Article Focus: After publishing his ShapeExtruder, Jerzy Drozda Jr (aka Maltaannon) got tons of emails asking for further explanation, so in this follow-up tutorial, Jerzy answers the most commonly asked questions.
I'd like to thank one of my viewers - AztecMonkey for pointing me to a brilliant script for converting masks into shape layers. You saved me a lot of work, since I was going to develop it on my own. For those of you who don't understand yet why this script is so great here's an explanation...
ShapeExtruder uses Shape Layers in After Effects CS3 to create the illusion of objects being extruded. The only problem was moving paths from Adobe Illustrator to After Effects as Shape Layers because when you copy them from Illustrator and paste them in After Effects they are pasted as masks. The script I've mentioned above converts masks to Shape Layers allowing you to create 3D logos easily.
Side note:
Click here to download rd_MasksToShapes script by Jeff Almasol. Make sure to check out the rest of his scripts. Very cool stuff. Used wisely may save you hours of work.
Feel free to post any questions on the After Effects Forum at CreativeCOW.net.
