REFLECTOR DOCUMENTATION

Reflector is used under license. Copyright 2007 Zaxwerks Inc.

WELCOME TO REFLECTOR!

Reflector is a very unique plug-in for After Effects. It makes any After
Effects 3D layer reflect the rest of the AE scene. It does what it does
pretty well, but there are a few limitations you should keep in mind. This
documentation contains information about both what you can do with
Reflector and what the limitations are.

It’s often times good to know what a plug-in is capable of, so we’ll start
the documentation with a list of features.

FEATURE LIST

- Reflector makes any AE 3D plane reflective. You add the Reflector plug-
in to a 3D layer and it will reflect all other layers in the scene.

- The reflective plane can be a solid color, or it could be an image like

wood grain or marble, or a movie, or a pre-comp.

- You can reflect any number of other layers. You are not restricted to
seeing only a single layer in the reflection.

- The reflection plane can be at any angle. Create reflections on a ground

plane, back or side wall, ceiling, or at any arbitrary angle. The reflection
plane can even move.

- You can animate the camera. You can animate the reflection plane. You
can animate any objects in the scene.

- The plug-in supports Falloff, which makes objects fade out based on
how far they are away from the reflection plane. Animated layers will
fade in as they approach the reflective surface. Layers can even rotate
and they will still fade out correctly.

- Reflections can appear all by themselves, meaning you don’t have to see
the plane they are reflecting onto. This is useful when you need AE 3D
layers to reflect into some background footage, like AE layers reflecting
into a picture of a pond, or reflecting into a picture of a shop window.
- Reflections will be created from any Zaxwerks plug-in which is using the
AE Comp Camera. This includes ProAnimator, Invigorator, 3D Warps and
3D Flag animations. This feature is hard to believe. For example if you
animate a ProAnimator title to fly on screen and sit on the floor, you will
see the underside of the 3D objects in the floor reflections. If you
animate a 3D Flag that is in front of a reflective wall, you will see the back
side of the flag in the reflection.

- The reflective plane can have masks, holes and feathered edges. Using
a feathered mask is a nice way to make the reflective plane appear infinite
but only having to render a reasonable amount of it.

- The reflective plane can have other effects applied to it. For instance
you can apply a Fractal effect to color the surface and then have that
surface be reflective too. You would do this by adding the Reflector plug-
in after the Fractal plug-in in the effects stack.

- If you add other plug-ins after the Reflector plug-in, the other plug-ins
will change the look of the reflection. For example, this technique can be
used to blur the reflection.

- Your AE 3D layers can overlap, intersect, or be partially transparent.

- Your AE 3D layers can have effect applied to them.

- You can have several layers reflecting at the same time, each from a
different angle.

- You can choose that 2D layers do not appear in the reflections.

- You can choose that some 3D layers do not appear in the reflections.

- The reflection will motion blur.

INSTALLATION

1- Unzip the archive if you downloaded the plug-in. Otherwise open the
CD the software came on.
2- Put the Reflector folder into your AE plug-ins folder. The Reflector
folder contains two plug-ins: Reflector and Falloff. Don’t move these
plug-ins individually, move the folder which contains them.
AUTHORIZATION

1- The first time you choose Reflector from the Effect menu it will ask
you to enter your Authorization code.
2- Enter the Name and Organization , and type the code exactly as it was
given to you. Then press the OK button.
3- If you click the Demo or Cancel buttons you will have to relaunch After
Effects before it will give you the Authorization window again.

QUICK START

1- Launch AE
2- Set up your 3D scene with an AE plane in position as the reflection
plane.
3- Add the Reflector plug-in to the reflection plane. If you’ve applied any
other effects to the reflection plane be sure the Reflector plug-in is last in
the effects stack. (Once you are more experienced you can change this
to suit the look you are after.)
4- When Reflector is first applied you will see a red and white
checkerboard pattern on the reflective surface. In the controls for the
Reflector plug-in, click the Update button to create the reflection on the
surface of the reflection plane.
5- You must update the reflections whenever you have changed anything
about the project or anything about the Reflector's settings. Clicking the
Update button builds a new comp. If you don’t click Update after making
changes, the reflection will be based on the way the comp looked before
you made the changes.
That last line was important so let's say it again… The plug-in builds
a second comp that renders an image and feeds it back to the main
comp. If you change ANYTHING in the main comp you must click the
“Update” button in order for those changes to appear in the reflection.

