1gp]

Dude, you are amazing! thank you so much

[@seansiegler]

How are you getting these sides to snap into place? I cannot get that to work for me, which means I cannot get this to look right. Not sure what I am missing.

[@mikolajm9175]

Is there any similiar rule to create diagonal rooves? How to approach this problem? BTW: Great tutorial!

[@m.u.r9484]

your walls are 3d (extruded) in the intro, can you please tell me the way how to do that?

[@berendvanrossum4585]

Great tutorial!

[@ThisisTechie]

Looks like the Monument Valley art style.

[@AakashKalaria]

Beautiful game!

[@mattrulez1900]

When he has the Wikipedia page open the other tab says "monument valley game"

[@raenkiwi9226]

TechieManny monument valley 2 came out a few weeks ago!

[@benistillman]

Love the tutorial. How did you do the in-caved roofs on your pink buildings?

[@ECAbrams]

we just make a ring around the top with a couple squares, one subtracted from the other with merge paths, and then throw in some walls behind that layer. It's a little trick is all.

[@vitorcervi]

Awesome stuff.

[@jkell42]

Cool concept for video! Is there way to adjust camera on a 3-d layer to make it look isometric?

[@ECAbrams]

+jkell42 absolutely. The angles you need are on Wikipedia. Just parent the camera to a null and rotate the null. But it'll only look isometric-ish you need a parallel camera to truly be isometric.

[@paoloallegretti8862]

Nice! But.. How did you made the flags?

[@johnmarkvillanueva799]

Can you help me if how to make a cylinder like building that also has windows?

[@ECAbrams]

Sure, if it were me, I would likely use a combination of cylinders deformed with the SSR method and vertical lines. Using the merge paths would allow you to add and subtract their area from each other. But it is complex to be sure.

[@JohnCadeProductions]

What about adding images to the buildings? For example I have a logo of a company and would love to place it on the side, how would you go about doing this?

[@ECAbrams]

I would probably use the transform effect on that logo layer if it were a jpg or similar bitmap kind of file. The transform effect has a skew property in it so you can just apply the same method.

[@공주-h2n9y]

감사합니다

[@NeonWolf3924]

hi can you make a isometric box opening and closing action please

[@logankees]

How in the heck did you get the final animation (group o green buildings) to work? I tried pre composing the singular building you show how to make, but when I go to edit the scale and make smaller/longer buildings it clips at the comp? plz help

[@ukaszes5514]

1. Null Object 2. Parent layers with Null Object 3. You can now edit :)

[@angelmolinalopez9997]

Green tower looping is made manually right?

[@JayBaggio]

thanks a lot, great video

[@dmc3079]

Is there an expression applied to the layers for the scaling effect, or is keyframes for each layer?

[@unleavenedmovies]

You may have explained this in the video and I just missed it, but how do you get the various pieces to snap together on their edges like that? I didn't know after effects had that kind of function.

[@ECAbrams]

Not everyone's Ae will do that. But you can hold Command or Ctrl on the windows to make that happen. But older versions of Ae may not have this feature.

[@VictorSilvestri]

I have the latest version of AE CC and am holding Cmd, but am still not able to get my shape layers to snap - REALLY would love to know how to do that as it looks super useful!

[@dmc3079]

Had the same problem, but hold alt/option to get it to snap. Hope that helps.

[@AnthonyRose]

This might be a major noob questions, but, How did you manage to get the shapes to snap together?

[@ABF_SJ]

@Yu Zalm mind = blown. I've only just discovered this after about 17 years of using AE!

[@premspicer]

Hi. wonderful tut. Thanks. But I am stuck. I am trying to increase the height of the side wall in one direction(upward). Like how it does in the intro pink building. I tried using scale & size but the increase happens in both directions, upward and downward from the center. I even moved the anchor point to the bottom. But no use. Please help. What mistake am i doing ?

[@Designetiks]

Happened to stumble upon this video, +subscribed! I am new to AE and was wondering if it'd be possible or easier to design the isometric building via Illustrator and importing it into AE to animate? Why would someone want to design in AE vs Illustrator?

