I didn’t knew adobe removed the “Live Photoshop 3D” from After Effects CS6, so today I was trying to create a project with 3D objects, using Photoshop CS6 and After Effects CS4 (with the idea that the project will work with future versions).
ae CS4 imported the photoshop 3D file with no problem and I could create my animation, add effects and everything.
But the antialiasing was noticeable in ae so I start looking for a solution. Every advice I found on the net said to change the antialiasing settings in Photoshop before importing the file in ae.
All good, but I can’t find the 3D antialising settings in Photoshop CS6 anymore. Back to google, no clue, can’t find the antialiasing settings anywhere.
So I figured out that probably After Effects CS6 will import the Photoshop CS6 file automatically with antialiasing and stuff. Surprise! the advanced last version of After Effects doesn’t have the Live Photoshop 3D functionality anymore
So go back to internet to find out why. Apparently After Effects team said the Photoshop team changed the 3D engine and they did not had the time to figure out how to make the “Live Photoshop 3D” work in ae CS6.
This is retarded on so many levels and let me explain why.
First is not true that After Effects can’t understand Photoshop CS6 3D layers. I have imported CS6 psd files (with or without compatibility turned off) in ae CS4 with no apparent problem (apart the anti aliasing issue).
If what they said is true and there is a new arcane 3D engine in photoshop then probably photoshop automatically saves the 3D file for past versions. This means that ae CS6 could simple ignore the new engine/3d info and load the old version as ae CS4 does.
There is no logical reason to remove the live 3d functionality at all. The new environment effects from photshop may not work in cs4 but the object can be loaded with no problem. You can use the old system while you work on the compatibility problems for a future update/version of ae. Instead they removed everything breaking compatibility for all projects that used this feature.
another problem is that I don’t understand how adobe works. is like every software they have is a different/closed world.
It doesn’t make sense for me as a programmer to develop a 3D engine for Photoshop and instead of using that 3D engine for After Effects you have to develop a completely new 3D engine for ae and figure out some sort of plugin to make those two completely 3D engines work together. Is stupid, costly and plain wrong.
So you plan for a Creative Suite to be released and yet at some point the team working on ae cs6 finds out the photoshop team changed the 3d engine and they don’t have time to “fix” the Live Photshop 3D feature. Just lovely.
The only logical explanation that I can think off is that adobe used some sort of 3d engine for the past versions of photoshop and they stopped paying/lose the license for that engine. They developed the new engine for photoshop but had to remove the 3D engine support from ae.
