Website: www.digieffects.com

Price: $199 standalone, $499  in the Mega Suite, most plugins available a la carte.

In case you haven’t noticed, we live in a 2D world. Sure, we have 3D technology, but we have yet to find a way to actually shoot footage or take photographs in 3D(stereoscopic 3D doesn’t count). So what do we do? Well, we fake it by adding depth.

Buena Depth Cue is a plugin suite from Digieffects that offers several solutions to the depth problem, giving you tools to add depth where it wasn’t there, even adding a 2.5D feel to your material.

Buena……In Depth

Each plugin in the Buena Depth Suite solves a specific problem. These aren’t one-trick ponies, but rather focused plugins that work well to create some cool 2.5D effects. Depth Cue comes as a plugin for After Effects on both Windows and Mac, and authorization is a simple serial number system. So let’s take a look at each plugin in the suite.

Falloff Lighting

This effect emulates the lighting falloff that happens in the real world. Items in the distance won’t receive as much light as those up close. Up until After Effects CS5, this is something that AE lacked. After Effects CS5.5 does have this built in, but the Falloff Lighting plugin does have an extra option or two available. And if you haven’t upgraded to 5.5, you’ll find this plugin even more handy.

The controls are simple, and allow you to decide just how fast the lighting falls off. There are three modes included. The first is referred to as “Natural” falloff and is equivalent to the CS5.5 square clamped equation of falloff. And as it stands, this is the most realistic way of light falloff available, using the 1 over distance squared equation. The next is the straight “Distance” method, which uses a more equal falloff as distance increases. Finally, you can select “Constant” falloff which gives you no falloff at all, just as After Effects has had all along but with the addition of a slider to adjust the general intensity of the light on your layer.

The final control, Distance Scale, effectively lets you adjust how close the lighting will seem to your layer. This lets you make up for slight issues with scale and layer object size. A nice touch that you won’t find even in the CS5.5 lighting system.

Also, a new After Effects menu item that gets added with this plugin, allowing you to add or remove Falloff Lighting from all selected layers. A great time saver, no doubt.

It’s nice to have these options in a plugin because you can set different layers to have different falloff types without setting up complex lighting systems. Despite the recent addition of falloff lighting to CS5.5 you’ll likely want to use this plugin to fine-tune everything.

Flipside

This one is simple, and solves a common problem. Typically, when a 2D object is thrown into a 3D space, and you turn that object around or fly the camera to the back side, you’ll simply see the same thing as the front, but in reverse. This, of course, isn’t ideal for most situations.

Flipside allows you to assign any layer to be the back of another layer. You can assign two videos to be back to back, or assign a solid, or whatever you want to the back of another. Really, most anything you want can be assigned except for that you must precompose text if you wish to use it as a back side.

This plugin is quite handy because doing such a thing manually, while possible, is a pain and often results in visual anomalies that aren’t ideal. You won’t see space between the layers or have issues with layers not rotating together just right. It virtually glues two layers back to back. For such a simple plugin, there are a number of uses for Flipside.

Depth

Depth lets you create depth maps to use inside of other plugins that utilize them. A depth map is simply a grayscale representation of how deep different sections of your image or other elements may be. Common effects that can use these maps are rack focus or lens blur plugins such as the ones included with After Effects. You’ll also find depth maps extremely useful for 3D effects such as Freeform, which can use depth maps for displacement.

There are a couple of ways of using the Depth plugin. You can distribute several layers in z-space and then apply Depth to each one individually or all at once using the menu command, or you can make it even more automatic and use the “Precompose Depth” menu command, which not only adds the effect but creates the depth map and creates all necessary comps and links, etc. This leaves you with a composition that includes your original layers, plus another composition with the depth map ready to use for whatever purpose you choose.

To make it a bit more clear, see this video tutorial from Digieffects:

Digieffects Depth Intro Tutorial from digieffects on Vimeo.

 

Below is an example of the depth map created by 4 layers spaced out in z-space, and an example of the results using the built-in After Effects Lens Blur plugin(with the focus distance set to the third image). Once the Depth plugin created the map, it was as easy as selecting the map comp as the blur map in the lens blur plugin.

