Buena Depth Cue v2 is the "Complete 2.5D suite."
Depth:
It’s said that birds see everything in focus no matter the distance. Humans can’t seem to focus on the space in front of their fast-moving automobile most days.That’s why Photographers and Cinematographers attempt to define planes of action or of composition with selective focus to “guide us”through their images. As human beings, our perception of depth is key to our feeling of scale and proximity...our entire sense of 3D space. When the entire image is in focus, the viewer loses the sense of the Z dimension in the material, be it a still image, a motion picture or video, or motion graphics.
Digieffects’ Depth gives you the ability to add these differences in focus to your images or motion graphics after they’ve been created. Using the ability of Depth to create a depth map, you generate a gray scale ‘layer’that drives the difference in how effects are applied to a clip in After Effects. You might think of it as an “alpha channel”for focus instead of transparency. If you require more virtual camera movement, use the ‘precomposite depth’ feature to allow a greater range of animation and viewing angle.
If you work in “2.5D”and want to achieve realistic results, Digieffects’ Depth will quickly become an indispensable tool.
Falloff Lighting:
Lighting is part of what makes a composite believable. It needs to throw light where you need it but make sure what is supposed to be in shadow stays in shadow, otherwise it makes things less realistic...like your indie zombie film’s makeup budget for instance. Digieffects’ Falloff Lighting plugin for After Effects provides a lighting system that mimics the way a light’s output drops off over distance in the practical world. In the practical world, the art of placing lights is in no small part dependent on deciding where to place the shadows in a scene. Having an effective composite is dependent on natural light falloff so that items further away from your light aren’t throwing shadows resulting from illumination that shouldn’t be reaching them to begin with...
Digieffects’ Falloff Lighting is the illumination component of a complete "2.5D" suite of effects.
Atmosphere:
How do you know one item in your field of vision is further than another? At great distances, you may notice that things like dark edges and shadows that should be very defined and sharp may not be very dark or very sharp. The very quantity of “air”you have to look through to see something a mile away means that particulate matter in the air is affecting your clarity of vision as the distance of an object increases. Hence, we all are in a “fog”to some extent whether we like it or not.
Digieffects’ Atmosphere alllows you to use this same effect in your 2D compositions and allows you to set the intensity and distance scale. As your elements move through Z space in your composition, the ‘haze’or ‘fog’environment that you’ve specified affects them all uniformly so various layers can move along the Z axis and the viewer suddenly has a better visual distance cue than scale alone. If a layer is oriented so that its surface occupies a range of Z space (picture a ‘ground’layer stretching into the distance as an example), that layer will “fade”into the haze based on it’s placement within your Atmosphere settings. Atmosphere can create a tremendously realistic effect, it’s subtle use can create an effective impression of distance, or it’s unrestrained use can simulate scuba diving in a glass of milk. You have the power to choose.
Rack Focus:
With many effects, capabilities may be similar but how intuitive they function may not be... Add Digieffects' Rack Focus to your composition and setup the depth of field and the Z distance of the focus target in moments. The viewer's perception of depth in your composition changes and the feeling of dimension and space becomes more authentic instantly. Move the viewer's focus within your images the way a cinematographer would by confining sharp focus to just specific areas or objects, or define the order that text is read in by controlling how it comes into focus...you have options.
Camera Mapper:
Creating virtual camera moves in simulated 3d space using only 2D images can be done a number of ways. Creating 3d surfaces and mapping them from the photograph can be time-consuming. Camera "projection" has become a very efficient method of accomplishing these tasks, and has become a key capability in the feature set of applications such as The Foundry's 'Nuke'
Without using an application outside After Effects, Digieffects' Camera Mapper alllows you to take a 2D video or a photograph, add some simple solids and map specific segments of the photograph to multiple planes in 3D space to create a convincing environment for a virtual camera movement through 2D images you've already acquired.
Flipside:
One of the key capabilities added to 2D compositing applications has been the ability to simulate 3D space by rotating flat, 2D elements in a scene. In cases where a 2D element has to rotate to reveal the "back" surface...it's still the front surface-backwards. Combatting this issue requires a steady hand, carefully positioning an additional layer in 3D space so that the separation between the layers is small enough to be hidden, but deep enough that the rear surface never 'touches' the front, creating occlussion which makes the entire process rather frustrating.
The Flipside plug-in does one simple thing: it maps one layer onto the back side of another layer. This allows you to flip the front layer over to reveal the back layer. It does this without creating any gap between the 2 layers. Layer flipped, occlusion is not a factor, and your client doesn't ask about a large invoice for a simple task...or about those tufts of hair that seem to be missing from your head...
