The sky is no longer the limit!
Give your compositions what they've been missing with this unique mapping tool. The Trapcode Horizon plug-in is a camera-aware image mapping tool that ties your After Effects camera to a 3D world. By applying images or gradients to the inside of a giant sphere, Horizon creates an infinite background. No matter where your camera is directed, the simple controls make photorealistic backgrounds or sky gradients a snap.

Trapcode Horizon runs only in After Effects.

• Adobe After Effects CS5, CS4, CS3

Virtual reality backgrounds
Trapcode Horizon is the only plug-in that creates QuickTime VR-like experiences inside After Effects. If you have experienced virtual walkthroughs on the Web for real estate, parks, monuments and more, you can now recreate these animations right inside After Effects with full control over 3D motion and the camera’s field of view. If you have longed to create a more scripted VR experience, Horizon is the perfect tool.

Gradient and image map modes
Choose from gradient or image map modes in the plug-in, each offering a unique way to provide interesting backgrounds. Gradient mode offers both point and line generation. Point mode generates smoothly blended color regions from up to 8 points on the virtual sphere, while line mode creates converging lines of colors that are perfect for generating a sky gradient.

3D Camera Integration
Horizon ties automatically into the After Effects 3D camera, so that the background image is always correctly drawn from the active camera’s field of view. The automatic camera motion means that other 3D effects like Trapcode Particular and Form will move correctly with background and provide the viewer with a much-needed orientation in 3D space.

Features

• Floating Point Support
  Offers support for Floating point mapping of .exr image maps in After Effects CS3
• Equirectilinear Image Mapping
  Familiar to 3D artists, "equirectilinear" images are maps that provide full 360-degree coverage of a sphere. Horizon will map these images seamlessly onto the background.
• Gradients
  Built-in gradient modes provide up to 8 colors for generating colors on the virtual sphere.
• Coverage Controls
  With controls for horizontal and vertical coverage of the sphere, you can determine how much of the virtual sphere to map—especially useful for using non-panoramic images or video.
• Controlled Zoom
  Mapping in Horizon depends on the Field of View in After Effects, so you can create a zoom effect by animating the field of view of the After Effects camera.

Apple Macintosh

• Mac OS X 10.4.6 and later*
• Mac OSX 10.5.2 and later*
• Power Mac G5, Mac Intel
• 1 GB of RAM
• 30 MB of Hard Drive space

PC/Windows

• Windows XP SP1 or later
• Windows Vista 32-bit and 64-bit
• Pentium 4 2.4 GHz or faster (or AMD equivalent)
• 1 GB of RAM
• 30 MB of Hard Drive space