3D Mesh Support in After Effects

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‌3D Mesh Support in After Effects

Big News! After Effects 2024.1 introduces limited 3D Mesh support.

Unfortunately, the .obj support required for easy SynthEyes integration didn’t make that initial release date, but the After Effects Beta after 2024.1 does include OBJ support.

That beta version can be downloaded with the normal Creative Cloud app. Presumably the .obj functionality will be included in all following versions of After Effects as well.

You can export to that beta version by selecting “Beta after 2024.1” as the version in the “For this AE (or later)” dropdown in the AfterEffects Javascript exporter control panel. Don’t enable C4D integration: when C4D is enabled, the builtin 3-D export is turned off to prevent duplication. To use “Run now” functionality, select the beta version in the Custom AfterEffects control at the bottom of the control panel.

After Effects and the SynthEyes exporter support most 3D features in SynthEyes, except features such as

- No animated meshes (no vertex caches),

- no per-vertex colors,

- no animated mesh illumination colors,

- no animated texture maps (rolling textures in SynthEyes).

After Effects 2024.1 and earlier do not support meshes directly. After Effects does include a version of Cinema 4D to handle 3-D meshes. The SynthEyes Javascript exporter can write both After Effects and FBX elements at once, setting up the integrated Cinema 4D and After Effects scene. See the CINEWARE integration section below.

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