Abstract 3D Looping Animations

On Adobe Live, I created these lovely, looping, abstract pieces entirely inside After Effects. You can see the whole process here, but here are some highlights.

A lot of the "look" of this piece leans on a feature of 3d layers called "Reflection Intensity". When we extrude shapes in After Effects using the newer Cinema 4d Renderer, we get access to new and different material options. The Reflection intensity allows us to reflect other objects, lights, and something called an Environmental layer. It is like a 3d sphere, wrapped around our scene, that we can only see in reflections. This allows us to create very interesting textures and lighting situations without needing a complex shader on the object itself and, any layer can become the environment.

Below, see a reflective cylinder tumble around while reflecting the earth.

In our examples, we used a simple gradient as your environment. But any image will do. So long as that image is equirectangular (twice as long as it is tall) you'll be in good shape. Also, you'll want to make sure it knits smoothly, so you want something that is "seamless". For that reason, HDRI images, or 360 shots can be really good to use in this technique, even if you blur them out or distort them.

All good pieces start with even a simple sketch, so we did a quick one in a notebook. I think you can tell why I stick with digital arts after observing the quality of these sketches.

From there it's a lot of manual keyframes, a few layers, and a lot of experimentation. With those few images as our markers, we navigate the wild jungle of the graph editor. It might looks a little wild at the end, but taking it one element at a time, and working from large motion to small detail is entirely manageable.

To see it all come together in about 90 minutes, check out the stream!