Save camera as favorite?

[JohnJay]

Is it possible to save perspective camera views and set up and use in another scene?

[Podolsky]

What do you mean by that?

You can have for example set of cameras - path (let say all cameras showing each room) and save the set in view map. Then you can rename cameras names in the view map following room numbers and names. Then you can duplicate cameras set in the view with different settings - let say to show core only - then you are getting the same set of views but with different content in 3D. When you add your camera set to BIMx you are getting there gallery items with names of rooms for better navigation. This is maximum of camera use I found out in ArchiCAD.

But when you want to have a favourite camera, what parameters would you like to save as favourite? Camera angle, z of camera and z of target? Sun position?

[Barry Kelly]

The camera tool does not have favourites.
But if you already have a camera set up with the heights, distance, view cone, etc., then you can ALT click it (pipette) to collect its settings.


Barry.

[JohnJay]

Podolsky wrote:
What do you mean by that?

I'm an Octane user and I like to combine AC line renders and Octane renders so need a camera match.

Octane renders AXO/ISO views different to AC so to get a match I use a workaround - a perspective camera with 1deg field of view from given viewpoints and with target at or close to origin.

I'd like to be able to quickly add these cameras when needed rather than set them up manually each time.

[Podolsky]

Ah, OTOY is a good company and Octane is very cool. Good for you.

No, unfortunately you cannot save cameras as favourite or anything like that. Camera tool, by the way, is very old. It was not updated for ages (apart of recent update of handling 2 point perspective).

So what happens if you try to render isometric view of ArchiCAD in Octane render? It just not supporting isometric views and you cannot launch it?

[Barry Kelly]

If you change the settings before you place a camera, then every future camera will have the same settings (unless you change them before placing again).
Of course this is only in the one file.

So if you use a template, set the camera and save the template.

However if you have many files, yes you have to set the initial camera up each time (unless you have used your template, then it should already be set).

As there is no such thing as a camera favourite, the best you can do is have a file with a camera set up as you like.
Then you can copy and paste that camera to other files and it will keep the same settings.

It seems you can also save a camera as a MOD file.
Then you can merge that MOD file into any other file and then activate the file path.
It will create a new file path each time you merge and it seems the camera is placed at exactly the same location as when it was saved.

Not perfect solutions, but might be worth a try.

Barry.

[JohnJay]

Podolsky wrote:
Camera tool, by the way, is very old. It was not updated for ages (apart of recent update of handling 2 point perspective).

So what happens if you try to render isometric view of ArchiCAD in Octane render? It just not supporting isometric views and you cannot launch it?

Unfortunately the 2 point perspective is not supported by Octane (Octane has its own version) so again this needs a workaround. Luckily it's 'just' a matter levelling the camera, increasing the field of view and then cropping to suit.

Octane does support Ortho views, but it gets the view angle from the perspective window, not the AXO window so no good if you need to match AC and Octane cameras.

Another issue is that you can't get a true top down view in the perspective view in AC as the distance between camera and target must be minimum 10mm. Plus when the FOV is only 1deg AC does this weird thing where you need to make the distance more than 10mm (sometimes needs to be metres) otherwise the view won't rotate properly and the render rotation is different to the viewport rotation...

Not ideal at all but combining AC edges and Octane renders makes even the very basic AC library objects look more than good enough for presentation purposes, which means I no longer feel the need to produce photoreal renders in most cases.

[JohnJay]

Barry wrote:
If you change the settings before you place a camera, then every future camera will have the same settings (unless you change them before placing again).
Of course this is only in the one file.

So if you use a template, set the camera and save the template.

However if you have many files, yes you have to set the initial camera up each time (unless you have used your template, then it should already be set).

As there is no such thing as a camera favourite, the best you can do is have a file with a camera set up as you like.
Then you can copy and paste that camera to other files and it will keep the same settings.

It seems you can also save a camera as a MOD file.
Then you can merge that MOD file into any other file and then activate the file path.
It will create a new file path each time you merge and it seems the camera is placed at exactly the same location as when it was saved.

Not perfect solutions, but might be worth a try.

Barry.

I'll look into these options when I can. In the meantime I've found that it is possible to copy/paste a bunch of cameras from one scene to another so that helps.

Thanks to both of you for your suggestions