3d rotation of flattened effect composite, possible?

i have a scene where i have made a simple brushed metal effect. the network chain is as follows:

box drawing layer → grain module → horizontal gaussian blur

result looks great, except i need to “skin” 2 sides of a piece of kitchen equipment utilizing this effect. the front looks great as is, but i was hoping to rotate a duplicate composite group in 3d so there is perspective applied to the effect. as this is not really a 3d-planed scene, i was thinking i’d use the “flatten” module on the perspective-ized metal effect comp to keep it a flat plane like everything else (is that even the correct usage of the flatten module?) – but i just want to get the rotation working before i attempt the flattening.

when i attempt this 3d rotation (i’ve tried rotating the drawing directly, rotating a parent peg, and a few permutations of auxiliary composite modules and the “apply peg transformation” module), it results in the effect chain remaining flat and horizontal, as if no rotation has been applied (though the drawing layer/peg itself is indeed rotated in 3d space). is there a correct method for doing this? or is this just how harmony operates, all effects are flat/2d regardless of networked composite operations? i feel like i’m missing some special-sauce combination of setting some composite in the network as 2d or pass-through or something – some step that would truly permit the effect stack to be rotated after it is flattened down to a state that accepts the transformation.

btw, resolved the effect by using radial zoom blur instead of directional gaussian. however, the question still remains regarding possibility of 3d transformations applied to effect composites.

You should enable the 3D camera.

http://docs.toonboom.com/help/harmony-11/workflow-standalone/?utm_source=ohstgm&utm_medium=InSoftware&utm_campaign=HAR_11#_CORE/_Workflow/013_3D_Space/017_H1_3D_Camera_Motion.html?Highlight=3d Camera

well, i actually don’t intend to do any movement with the camera, only the subjects in the scene. does enabling the 3d camera “unlock” the effects applied to drawing objects? my issue was that i couldn’t apply some effects to a drawing in the network, and then rotate the drawing as a 3d element and have the effects lock to the new plane of rotation – the effects remain flat/facing the camera even though the drawing element is rotated.

“Unlocking” (I prefer the term enabling since the reason this feature is disabled is that mostly it’s not needed and it’s easier to work with the feature off) the 3D option allows you to rotate elements for effectively building a pseudo 3D type set which I thought from reading your post was what you were trying to do. I may have misunderstood your intent.

If you do end up using the 3D to rotate elements, note that you can’t draw or type text on a layer that is not facing the camera plane. It has something to do with the distortion you would see while drawing this way, it’s too difficult to do.
The solution would be to do all the drawing and text first, then rotate the element.