----- IN-DEPTH INFORMATION -----

OBJECT FALLOFF
Falloff makes an AE 3D plane more transparent the further away
from the reflection plane it is. It’s like putting a feathered mask on your
layer and aligning it with the reflection plane, so it fades out the side of
the layer that is further away from the reflection plane.
In order for the Falloff feature to work, the Falloff plug-in must be
installed in the plug-ins folder. You never apply the Falloff plug-in by
hand. It is automatically applied and used by the Reflector plug-in. All
you, as an artist, have to do is set the Falloff controls and the Reflector
plug-in handles the rest.

FASTER KEYFRAMING
When animating the camera, or Falloff, or animating the reflection
plane itself, the Reflector plug-in has to create keyframes for the entire
animation. Sometimes this can amount to thousands of keyframes and
take several seconds to do. When you click the Update button Reflector
will check to see how many keyframes need to be created. If it’s a lot
you’ll get a window asking if you’d like to test the reflections at the
current frame, or for the duration of the work area, or to calculate the
entire animation’s worth of reflections.
Obviously, if you have to wait several seconds each time you want
to see what the reflections look like, your workflow will start to slow
down. By testing the reflection at only the current frame you can see the
reflections nearly instantly and make adjustments to your scene to make
them look better.
Once you are done changing your scene you have to remember to
update the plug-in one last time and this time select the option of
updating the entire animation. Then you can render the final movie.
If this window doesn’t appear then either the animation is very
short, or only the current frame is being rendered.
Power User Tip: By holding down the Option key (Mac) or Alt key
(Windows) when you click the Update button, Reflector will render the
reflections only for the current frame. This prevents the extra window
from opening and speeds up workflow when working out the look of the
reflections or Falloff.

ALWAYS UPDATE
This plug-in does not auto-update. If you click “Update” to get a
reflection and then change the camera angle you'll see that the reflection
no longer looks correct. If you change the camera angle you will need to
click the Update button to get a proper reflection.

WHAT’S THE CHECKERBOARD ALL ABOUT?

When you first apply the plug-in the surface gets covered with a
red and white checkerboard. This is a reminder to click the Update
button.

WHAT DOESN’T NEED UPDATING?

- Several of the settings are “live” so you can change them without
having to click the Update button:
The reflectivity amount.
The color of the reflection surface.
The Reflections Only option.
The Reflection Adjustments (X & Y).

RAISING REFLECTION QUALITY

To increase the quality of the reflection, create a High Rez floor, or
turn on the High Quality checkbox. (See the High Rez Floor section in
these docs.)

CLIPPING OBJECTS THAT GO THROUGH THE FLOOR

If your 3D layers intersect with the reflection plane the software
will attempt to clip the layers at the intersection so the reflections look
correct. Most of the time it does a good job but sometimes you can see
a slight mis-registration where the layer should be touching its reflection.
Use the Reflection Adjust X & Y controls to move the reflection slightly in
order to match the reflection better.
Of course the proper thing to do is to not position your layers so
they go behind or below the reflection plane, however by using this
clipping feature it is possible to do special effects such as making a layer
rise through the reflection plane. The clipping built into the software will
show only the part of the reflection that is in front of the mirror.
NOTE: Making layers “rise through the floor” will only work with 3D
layers that are in the same comp as the Reflector plug-in. This effect will
not work on layers that are in pre-comps, nor on other 3D plug-ins such
as Layer Warp, or 3D Invigorator objects.
Power User Tip - Effects applied to the reflection plane after the
Reflector effect (in the Effect Controls window) will change the look of
the reflection. For instance by applying the Lens Blur filter after the
Reflector filter you are able to make the reflection get fuzzier with
distance. You can also use other plug-ins such as the Zaxwerks
Displacementwerks plug-in to make the reflection plane distort the
reflections as though it were made of textured metal.

