What is Draft 3D Preview

Leverage the Draft 3D Preview that uses the faster Advanced 3D Engine renderer to preview your changes to your 3D scenes in real time. It's an engine that assists animation workflows by speeding up real-time playback in heavy scenes. ​The renderer runs on GPU. Unlike other renderers in After Effects, the Advanced 3D Engine is only intended for draft quality and not the final output.​

Learn more about working in 3D Design Animation Space.

Turn on Draft 3D Preview

Use 3D Ground Plane to view the space within your 3D scene

A ground plane is a horizontal plane of projection that gives you a sense of perspective and space within your 3D scene. It visually orients a user in 3D space. It provides a reassuring grounding to a 3D space.

To use it, ensure that the Draft 3D button is enabled, and then switch on the 3D Ground Plane button next to it. This tool helps keep everything in your scene in perspective and proportion at a glance.

Important points

• The closer the objects are to the ground plane, the easier it's to understand their relationship to one another in 3D space. 
• The ground plane grid progressively scales as you dolly in and out of the scene.
• The scene center locator axis is in the center of the comp view to give you a sense of the X, Y, and Z directions. 

Use Extended Viewer to preview areas beyond composition boundaries

The Extended Viewer lets you view the 3D content outside the composition frame boundaries. Switch back to the standard frame view to view your composition’s final view.

Do more with your 3D animations

Explore 3D animation settings and various capabilities to modify, edit, and enhance your 3D animations and 3D space.

More like this

• Import and add 3D models to your composition
  
• Import 3D models from Creative Cloud Libraries
• Image-Based Lighting
• Extract and animate lights and cameras from 3D models