Two review points on the merge:
- env_pixels returned None both for an unconfigured light (no Source, no
Environment Layer) and for a failed source (a deleted layer, missing
footage, a failed decode), so a selected source that failed silently
swapped in the default studio environment — relighting and reshadowing
the scene behind the user's back. It now tells the three apart
(EnvPixels::Absent/Image/Failed): only the unconfigured light uses the
default; a failed source contributes nothing, exactly like a layer whose
source fails renders nothing. The repair the user can act on stays where
it already lives — missing footage is flagged on the item, with the
relink commands to fix it.
- The docs claimed only a uniform image casts no shadow. A non-uniform one
can be directionless too: opposing bright regions cancel, and anything
under 1% directional is rejected. agents.md, architecture.md and the
sun/dominant_direction doc comments now say an image without a
sufficiently strong dominant direction.
Tests: an unreadable Environment Layer (auto-picked), an unreadable
selected Source and a deleted one all light nothing — pixel-equal to the
unlit render, no studio default, no default-environment shadow — while an
unconfigured light still lights; two equal bright spots at opposite
azimuths cancel to no sun and no key, and tilting the balance re-emerges
pointing at the brighter spot.
The default studio environment's level-preserving mean of 1 acted like a
100% white Ambient light: with only the Environment light on, a white floor
rendered at full white (95% of the frame saturated) while its shadow core
went to pitch black — a fog over the scene, nothing like After Effects'
default. Three changes bring the look in line, CPU and GPU alike:
- The default environment is a dim studio now: a solid-angle-weighted mean
of 0.3 (and a stronger key gradient), so a white floor reads a mid gray
and the light's colour x intensity still scales the level.
- The shadow occludes only the image's directional (key) fraction of the
light — |sum of dir x radiance| / sum of radiance, computed beside the
dominant direction and carried in the scene — so the fill keeps shining
inside the shadow: an area-light shadow, partial like After Effects'
(a lone bright spot on black still shadows almost fully; a uniform image
not at all).
- The environment shadow map's penumbra has a floor — eight output pixels,
or four map texels where those are coarser — because the map covers the
whole scene bounding sphere rather than the view, and its texels would
otherwise stair-step the edge (all the more in a draft render's flat 512
budget). Shadow Diffusion widens it further, as before.
Tests: the key fraction tracks directionality; the default keeps its dim
level, its direction and its key; the default and a bright key both shadow
the floor (the default partial, the key deep) with Cast Shadows off lit
everywhere; and the full look — a mid-gray lit floor (no fog), a partial
core, and a soft edge ramp in quality and draft renders alike.
After Effects' default environment map casts shadows out of the box: an
Environment light with Cast Shadows on shadows the scene with no Source
set. The flat default cancelled its dominant direction to zero, so the
option did nothing until a Source image arrived. Give the default a soft
studio gradient (bright above and toward the initial camera, dark below
and behind), level-normalised so the light's colour x intensity still
sets the overall brightness; its dominant region drives the existing
shadow pipeline, CPU and GPU alike.
Three small fixes from the review of the shadow commit:
- light_settings switched a Classic 3D comp to Advanced 3D whenever the
edited light was an Environment light (the resulting kind), so editing
the intensity of one in a comp the user had switched back to Classic 3D
dragged the renderer back. The switch now happens only on the
non-Environment to Environment transition (the sources before and
after), matching the docs; ordinary edits leave the renderer to the
user.
- dominant_direction's thresholds let NaN through (every NaN comparison
is false): a NaN or infinite texel produced a NaN sun direction and
NaN shading with it. A non-finite weight or length now returns no
direction — garbage casts no shadow.
- add_environment walked the full-resolution image for the dominant
direction even when the light casts no shadows, where nothing reads
it. Only a shadow-casting light pays for the pass now.
Tests: editing an existing Environment light in a Classic 3D comp keeps
the renderer and stays toast-silent; a NaN and an infinite environment
image yield no sun direction.
