Do you need AfterEffects Pro to animate a still?
 

I have AfterEffects7 Standard. Can anyone tell me if I can do this 3D thing or will I need the Pro version. Also, I use the Matrox Parhelia APVe for full HD previews, but I know this will not support GPU effects, is that a showstopper?

Your graphic processor doesn't really matter to AE. You can do a RAM preview and that is software driven.

The trick is to learn how the objects respond to your stage with respect to the 3d movement of the camera by creating a small render. This way you can quickly preview your comp and add time (duration) later.....

no , im mean to use pan crop to create teh required motion, then to use cookie cutter to retain consistancy in framing throughout the entire piece

Lloyd was absolutely right in his earlier post about how to get this effect.
I do exactly the same in Photoshop: crop around the foreground image and enlarge it slightly to hide the cutout portion behind. Import the layers into After Effects. Always give a little bit more speed to the foreground layers to maintain the parallax effect (check the word on Wikipepia!)
Here's a"quick'n dirty" example here: http://www.neptune.com/users/robindr...indr462149.wmv

Robin

You'll get better results if you use 3D parent/child track motion to pan. You won't need a cookie cutter to maintain consistent framing, because the track motion engine will do it for you.

Play around in the 3d channels in After Effects. YOu will love it! Like they stated above, add camera and go. This is an amazing aspect of After Effects and really will expand your graphic capabilities. Does anybody know if Motion or shake does anything similar.

Almost forgot to post that sample I was talking about!

Do pardon the quotes in the beginning and graphics and stuff - turns out I can also share this with relatives who didn't see it at the rehearsal dinner!

The MP4 compression did quite a number on the quality of this piece, but if you download it to your hard drive and scrub back and forth you'll definitely be able to notice some parallax. Enjoy Megan and I's photos. ;)

http://www.robzeigler.com/3d.mp4 - 10.7MB

George Lilly - Motion will allow you to independently pan different images and use scaling to make one appear to be more in the foreground, but After Effects has a much more robust, true 3D space that makes these operations much easier and more organic.

Shake does have limited 3D capabilities, but by the time you've got the node tree set up you probably could have finished three in After Effects. Shake is just not a motion graphics tool. It can perform these types of operations with a little bit of tweaking - but this is the area that After Effects really shines in, especially because of its close interoperability with Photoshop.

I have access to all three of the programs mentioned, and I'd launch After Effects first anyday to complete this sort of task.