Aescripts – STMapper v1.0

If you’ve ever round-tripped through Nuke just to apply lens distortion, wrestled to use a UV pass from a 3D render, or given up on baking down a stack of transforms into something reusable, STMapper is for you. It brings the industry-standard ST map workflow natively to After Effects, with a streamlined and easy-to-use workflow.

1. Render a UV pass from your 3D software as a 32-bit float file. Quick tip: It will be helpful to render out some sort of matte for the specific object you want to add texture to.
2. Import your UV pass, interpret it as data: Raw or preserve RGB, and add it to your comp.
3. You will probably need to apply the EXtractoR effect to the file if it’s a multilayered EXR. It’s best to then precomp this effect.
4. Set up a new comp with a square resolution (we’ll call this texture comp). Quick tip: Bring in an image of the unwrapped object UVs from the UV editor to use as a reference.
5. Apply the STMapper effect to the UV pass layer/precomp and select the texture comp as the input layer.
6. Set Offset to no offset (UV Map from 3D render) and select a Filter option (default is bilinear).
7. Composite the result over your beauty render, using your 3D matte/alpha to hold it out.