Realistic reflection of spinning 3D object

[SimonCreations]

Ok, I am trying to make a reflection of a spinning 3d object. The object is a book that I made in Lightwave.. I exported a .mov of the object spinning and brought that into AE. Next I duplicated the layer and flipped it upside down... Now I am having a problem with the reflection matching the original clip. The reflection doesn't line-up perfectly at the baseline as it spins - I have attached a video clip to illustrate what I am talking about.

http://www.simon-carr.com/spin_test.mov

Any ideas how I can fix this??



This tutorial was my inspiration (yet they use a 2d object and not a 3d movie clip):
http://toolfarm.com/2006/12/after-effects-tutorial-reflection_19.html

 

[kai]

It would be easiest to just place a reflective floor beneath your spinning book in Lightwave.

 

[Andrew Brinkhaus]

This is easily doable in AE, no need for 3D. The problem is, is that your reflection layer needs to be a 3d layer, after it is changed, use the rotate tool, and flip it so that it lays flat in 3d space, now line it up so it matches frame 1 of the rotation of the actual object, and just parent it to that layer to match the rotation reflection.

 

[graymachine]

The object and object reflection would be two different angles. The reflection angle should appear as if you are looking up at it from below the floor (90º from the current camera).

Andrew's tutorial on faking a reflection might be useful to you:

http://forums.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/reflections/reflections.htm

My expression series also goes into this (I use a negative Y scale), but stick with the free tutorial first.

 

[Neil Rowe]

id agree with kyle 100%. youve got a tilted perspective on a rotating object created in 3d space, and its going to take some serious elbow grease to get a nice realistic looking reflection of that using AE. but simply sliding a reflective surface in from lightwave should take a couple minutes. AE does nice reflections, but its generally when the object is 2d and stationary, or is at least apparently uncanted to the lense of the viewing camera.

 

[SimonCreations]

Yea, I have thought about doing it in lightwave.. but I'm not quite sure how to get a good gradiating/blurry fadeout via lightwave. Also, the render time is a lot less when you are just rendering a spinning object and not the reflective surface that goes along with it.