topic Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How? in Visualization

Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Dwight — Thu, 11 May 2023 11:21:25 GMT

When you are working in tight spaces, how do you control the camera path for smoothness?

Comments, please.

I am getting there, but can't imagine that the meticulous bezier point editing to never make a jinky at a camera is the way it is done.

That "Smooth at cameras thing" isn't universally applying itself.

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Link — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 01:37:03 GMT

Gidday mate.

That's the way it's done alright. Use the handles on the cameras to determine your bezier, set the path to smooth, not polygon (the terminology may be wrong, as I'm away from my computer right now, but you'll see what I mean in the path settings of the camera tool). Then use the Smooth Path at Camera 'feature' at each camera (although this can counteract the bezier work you've just done. And it's a good idea to keep your targets in a similarly smooth (non overlapping) path too. I've found it very difficult to keep the camera from appearing to bounce around, but it can be done, with a lot of patience, cameras and frames.

Hope that helps Sir.

Cheers,
Link.

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Dwight — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 02:48:46 GMT

Thanks:

You've just confirmed that while with care, the camera path can be controlled into smoothness, it can't be done the way it should - that the camera can't be accelerated or decelerated smoothly, so ArchiCAD users must rely on tricky crossfades to simulate starting smoothly from a fixed point or to change fly-thru speed - unlike any other fly-through application.

Yet another problem that must be solved by exporting the file to another application ....

Link : we are forced into looking after your special friend in your absence - when you back? Just so we know when to get out of town.

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Djordje — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 08:42:05 GMT

The speed IMHE is best controlled by the placement of the cameras. The number of the frames between the cameras is fixed, therefore the distance between the cameras decides the speed. If you do want changing speeds, then your keyframes (cameras) have to be placed accordingly.

In Art•lantis, you can control this individually ... but that is not what you want or what you asked.

Doing a walkthrough of a cramped interior is a difficult exercize. Just hold your camera to your eye and try walking around a familiar space. Dizzying!

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Anonymous — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:04:34 GMT

More than dizzy: unreal.
Ever wondered why you wanted to barf up every time you saw someone play Wolfenstein(the original, not the Return)?
If you walk trough a space, you don't keep your eyes fixed on an imaginary point 20 feet in front of your nose.
Your eyes jump from one object to another, in quick sucession. Try to turn around real slow, at the same time keeping your eyes fixed straight ahead. It can't be done! (unless you unfocus your eyes).
So you path may be smooth, but the point of focus of your eyes certainly isn't, so why bother doing them in the first place??? (I know, I know, it has something to do with canadian grandmothers eating eggs in a special way...).

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Dwight — Fri, 03 Dec 2004 18:26:31 GMT

I found a solution that is cinematic. You keep the camera "velocity" constant for a given segment and edit using crossfades to shift subject instead of trying to accelerate or decelerate the camera. This is much less like a video game or a robotic walk-thru and more like it would be in a movie.

A good example of this is during the opening sequences of "Dolores Claiborne," as we fly over the oceanfront community, crossfade into the town, crossfade thru the forest, crossfade thru the front door and arrive at the landing just as the old lady crashes down. Here the sequence ends.

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Erika Epstein — Sat, 07 May 2005 20:29:45 GMT

That's the way it's done alright. Use the handles on the cameras to determine your bezier, set the path to smooth, not polygon (the terminology may be wrong, as I'm away from my computer right now, but you'll see what I mean in the path settings of the camera tool). Then use the Smooth Path at Camera 'feature' at each camera (although this can counteract the bezier work you've just done. And it's a good idea to keep your targets in a similarly smooth (non overlapping) path too. I've found it very difficult to keep the camera from appearing to bounce around, but it can be done, with a lot of patience, cameras and frames.

Link.

I am doing some fly-throughs around a building and even with Smooth Path the end movie still appears as though the camera is moving closer to the house between cameras. Is there anything else I could try?

Nevermind. Didn't have them all looking at the same point.

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

stefan — Mon, 09 May 2005 08:58:29 GMT

Talking about how it's done in movies reminds me of some David Fincher directed movies. IIRC, he is also a camera-man.

In Panic Room and Fight Club and a few others, part of the atmosphere of depicting the scenes ('architectural visualisation' comes to mind) is done with physically impossible camera moves (a combination of computer generated images and real camera moves).

Doing fly-throughs without any control over the eyes' direction makes for these sickening movies. If you let the camera target turn around in anticipation of a real path turn, you can make a lot easier for your viewer...