[@ECAbrams]

Hey Helen. There are a few reasons, but generally, you have higher flexibility when animating assets made natively in Ae. I advise people to make assets in Ai when the design complexity is high, and the animation requirement is low (fewer moving parts, less complex motion). And to create assets in Ae when the reverse is true. But it's all subjective. Some people are just more comfortable in once place than the other. Or they feel their style requires one over the other. It's something people have to decide for themselves based on experience, skill, and the project's requirements.

[@Designetiks]

Whoops, can't believe I didn't see this notification until now. Thanks for getting back to me and explaining the use cases! :)

[@rafaelpayumo9066]

Do you have tutorial videos where you animate the isometric illustrations imported from ai file?

[@ECAbrams]

not yet. buy maybe I should... :) I'll put it on the list.

[@rafaelpayumo9066]

Thanks sir! I want to know how to animate complex isometric illustrations like the persons, other shapes built in isometric blah blah blah...

[@DhyanShanasa]

Nice tuto, @ECAbrams, But you can create a 3D cube (with separate faces in each pre-comp), and use the camera locked in isometric angle. That way you have the freedom to rotate the isometric cube.

[@ECAbrams]

I certainly don't claim this is the only way to make things look isometric. But using 3d extrusions and a camera is going to net you something that looks close to isometric, but is still foreshortened by the camera's viewing angle unless you have access to a truly parallel camera. It's certainly an option that may be covered in a later tutorial but I think EyeDesign has done a good job covering that method already.

[@DhyanShanasa]

Thanks for the reply, man. Actually, I think I said it wrong: I mean we can create 6 pre-comps represented each side of a cube, takes them to another pre-comp where we assemble the cube, takes it to another pre-comp where we put the cube In isometric view via rotation and we can still use an expression to control the movement of this cube at isometric angles, without camera. The cube would not be an extrusion. The interesting thing is that we gain "freedom" of movement and rotation, but it is certainly a "false-isometric", since the AE does not have a parallel camera like the C4D.

[@stepoter]

how did you animate that uprising building like thatt???

[@IsionIndustries]

How did you animate the buildings and windows at the same time? I created a rig for SSR projection but I have the top left and right shape layers linked with expressions to a controller. If I start putting groups in the shape layers then the Expression gets broken

[@ECAbrams]

in what way does it break? What's the error you're coming up with?

[@top10foryou84]

HOW TO MAKE IT SPIN AROUND ITS AXIS?

[@soyfelo202]

Amazing!

[@abacadusale]

That's a lot of math. I love it! :D

[@KABOBkabob]

I wish you'd showed how you did the roof intrusion in the intro sample. I can think of a couple convoluted ways but have a feeling you took a simpler shortcut.

[@traceurAlex]

awesome!

[@YashwantKharsan]

unable to snap....any key you pressed or something??? i am using ae cs6..

[@ECAbrams]

I'm just holding down the command key on the Mac. I think the equivalent key is ctrl on the windows. But older versions of Ae don't have this feature.

[@akridiy]

Why not use Illustrator instead?

[@HailSagan1]

Because this is an AFTER EFFECTS tutorial?

[@ECAbrams]

Making assets for animation in Illustrator is a pretty popular move. In general, I recommend making your assets in Illustrator when they are visually complex, but won't be animated very much. If the assets are simplistic but require more complex animation, it's best to make them in Ae. This method, in Ae, is meant to give you much higher flexibility when animating the content in an isometric projection.

[@MorrisBarrier]

I'm surprised their aren't more plugins for Isometric animation since it's so trendy. Thanks!

[@ECAbrams]

I know there are a couple. Fremox commented on here with theirs, ISOMATIC FX. Mostly I think folks turn to a 3d program to make these things nicer. Or there are some programs that do isometric stuff only.

[@MorrisBarrier]

Not much of a 3D guy so I'll stick with the folks at aescripts.com. :)

[@alihejazi6345]

thank you !!!

[@edgarl.f.4471]

Might be a silly question, but , How did you animate the buildings to go up? I imagine that later u repeated the animation... is the building longer and you just moved the comp up? or does it scales up? Thank you very much for the tutorials ECAbrams, they are really cool and helpful.

[@ECAbrams]

Well, the walls are animated using the rectangle's parametric properties of size and position, so they appear to grow up from the bottom. The roof, however, just changes position. There are other little things like the very top edge that makes a kind of sill around the top, that's getting a position change as well.