LEAVE THE ZaxRC COMP ALONE

When you click the Update button the Reflector plug-in creates an
extra comp called the Zaxwerks Reflector Comp or ZaxRC for short. Don't
make adjustments to this comp or else you will change the look of your
reflections. Also, each time you click the Update button the reflection
comp is rebuilt so any custom changes you make to the reflection comp
will get lost.

VAMPIRES
The Vampire setting enables you to make some of the layers
invisible in the reflection. For instance there may be layers that are
cluttering up the look or obscuring items that you want to see. By
choosing them from the Vampire menu these layers will not appear when
the reflection is rendered.
This is also a useful feature when you need to make 2D layers
invisible. There is a checkbox option that will make all 2D layers invisible,
but sometimes you need one or two of those 2D layers to remain. For
instance if you are reflecting any of the Zaxwerks plug-ins such as 3D
Flag, Invigorator, ProAnimator or 3D Warps, these plug-ins are all applied
to a 2D layer. So those 2D layers need to be visible. By choosing the
rest of the 2D layers from the Vampire menu, you end up with some
visible and some not.

NOT ENOUGH VAMPIRES

There is only room in the Vampire menu to make five layers
invisible. What happens when you need more than five Vampire layers?
The answer is parenting. If you take a bunch of layers and make them
children of some other layer, you can make the parent a Vampire and all
of the children will become vampires too.

MULTI-REFLECTIONS
You can apply the Reflector plug-in to as many layers as you want.
Each layer will reflect the scene, however there are some limitations you
should keep in mind.
1- Every layer that is reflecting needs to have a unique name. In
other words if you have two reflective layers that are both called “Solid
1” the plug-in won't be able to tell them apart. Give each layer it's own
name and the plug-in will work correctly.
2- Keep the layer names short. When you click the Update button,
Reflector creates a new comp. The name of this comp is CompName +
LayerName + ZaxRC. For example, say the name of your comp was “My
Big Project” and the name of the layer was “Really Cool Layer”. The final
name of the new comp will be called “My Big Project _Really Cool
Layer_ZaxRC” This is no big deal until the number of characters reaches
31. Then AfterEffects will chop off the characters at the end and you
could potentially end up with two reflection comps with the same name.
If this happens then you’ll either get a “mismatch” error, or the same
reflection will appear in two places. To correct the problem keep the
name of the comp and the reflection layers short. Keeping them both
under 12 characters should do it.
3- The plug-in does not support recursions, meaning you won't see
a reflection inside of another reflection. For instance, in the real world, if
you pointed a mirror at another mirror you would see an infinite number
of reflections within reflections. These are the recursions and will not
happen when you render an image with this plug-in.

HIGH REZ FLOORS

Sometimes the reflection looks jaggy or stair-steppy. This happens
when the camera is too close to the reflection plane causing the
reflection to get stretched beyond its limit. To compensate for the
stretching you need to make a High Resolution Floor.
A High Rez Floor is one that has more pixels packed into it than a
regular floor. (or wall, or whatever your reflection plane is.) To make a
High Rez Floor requires two steps.
1- Increase the size of the reflecting layer.
2- Scale the layer down to its original size.
So for instance, say you had a floor layer you had made out of a
solid that was 500 x 500. To make a high rez floor you would change the
Solid Settings to 1000 x 1000 and then set the scale for the solid to
50 % for both X and Y. That will double the resolution of the floor and
make the reflection look better.
For extreme cases you may have to quadruple the size of the floor.
In the above example you’d set the size to 2000 x 2000 and the scale to
25 %.
There is also a “High Quality” checkbox in the plug-in that will do
additional sampling on the image for a smoother-looking reflection.
If you already have a very large reflection plane then increasing its
size may make AE run out of memory. If that’s the case you’ll have to
get creative. Make a smaller reflection plane that only covers the area
where the reflection needs to appear. Then turn on Reflections Only so
you see the reflections but not the plane itself. If you must see the floor,
create a new floor plane and make it a Vampire, meaning it won’t appear
in the reflections. This will make the reflections look like they are
appearing on the visible floor even though they are being created by the
Reflections Only floor.
Finally, another method of smoothing out the reflection is to render
the scene with motion blur.

