"3D glasses" After Effects
 

Anyone use this effect in AE? I hate it. I thought I would be able to apply it to each layer (green screen or animations) and adjust the distance between the red and blue for each layer to create a 3D comp. But when you apply this to say a keyed performer or mask, it automatically fills the screen with black so that you can only see the performer and not the background or any underlying layers.
What a stupid effect!

Do you have 3d glasses? I believe that is the only way it will work

Yeah, but it turns my background completely black, in other words you cannot have a mask or key anything when using this effect. It seems to me that you need the right and left image already done, and all the effect does is make it red and blue.

Why don't you make a nested composition and apply on the outer comp only?

George/

Yes, that is the way you have to use it. Create your complex left eye comp, and your separate complex right eye comp. Then ccombine those as two layers in a master comp, and apply the effect there. Create a new viewer and lock it to that comp, and then proceed to edit you left and right comps, while having a 3d preview. This workflow also allows you to keep separate left and right master streams until the last step, since you won't always want an anaglyph deliverable.

If you are working in 3D space I would suggest you use the 3D camera and setup all your moves in one comp. Then duplicate the comp and move the camera slightly to either the right or left (this would require some experimentation after nesting.) The target should stay the same and this convergence point will represent the screen plane.
Then make a new comp and nest the two original comps for left and right eye with the 3D glasses plug-in.

I've used the 3D glasses plug-in many times for my own stereo footage, but never in 3D space as I suggested above. I should give it a try in the latest version though. If I remember correctly it can do various anaglyph and interlaced modes.

Have you seen U23D? Chris Hurd and I saw pieces of it at NAB and heard from the filmmakers on the panel. On the song "The Fly" they have text elements moving around in 3D space and it looks pretty incredible. According to the filmmakers it was a ton of work, but I'd imagine you could do something like this in after effects (if you had enough time to rotoscope mattes for your elements!)