Cameron Pierron Shares a Tip That Uses Lens Distortion Effects to Help With Animating 2D image Parallax

Creative Director, Designer, and Animator, Cameron Pierron walks us through creating a parallax effect on a 2D image in After Effects — Something that has been covered countless times before. Cameron offers a new trick into creating an animation from a 2D image by bringing it into 3D space. That is by using a lens distortion effect to help with the parallax animation.

We are already familiar with how to slice, layer and distribute a single 2D image in 3D space so that a parallax animation can add some interest to an otherwise static scene. Cameron uses After Effects Optics Compensation effect to manipulate the background or the farthest element in the view.

Animating the field of view (FOV) can make the background appear to recede or come forward. This effect can be a great addition to a standard parallax effect.