Throwing things into t he Z-Space in After Effects isn’t a terribly difficult thing, It can be a bit of kludge and definitely time consuming. There are a few multiplane tools out there that can help you place things in 3D space. Most will cost you some dough.
You could just write your own. Now there is another alternative. Stephen Sprinkles of PixelBump posted a free to use multilane camera script for After Effects.
The script takes the process of setting and scaling all the layers, and moving the camera in z-space. Its an easy way to get a 3D effect from 2D planes.
Check out PixelBump to download your free copy of Multilane for After Effects.