COLLAPSING TRANSFORMATIONS
 A popular method of building 3D scenes is to put related layers into
a single comp and then add this pre-comp to a final master comp. Once
in the master comp, the 3D layers from the pre-comps are pulled into the
master comp by turning on the “Collapse Transforms” switch.
The Reflector plug-in will create reflections for collapsed layers. However,
the Falloff feature won’t work properly. The Falloff plug-in ends up being
applied to the pre-comp not the elements inside of the pre-comp, so as
long as the elements are relatively close together it may look OK, but if
the objects are spread far apart the Falloff won’t look right.

SEEING ZAXWERKS 3D OBJECTS IN A REFLECTION

3D objects created by other Zaxwerks plug-ins can be seen in the
reflections as long as you keep the following conditions in mind:
1- The Comp Camera must be used. You must have the “Use Comp
Camera” option turned on for the Zaxwerks effect.
2- The “Hide 2D Layers” option must be turned OFF. Zaxwerks
plug-ins that create 3D images are always applied to a 2D solid, so if
these layers are turned off the 3D objects won’t appear. When you turn
this option off you’ll be making all 2D layers appear in the reflection. If
there are some layers that you don’t want to appear use the Vampires
control to make these selected layers invisible. (See the section on
Vampires in these docs.)

----- TROUBLESHOOTING -----

Problem - The reflections aren’t showing the correct objects.

A1- You have to remember to click Update after you make changes to
your AE project otherwise the changes won’t be seen in the reflections.
A2- If you have more than one reflective surface in the project make sure
each has a unique name. See the Multi-Reflections section in this manual.

Problem - Falloff isn’t working.

A1- The Falloff distance setting is too large for the objects. Try setting
Falloff Distance very small (like a value of 20) to see if your layers
disappear.
A2- The Falloff plug-in might be missing. Check to see that the Falloff
plug-in is listed in the Effect > Zaxwerks menu.
A3- Falloff doesn’t work on other plug-ins that create 3D effects. For
instance if you are reflecting 3D objects created by the 3D Invigorator,
Falloff won’t affect them.
A4- Falloff doesn’t work on individual elements inside of pre-comps. For
instance if you use the Collapse Transformations option on a pre-comp,
Falloff will be applied to the whole pre-comp not to individual elements
within the pre-comp.

Problem - Reflections look jaggy.

A- The reflection will start to look jaggy when
1) Using extreme angles or
2) When the reflection plane is too large.
1- Extreme angles happens when you put the camera too close to the
reflection plane, or use a camera lens that is too wide angle. When you
do this you are stretching the pixels in the reflection too far and they will
start to stair-step or look jagged. To fix it either follow the instructions
on creating High-Rez Floors, add motion blur to your project, or change
the camera position so it doesn’t come so close to the reflective surface.
2- You can also get tearing when the reflection plane is very large. The
reflection has to get spread out over the whole plane and then smashed
back together during rendering. This process can also cause the stair-
stepping effect. The way to fix it is to minimize the size of the reflection
plane. This can be done by using a feathered edge on a much smaller
plane. The feathered edge will make the plane appear to be fading out in
the distance.
There are other creative ways of minimizing the size of the
reflection plane. For instance by using the “Reflections Only” option you
can use a reflection plane that is only the size of the reflections. To do
this technique, duplicate the large plane and make the duplicate just large
enough to hold the reflections. Then apply the Reflector plug-in to the
small duplicate and set the large plane as a Vampire so it won’t appear in
the reflections. The result will be a nice tight reflection that is
composited over the top of the extra large plane.

Problem - I’m getting a “mismatch error”.

A- You probably have more than one plane reflecting and AE is having
trouble figuring out which plane gets which reflection. See the section on
Multi-Reflections for more information.

Problem – I don’t see the reflections from Invigorator, ProAnimator, 3D

Flag or any other Zaxwerks 3D plug-ins.
A- Turn OFF the “Hide 2D Layers” option. Any plug-in that is applied to a
2D layer will not appear in the reflections when this option is ON.
Normally 2D layers look bad in reflections, but this is the exception.
 Once you turn this option OFF, it can sometimes cause problems
because now every 2D layer will be visible. If you need to remove these
2D layers from the reflection, make them a vampire. (See the vampires
section in the docs.)

Docs copyright 2007 Zaxwerks Inc. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED