After Effects CS6, your hardware, and you
A look at After Effects CS6’s 3D Raytracing
After Effects CS6 is undeniably a major evolution of the software — the most significant update on multiple levels in many versions.
The main new feature, which will serve as the foundation for future developments, is the new ray-traced 3D engine. True 3D has finally arrived in After Effects, allowing us to play with extrusion, curvature, reflection, refraction, and more on our layers.
There’s so much to explore with this new tool that it’s hard not to be amazed — we’ve been waiting for this for so long! And yet, it’s not all perfect…
Based on Nvidia’s OptiX raytracing technology, this new engine requires a powerful graphics card to run properly. Currently, very few cards are officially supported by Adobe.
And you’ll need a lot of CUDA cores to get comfortable rendering speeds. If your card doesn’t have any, render times may feel huge… and that’s the major downside of this new system.
New perspectives
And yet… I love it! I’ve only been playing with it for a few days, and the possibilities are just massive! Below are two small tests using After Effects’ new 3D options.
Many tutorial ideas are already popping into my head, but maybe it’s still too early for CS6 tutorials. The poll at the end of this article will help clarify that.
About the author
I am the Founder of Mattrunks.
I work as Creative Director and Motion Designer in my studio. I also create video tutorials to share my passion of motion.