You can actually even apply Depth to a single 2D layer and it will detect masks you have created and bring them forward in the map. This is perhaps one of the coolest uses for Depth as you can create depth of field within footage that didn’t contain it already, but is restricted to a “two depth” map unless you utilize multiple layers with masks.

Though it takes a little bit of setup, Depth is really easy to use. You can adjust the curve of the depth map and control the amount of depth. Again, as with some other plugins in this suite, it’s a simple plugin with numerous uses. The fact that you can apply depth to a 2D object is just icing on the cake. Depth provides more, uhhh, depth than the built-in After Effects depth of field system, and gives you more flexibility when working with other plugins as well.

RackFocus

This plugin, while not having the smallest number of settings of the bunch, is actually the most focused and simple plugin of the bunch. RackFocus lets you apply, well, focus to parts of your composition. This happens just as with a real camera when it focuses, blurring out objects that are closer and further away than the focused area. As opposed to the Depth plugin, which emulates gradual depth, RackFocus emulates simple camera focus based on depth.

You can control where the focal depth is, how wide of an area is in focus, exactly where the focus area begins and ends, and more. You can also adjust how quickly the focus changes to out of focus(the ‘ramp’). It’s really that simple. Place RackFocus on your layer or apply it across multiple layers using an adjustment layer. Then, either adjust the focal depth inside the plugin or move layers through the focal depth area to bring them into focus.

You can set the blur amount for out of focus areas, of course, but there are also some extra goodies included. You can adjust the circle of confusion, which emulates the way a lens can distort items which aren’t in focus. Sometimes referred to the “bokeh” effect, this lets you set everything from the shape of the distortion to the threshold at which the effect is applied, and more.

In addition, you can set anamorphic breathing to occur in your composition, causing items to “grow” in size, or at least appear that way, as they fall further out of focus. When set just right, this can add extra realism to your rack focus.

I don’t have much to say in terms of opinion here, as the plugin does exactly what it says very well. Again, this adds more flexibility than you get inside of After Effects cameras, and that’s good enough for me!

Atmosphere

This one is quite simple(see a trend forming here?). It creates a 3D, almost volumetric fog(almost) to surround your 3D layers with. You can set the depth of the beginning and the end depths of the fog and as your layers get further into the distance(or as they get closer, if you prefer), they are gradually covered more and more. You can set the curve of the fog falloff between linear and custom exponential settings, and you can set the density of the fog. In addition, you can color the fog to any color you want.

The atmospheric fog that is created isn’t necessarily one you can fly through with your camera. It’s more an emulated fog and works based on distance from the camera. As you move the camera closer to a layer, it becomes more clear of the atmosphere. This is important to realize as it lends to working differently than a true volumetric fog, which isn’t the intended result here. Instead, Atmosphere works as a sort of alternative to a depth of field effect.

Atmosphere can take a bit to get the settings just right if you apply the effect manually, but you also have the ability to apply Atmosphere to multiple layers at one time on an adjustment layer using the After Effects menu. It helps to have a good understanding of the 3D world inside of After Effects or you may find yourself confused as to why nothing is happening, but it’s a pretty simple plugin that does one thing pretty well.

Camera Mapper

I saved this one for last on purpose. This one took me a few tests to get my head around, but it may just be the coolest plugin of the whole bunch. In fact, even if you don’t find any of the other Depth Cue plugins useful, Camera Mapper is worth the price of the bundle alone. You wouldn’t know it by the simplicity of the interface though, as seen to the right.

Here’s the idea: take a 2D image, and turn it into a seemingly 3D space. That’s it. That’s what Camera Mapper does. But let me explain further. First, Camera Mapper does take a bit of practice, but it’s actually easier than it sounds. But once you get it, you start to see very cool possibilities.

