creating a 2 and a 1/2 D house using 3D layering in AE

Create separate pieces in Photoshop

house front, house side, roof, roof center piece. Save a PNG or photoshop document to reserve transparency.

import photoshop documents with images into AE

put into composition

turn on 3D layer button (the cube)

put the separate images together to construct a 3D house

once house is constructed  go to layer- new- camera. You can then navigate and rotate around in the camera view to see the 3d house properly. IMPORTANT NOTE: If the camera is not moving around the object itself and doing something weird with the perspective, go to Layer - transform - Auto orient and this need to be switched OFF to work properly.

parent the layers to the main image