3D Problems in AE CS3 Mac OSX 10.5

Question

I am having a lot of trouble with 3D in After Effects. I cannot get my layers to be 3D, even when I have the 3D option checked on in the timeline. For instance, I'm trying to create a rotating Earth, but instead of it rotating and being a sphere, it's just a flat layer that twists. I don't know what to do. I can't find any good info about this type of thing.
Also, I don't have a 3D axis (you know--the three-dimensional X,Y,Z axis). I don't know if it's my video card or the program itself. I don't know what to do and I'm getting close to scrapping the whole program and trying to find a version for Mac online.
Can anyone help?

Answer 1

You can do a rotating sphere using any one of several 3rd party apps. To create the effect using the built in effects take an image you want to use for the
globe surface and apply the CC Sphere Effect. You'll find that under Effects>Perspective>CCSphere.
Apply the CC Sphere to the layer, make the layer 3D, change the Transform properties to Auto Orient towards Camera, then apply the followint expressions:
To CC Sphere X rotation:
r = lookAt(position, thisComp.layer("Camera 1").transform.position);
x = r[0] - 180;
value + x
To CC Sphere Y rotation:
r = lookAt(position, thisComp.layer("Camera 1").transform.position);
y = - r[1];
value + y
To CC Sphere Z rotation:
r = lookAt(position, thisComp.layer("Camera 1").transform.position);
z = r[2] +180;
value + z
If you really want to get fancy you can add expressions to light height and direction using a variation of the basic lookAt(position1, position2) language.
Hope this helps. You might want to take a look at
this sample project using one of the images picked from the google link above.