The Casts Shadows option Environment lights got is only half a fix if
nothing shades for it: an image lights the scene from every direction,
and what occludes that light is the image itself — its dominant bright
region, the sun in a sky map.
- dominant_direction finds it: the radiance-weighted mean texel
direction (solid-angle weighted, rotation applied). A uniform image
cancels to zero — a flat default environment shines from everywhere
at once and casts no shadow, which a uniform environment test pins.
- The shadow is one orthographic map over the scene from that
direction, after the lights' maps, like a parallel light's: PCF
widened by Shadow Diffusion, darkened by Shadow Darkness, cleared
when nothing casts, the image is directionless, or the texel budget
drops it.
- It darkens the environment's own diffuse and specular light on
Accepts Shadows surfaces and counts in Cast Shadows Only. CPU and
GPU (WGSL) do the same; Globals carries the environment's sun
direction and shadow settings (40 → 44 floats, preflight updated).
A bright-disc environment turned to shine from behind the camera now
shadows a sphere onto the floor behind it, Cast Shadows off lights it
evenly again, and the GPU scene's sky gradient takes a shadow-casting
Environment light. Also: the renderer-switch toasts read "...renderer,
which draws 3D models", the dialog's Casts Shadows checkbox gets an
auto id (dialog.light.casts) the tests click, and the docs' Environment
notes cover the shadow.
An Environment light had no visible effect, and its Light Settings dialog had
no Casts Shadows option — both halves of #2436.
No effect had two causes:
- Classic 3D (the default for new comps) skips Environment lights entirely,
so creating one did nothing. Adding one (or changing a light's type to it)
now switches the comp to Advanced 3D in the same undo step, with a toast,
exactly as model and primitive layers already do; switching back to
Classic 3D with an Environment light in the comp explains itself too.
- In Advanced 3D, a light with no Source and no Environment Layer produced no
environment at all. It now falls back to a flat default environment of the
light's colour × intensity, as After Effects does, so the light always
lights the scene per its parameters.
Cast Shadows was missing because the dialog and the light's property groups
shared one gate (Falloff and Shadows together) that excluded Environment.
The two are now split: every light but Ambient gets Casts Shadows, Shadow
Darkness and Shadow Diffusion (stored, edited and carried over on type
changes), while Falloff stays on Parallel/Spot/Point only — an environment
light shines from every direction at once and has no use for a falloff.
Tests: the renderer lights a card from a sourceless Environment light (colour
and intensity drive it, zero intensity lights nothing), the engine switches
Classic comps to Advanced 3D on creation and type change (one undo step,
toast, and the Classic 3D switch-back toast), Environment lights take and
carry shadow options but no Falloff, and the dialog ticks Casts Shadows on
a new Environment light.
Shadow maps use the full scene-derived size (point-light faces capped
at 2048) under a 26M-texel scene budget halved largest-first; the PCF
filter measures its reach in output pixels with a two-texel minimum,
samples texel centres on a jittered adaptive 5..10 grid, and compares
each texel against the receiver plane's own depth so wide kernels never
self-shadow lit casters. The WGSL mirror is parenthesised (Tint rejects
the old form) and guarded by a shader-wide grammar test; the CPU
reference and shader remain step-for-step parity-tested.
The Advanced 3D renderer folded Accepts Shadows (Off/On/Only) into a
bool, so a shadow catcher set to Only drew as an ordinary lit surface.
The material now carries shadows_only. Such a fragment draws black at
the strongest shadow a light casts on it, as Classic 3D does, and it
goes in the blended pass so what is behind it shows through. The CPU
shader and advanced3d.wgsl get the same branch.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Problem: In Advanced 3D, an extruded shape or text layer was one mesh in
its paint colour. After Effects colours the front, bevel, side and back
of an extrusion separately (shape Contents ▸ Add ▸ Front/Bevel/Side/Back,
text Animate ▸ Front/Bevel/Side/Back), and EffectCraft had none of it.