[@biscuitsalive]

This is cool an all. But why would you do this sort of design in After effects? when Adobe animate is a much easier tool for animated isometric illustration work like this. Just my opinion. But I have been working in this sort of art style for many years.

[@mauroangst]

biscuitsalive Maybe you need to complement this kind of style with another things that you can only do on After Effects. I think that If you need to make an animation of ONLY flat isometric things I you should go to Cinema 4D and work on an actual 3D environment with an isometric camera. This way you could even work with other 3D things (like particle plugins or whatever you need) on AE using an depth map rendered on C4D. But when when you have to mix those isometric graphics with other kind of things that require specific use of AE, this is really helpful.

[@biscuitsalive]

Mauro angst fair enough. But I would just use both and run it through both applications. Much quicker and cleaner to create these sorts of shapes in animate. (All graphics collected together with nice clean timeline etc in animate) Then being that straight into as to add particles or whatever u wanted.

[@AksentNethariaFilm]

Just realized that Evan is like the Binging With Babish of VFX. Similar voice and sense of humor.

[@ArchimedesBerlin]

Thank´s a lot!

[@Versiloff]

How to add the transformation to text?

[@ECAbrams]

Converted text to paths.

[@Versiloff]

But I want to keep the text editable.. I saw another way of doing it using isometric camera

[@ECAbrams]

An isometric camera would be a parallel camera. Which is a kind of virtual camera with an infinite focal distance. Sadly Ae does not, at this time, have one. You can have a very far focal distance for it to appear close to isometric.

[@Versiloff]

Yep that's what I did

[@aliakll4090]

pretty cooooooooooool

[@blink18ii]

Good

[@dahaekim5336]

thank you! :-)

[@MoreMishelle]

this is so monument valley-esque

[@ECAbrams]

Absolutely! Big fan of that game right here.

[@serdaryagshim6112]

Why won't you make them 3d and simply rotate the camera?

[@ECAbrams]

Mostly because Ae lacks a parallel camera. There are no camera settings in Ae that can give us a true isometric perspective. It can get close, but there is still distortion from the virtual camera. We can do true isometric projection in other 3d like c4d, but only because it has a parallel camera that has no perspective. I hope that makes sense.

[@serdaryagshim6112]

@@ECAbrams true. Thanks.

[@1234radio]

Came for the Isometric Projections, left with the Shape Groups. Oh, well. :)

[@vinee.mp4]

have no idea how he did that last animation....

[@naimulislam2762]

copy and animate the y position

[@Scripture-Man]

2½ minutes in before I realised it's only fake isometric, not 3D objects! I'm disappointed that After Effects can't do real isometric as I need it for a logo. Instead I've just approximated the effect with a 200m camera, moved it miles away and zoomed in. It looks close enough for my purposes.

[@Sxxov]

notification squad xd

[@blackcode08]

hey!

[@noahgrice]

lol hi jason

[@FLOWTUTS]

wtf

[@BluezConcepts]

oii baes ;-)

[@mibdev]

How are you verified? You been in a network?

[@ryann3039]

I love you

[@JuliusPfeiffer]

Genius :^)

[@KAMIKAZEE3421]

🎵86.602🎵

[@ECAbrams]

Now is the tune meant to be Jenny by Tommy Tutone or the scruff mcgruff crime dog song?

[@kinleunglau]

86.602~~

[@FLOWTUTS]

Dooooope

[@oliwierfaikis]

just stop

[@FLOWTUTS]

Oliwier Faikis stop what ? haha

[@irregular1430]

Isometric projections! Care to join me?

[@kawabungadad8945]

Or you could just draw it in illustrator with an isometric grid and import it into after effects.. without doing any maths.

[@mendistudio]

Honestly, I think that would take longer.

[@kawabungadad8945]

It doesn't - Mostly because drawing things in illustrator is a lot more user friendly than in After Effects, I really wish Adobe would just make things function the same across all applications (ie. Pen tool)

[@juanelvale]

💚

[@3d-flushedemoji]

isometric projections, care to join me?

[@MrBiswas123]

weeeeeeeee !!!! lol xD

[@paulscholesisgod]

you're amazing After Effects Seth Rogen