Smooth, Precise Paths for Fly-through. How?

[Dwight]

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.

[Link]

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.

[Dwight]

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.

[Djordje]

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!

[Anonymous]

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...).

[Dwight]

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.

[Erika Epstein]

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.

[stefan]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[tworks]

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,