Geometry group

The Geometry group defines the size, shape and position of the polygon mesh that’s affected by the fractal. We recommend that you set up a composition camera when working with Mir and use this together with the Position and Rotation controls.

Mir was made for taking your creativity to high speed, utilizing the GPU rendering at its core. Because of this feature, you will find that After Effects will remain responsive even when working with larger meshes. It is still ideal to keep the number of vertices to the minimum needed to ensure fast render time. The Reduce Geometry control can also be used as a fast preview mode when working with large and complex surfaces.

When starting out positioning a mesh in Mir, it may be helpful to turn the default Amplitude, found under the Fractal Group, down to 0. Without fractal noise, Mir will appear as a flat, rectangular plane ready to be manipulated to the angle you wish to start from.

NOTE: Mir supports up to up to eight Point lights, and unlimited Ambient lights. If a Spot light is used, Mir will respond as if it were a Point light.

Position XY, Position Z

The X and Y position in 3D space of the polygon mesh. These values can be keyframed over time to create movement and shift perspective. There is crosshair positioning for setting the center point of the mesh.

- Position X: Move left or right around the X axis.
- Position Y: Move upwards or downwards around the Y axis.
- Position Z: Move closer to or farther from the camera around the Z axis.

Rotate X, Y, Z

Rotates the mesh around the X, Y and Z axes. This does a 3D rotation.

- Rotate X: Rotate forward or backwards around the X axis.
- Rotate Y: Rotate to the left or right around the Y axis.
- Rotate Z: Rotate around the Z axis.

Vertices X, Y

Sets the number of vertices used to generate the polygonal mesh along the X and Y axes. Vertices affect the speed of Mir’s render. Increase the number of vertices to create smoother, more detailed looking meshes but keep in mind that render times are directly proportional to the number of vertices. The higher the number, the longer it takes to render.

Reducing the number of vertices on Mir will improve the speed of rending, but may create a coarser or more jagged result.

Size X, Y

Sets the size (in AE pixels) of the mesh in the X and Y axes. The X and Y dimensions correspond to the size of the mesh horizontally and vertically. When scaling up in size, it may be desirable to add more vertices to the plane to create a more detailed look.

X, Y Step

Gives a zebra-like effect of skipping rows and/or columns in the mesh. Increasing the Step in either direction will gives a striping effects of skipping rows and/or columns in the mesh (if used in only one direction) and square patterns if used in both directions.

Bend X, Y

Bends the mesh around X or Y axis. Higher values can produce Arc shapes, or twisting, vortex-like effects. This Bend is computed before the fractal displacement for more accurate shaping, whereas the Bend inside the Fractal group is computed after the fractal. When Bend is at 0, the Mir mesh will appear completely flat if no Fractal> Amplitude is applied.

Turning up the Bend to its highest possible numbers will cause Mir to bend in upon itself, sometimes with very interesting geometric results.

Reduce Geometry pop-up

An option to quickly reduce the number of polygons. Setting the Geometry lower is useful to quickly preview heavy meshes and complex animations. When this is set to Auto, the resolution will match the Resolution setting of the Composition window.

There are five Reduce Geometry settings:

- Off: The default setting, which turns off Reduce Geometry.
- Auto: Previews the geometry to whatever Resolution setting is in your Composition Window, half of the vertices, quarter, third, etc.
- 2x: Previews the mesh as if the geometry has 2x's fewer vertices than what the mesh actually is.
- 4x: Previews the mesh with 4x's fewer vertices.
- 16x: Previews the mesh with 16x's fewer vertices.

Reduce Geometry is useful to quickly preview heavy meshes and complex animations.