Creating a Graphical Globe in After Effects

Berkshop’s Jonathan Berkey shows a technique for creating and animating a quick and dirty globe in After Effects that has a more graphic or illustrative look to it, which is a little different from just using the common CC Sphere effect.

a quick way to make and animate a globe – hope you pick something useful up

Jonathan notes that the typical CC Sphere effect attempts to look more realistic, and you are not able to control things like the shaded areas of the effect. Jonathan sets up a little slight of the eye trick to create the globe, by using a simple positional change through a round mask and nested compositions. In all the final result is a great graphic-looking globe rotation that can be tweaked easily with a graphical atmosphere, radio-waves pinpointing locations, etc.