The way that Camera Mapper works is you create solids that you line up with flat planes in your image, such as the sides of buildings, the ground, etc. There can be as many solids as you want or need in order to represent all the flat planes in your image. The key is that when you place your solids over your planes, you rotate them and turn them to the same angles as the planes you’re trying to match. Essentially, you’re creating a 3D model using solids. You can mask out portions of your solids and get them to the exact shapes and dimensions needed.

You use two different cameras as well. One camera is your actual “viewer” camera, and the other is your “projection” camera. Once you have placed your solids in place over your flat planes, your projection camera will then look at what is behind each solid and project that same image onto that solid. And since you have placed your solids in a 3D configuration, the projection camera essentially replaces the flat color of the solid with the part of the image you covered up with that solid. The result is a 3D space that you can rotate around, zoom into and out of, and basically emulate actually being IN your scene, even though it’s only a single 2D image. Camera Mapper adjusts angles and perspectives to make this all happen. As pictures don’t really give the whole story here, see this video which gives a good example of what is possible:

Camera Mapper Intro : After Effects tutorial from www.digieffects.com from digieffects on Vimeo.

Now, if this sounds convoluted, don’t worry. I was a bit confused at first. But let me say that after doing it only a couple of times, it worked extremely well and was very easy to grasp. Just being able to take a 2D image of a building and create a scene that you can rotate around is pure magic in itself. You can create complex models of your image and come up with a cool true 3D scene as if you created it in a 3D modeling application. You can place solids on your ground plane and then give the impression you’re actually walking along that plane as you get closer to the items in the background. Seriously, this is some cool stuff. Here is another video from Digieffects that shows another simple, yet powerful use for Camera Mapper:

Camera Mapper – San Francisco Bridge Tutorial from digieffects on Vimeo.

What makes this even better is that once you have your scene set up, you can even light it using the built-in After Effects lighting as mentioned in the first video above. Your 3D scene can cast shadows and receive shadows(within reason, of course, and depending on how detailed your ‘modelling’ is).

There are some issues in that it can be difficult to line up your seams just right. So make sure you have a full understanding of the 3-way positioning system used in 3D space. If you don’t line things up right, you get a clear tearing of the image, or you can see behind your planes, or through the cracks you leave between them. And many times, if you try to apply a square or rectangle solid to a non-square source, your perspectives can mess up a bit. So using masks and adjusting shapes is also essential.

There are numerous uses for Camera Mapper, even if you don’t want to use 3D spaces. You can use Camera Mapper to just make certain portions of your image “pop out” as if they were floating above your image even. I won’t go into extreme details here, but I encourage you to check out tutorials on the Digieffects website. Camera Mapper is worth the majority of the price of the bundle on it’s own. It’s not a complex plugin, but the results can indeed be stunning. It’s one of those plugins that you will probably experiment the most with. It’s great how you can apply this effect to even the most non-geometric images and get some cool results.

Camera Mapper is a winner, no doubt about it.

2.5D Made Easy

It’s really difficult sometimes to emulate true depth in a 2D world. So whenever tools are available to make it more believable, I’m a fan. The plugins inside of Buena Depth Cue are focused and are very real-world useful. There isn’t a large amount of complexity here. A couple of the plugins do require a slight learning curve, but the results are worth it.

Every plugin inside of Depth Cue is also very light on system resources. There was never a problem with rendering speed or waiting too long for RAM previews, even on my largely under-powered Intel graphics laptop. And on our larger desktop machine, even better. The only system resource drains came when using excess blur in effects such as RackFocus and others using the blur setting. But in most cases, this was minimal.

Depth Cue is quite useful for emulated space as well as some unique animation possibilities and flexible depth of field. Even uber-simple plugins like Flipside have a multitude of uses, which makes Depth Cue a valuable suite. At a price of $200, you won’t be breaking the bank, especially when Camera Mapper alone could be worth the suite asking price.

Depth Cue may prove to be one of the more useful, even essential utility tool sets in your box that will find their way into your compositions more than frequently. In fact, I find myself reaching for these tools to apply them to old projects to breathe a bit of depth-life into them. It’s a great suite of tools, and worth checking out every one of them.