Fix: The extruder can split its mesh by surface (front cap, bevel rings,
walls, back cap). Shape layers get Front / Bevel / Side / Back contents
items (layer.addShapeItem kinds frontColor…backColor, one item per
group, colouring every paint of the group and its nested groups; the
innermost wins). Text animators get Front / Bevel / Side / Back Color,
blended over the character's fill or stroke by the selection. Paints
with a surface colour render as one mesh per surface. Menus, the
Contents Add: pop-up and the menu translations list them. The other
surface material properties (Ambient, Diffuse, Specular, Metal,
Reflection, ...) remain.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Depth of field in Advanced 3D comps uses the camera's iris (Fast Rectangle, Triangle to
Decagon, rotation, roundness, aspect, diffraction fringe) and highlight gain/threshold/
saturation through the Classic 3D bokeh kernel. Collapsed precomps in an Advanced 3D comp
add their nested layers as real geometry (meshes, extrusions, cards) lit by the parent;
2D collapsed precomps draw nested 3D layers with the parent's renderer. Text and shape
strokes extrude as bevelled meshes stacked in paint order (model extrude_stacked).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Layer > Camera > Create Stereo 3D Rig (left/right eye comps with expression-linked eye
cameras, Stereo 3D Controls effect, stereo comp through 3D Glasses), Create Orbit Null,
Create Cameras from 3D Model; Layer > Light > Create Lights from 3D Model
(KHR_lights_punctual), Control Light with Camera, Create Environment Light Background
Layer (equirectangular sky drawn through the camera). glTF cameras and punctual lights
are parsed by effectcraft-model.
Advanced 3D: per-sample motion blur over the comp shutter, and blend modes / track
mattes / Preserve Transparency composited through the 2D path in depth order.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
3D-1: Classic 3D depth of field renders the camera's Iris Shape (Fast
Rectangle box or Triangle…Decagon polygon), Iris Rotation, Roundness, Aspect
Ratio and Diffraction Fringe as a span-kernel gather blur, with Highlight
Gain/Threshold/Saturation boosting highlights first; tilted layers blur
progressively by per-pixel camera depth. Layer > Camera > Link Focus Distance
to Point of Interest / to Layer (expressions) and Set Focus Distance to Layer
replace the stubs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
sampleImage renders the sampled layer through the evaluating renderer's footage source
(EvalCtx::footage), cached per thread and frame. File > Import reads .json/.csv/.tsv as data
footage kept in the project. expr.errors collects failing expressions for the error bar;
expr.languageMenu lists the categorised Expression Language menu. Marker keys expose
protectedRegion and cue points; colorDepth, timeToFeetAndFrames, comp.activeCamera.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Extruded text keeps per-character 3D: each glyph's outline is extruded in its own space and
placed by its animated matrix; shape layers extrude their fill outlines (gradients use their
mid colour). Shadow-map bias scales with the texel footprint at the receiver and the PCF
reach (no acne on curved casters), identically on CPU and GPU. Docs: Advanced 3D in
architecture.md, parity table updated (3D, Text).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Advanced 3D comps render their 3D runs as one scene of world-space triangles: model and
primitive layers (meshes, skinning, animation clips by layer time), extruded text/shape
layers, and textured cards for every other layer with their Material Options. Shading is
physically based in linear light: Cook-Torrance GGX + Lambert for parallel/spot/point lights
(AE falloff and cone), ambient lights, image-based light from an Environment light's layer
(equirectangular; cosine irradiance map + roughness mip chain + split-sum BRDF fit), and
PCF shadow maps (spot/parallel/point cube faces). 2x2 SSAA, depth of field as a gather blur
by circle of confusion, back to the working encoding.
The software rasteriser (depth buffer, top-left rule, perspective-correct, opaque visibility
then sorted transparent blending) is the reference and CI path; effectcraft-gpu implements
Accelerator::raster_3d with a wgpu render pipeline (advanced3d.wgsl) and matches it within
tolerance. Environment layers are hidden from both renderers.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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