See this example (1,5 MB MPEG-1 file):
http://caad.asro.kuleuven.ac.be/downloads/cam_example.mpg

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Anonymous — Tue, 17 May 2005 15:18:53 GMT

Lot's of cameras, no inbetween frames, no bezier. Smooth as a . . .

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

tworks — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 12:03:43 GMT

hi you all,

After so many years it still seems to be very difficult to set cameras right for animation and not have the camera from appearing to bounce around or have different speeds.

In the current setup, I found one way to minimize the bounce around by having the cameras located with same distances from each other and smooth the camera path.
But then when making curves and having also a curved camera path the math is very difficult to determine the exact location to make the camea's going smooth.
Then.. when going vertical up and down with your camera.. like walking up the stairs (or just fly around in whatever scene you imagine)... the calculation for good location of camera distances is a job for Einsteins 😉

The logical thing would be for Graphisoft to have another
(or a second way with tick box) to determine the calculation of an animation with cameras;
Not with frames between cameras like it is now,
but with total frames from first to last camera (and not minimized so low), and then with same speed all the way.
(If the math can be done by cpu instead of our brains... that would make our lives much easier 😉

I hope that Graphisoft is considering this or can consider this for near future. (if it has not already been changed for the better in AC20, has it?)

cheers,

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 12:14:16 GMT

Yeah! Long time ago 🙂
This is how we solved this now. . . Lumion.
https://lumion3d.com/

Cheers

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

tworks — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 12:20:44 GMT

Lasse wrote:
Yeah! Long time ago 🙂
This is how we solved this now. . . Lumion.
https://lumion3d.com/

Cheers

Hi Lasse,
mmm...?
... seems to me it is not a solution but more like a coverup with fadeovers of partial animations, don't you think?
greetz,

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Anonymous — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 12:23:59 GMT

Yes! But waiting for GS to implement something that we want can take a long time 😉

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

tworks — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 12:28:44 GMT

Lasse wrote:
Yes! But waiting for GS to implement something that we want can take a long time 😉

Yes, but more then a decade makes me unpatient.
It would be nice to hear from GS what they think about this subject.
Maybe someone can ring a bell or two?

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Erwin Edel — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 13:43:03 GMT

On the (thankfully!!) rare occassion we render out a flythrough, I export it to BIMx with the option ticked that turns the cameras into a flythrough there, to preview the speed a bit. You can also render out the 3d window, but BIMx is a bit faster to save out.

We don't do the one big long unending flythrough type of video though... so yeah, use Adobe Premiere and use crossfades to combine a set of clips.

If we would be doing more of these on a regular basis, we'd probably get something like lumion or twinmotion, which seems to be better equiped for making these kind of flythroughs. Then again, you can't design a building in those programs, so specialised software for the win

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

tworks — Wed, 07 Sep 2016 15:21:09 GMT

Erwin wrote:
On the (thankfully!!) rare occassion we render out a flythrough, I export it to BIMx with the option ticked that turns the cameras into a flythrough there, to preview the speed a bit. You can also render out the 3d window, but BIMx is a bit faster to save out.
...
If we would be doing more of these on a regular basis, we'd probably get something like lumion or twinmotion, which seems to be better equiped for making these kind of flythroughs. ...

Yes BimX can be nice as preview, but imo it is not good enough to make a very attractive rendered animations.
It is too bad that we cannot make a proper animation within ArchiCAD.
Not all of us use a third party render software and just use the internal kernel of Cinerender to make renderings (stills and animation).
I use a ArchiCAD render plugin (OctaneRender) myself and no escape for me (and a lot users I guess) to export outside ArchiCAD to make the renders I want/need.
Maybe you are right that twinmotion is better equiped for flythroughs.. I guess there is a lot more out there to do our thing.
But GS has made this great function of making animation... the thing now is to make it work properly, or better said more usefull.

Where and how can 'we' bring this to the attention of GS?

cheers,

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

Erwin Edel — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 06:43:58 GMT

We only use BIMx to preview the speed and motion of the flythrough, rather rendering it out without checking, which can take a very long time.

Re: Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

tworks — Thu, 08 Sep 2016 07:54:48 GMT

Erwin wrote:
We only use BIMx to preview the speed and motion of the flythrough, rather rendering it out without checking, which can take a very long time.

Aah, yes that's a good way to show preview of path to client