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BryceTalk Camera Discussion
June 29, 1999
Part 4 of 4
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BryceTalk Camera Discussion, June 29, 1999
Part 4

AuntiAlias: Any other questions? tips? Things you do when animating camera motion?

if so:

?

or

!

gdmsynth: ?

AuntiAlias: yes?

gdmsynth: When moving points on the path, the speed along the path gets altered. This is very difficult to correct for. Any suggestions?

AuntiAlias: Anyone have any suggestions for gdm on this?

gdmsynth: (This is such an interesting topic and we're down to 13 people!)

AuntiAlias: I've got lots of knowledge of the theory on this, but haven't yet done tons of practical things...

gdmsynth: Altering the Path with the T, B, and C keys helps some but its difficult to get it smooth again.

AuntiAlias: yeah.. the trajectory is good that way!

gdmsynth: Wish we could make another path from an "altered path".

gdmsynth: Once we convert the trajectory to a path the trajectory is history (unless we backed up first ;-)

AuntiAlias: you can duplicate paths

aaah, you mean a trajectory?

gdmsynth: But not trajectories.

AuntiAlias: I guess you could this way:

save scene, then save as different name

then do conversion from trajectory to path in second scene

keeping the first trajectory

you can copy and paste paths as objects

you can also save them as objects

so...

AuntiAlias: you do that, and keep going back and forth between the two, and you can then make alterations to your trajectory.... and keep pathing it.. to your heart's content

KathG: Time for me to go.....Thank you Aunti for sharing your time and knowledge with us :) Oh would you consider doing a night on Creating lights Etc . to get the best out of them :)

Rosy: lights would be GREAT

gdmsynth: Yes, I see but that's a very round about way.

AuntiAlias: roundabout yes, but possible....

; ).

and I thought of it just now off the top of my head...

AuntiAlias: may come up with another one

in time

Purusha: ?

AuntiAlias: Purusha?

gdmsynth: Good idea but my scenes are 50M + and take a long time to open and close. Doesn't seem terribly practical.

AuntiAlias: go ahead with your question

aaah, yes, I can see how that might be, gdm....

Purusha: what did gdm mean by "Altering the Path with the T, B, and C keys helps some but its difficult to get it smooth again."

AuntiAlias: <--have been working with 30 MB scenes lately... take 5 mins to save eaach time

tho you can delete all obejcts except for the essential ones....

to hone down on a "trajectory altering" scene version

may or may not work depending on the requirements....

is one pain-in-the-you-know-what session while you do things to make scene smaller

(another idea: for that scene, make terrains all low resolution)

it depends how badly you want to keep the initial trajectory for alteration possibilities

Purusha.. good question: when your mouse cursor is over the blue points in a trajectory, there are things you can do to alter the shape of the curve

AuntiAlias: holding down the T, B and C keys each do different things....

T is for tension

and the other two are for things whose name I don't remember off the top of my head

but what you do is this:

gdmsynth: B is bias

AuntiAlias: press one of those keys and then drag the point

gdmsynth: C is curve?

AuntiAlias: hang on a sec... let me check it out in the scene I got here

gdmsynth: Sometimes you have to press the key before selecting the point (don't remember which one)

AuntiAlias: yeah... I think so

cool things, that

Here's what I did to see what's waht

I just made a three point curve from top view

made a path from a to b

and then put time scrubber in the middle, and dragged object out so that there'd be a curve

moved scrubber so that middle point was showing without object being in the way

and tried each

C adjusts the fatness or the skinnyness of the curve

in Adobe Illustrator bezier handle-speak, it extends the handles

Oh!

and you can, in the object attributes dialog, under the Animation section

select an option that shows your trajectory handles

it's called "show handles"

gdmsynth: There is a good tutorial on this on line. Maybe on the B-Smooth site? (Search for Bryce Animation tutorials - there aren't very many).

AuntiAlias: then C makes that handle longer or shorter, to make the curve fatter and skinnier

the B biases the curve...

so it favors one or the other side of the point

oops

I just lied

It's not C.. but T

AuntiAlias: T makes handle longer/shorter

B biases the curve

gdmsynth: B shifts it to one side or the other.

AuntiAlias: and C "bends" the handles

so that you can have a sharp point or a smooth curve

gdmsynth: (Curve FOV)

AuntiAlias: can also shift in one direction or another...

lol... fov ; )

AuntiAlias: appearance from top view is the same, behavior is way differnet1 : )

Purusha: darn, and I missed a few paragraphs while I left my desk!

AuntiAlias: log'll be posted in a day or so, Purusha! : )

Purusha: thanks! ;-)

AuntiAlias: speakin' o which, i better save the log again

gdmsynth: ?

AuntiAlias: so..... any more questions?

heh!

gdmsynth: Is there a shortcut to selecting the camera? I'm always finding myself mousing my way to the little selection triangle.

AuntiAlias: gdm, you're *full* of them! ; )

yes

selection palette

pop up menu

there's an option near the top

select camera

gdmsynth: Sorry I'm trying to contrain myself...

AuntiAlias: ; )

gdmsynth: What is the palette pop up?

AuntiAlias: Theyu're all good questions

Purusha: gotta go - thank you all :-)

AuntiAlias: between the select family controls and the selection arrows on select palette

AuntiAlias: a little downward pointing triangle

gdmsynth: Thanks...just trying to figure this amazing program out.

AuntiAlias: popup menu.. select meshes, select groups. select inverse, select none

3dradmd: ?

AuntiAlias: 3dramdmd... go ahead with your question! : )

gdmsynth: Hmmm. I'm not sure...I'll look around for it. Thanks.

AuntiAlias: (toward the right hand side, gdm)

but left of solo mode/arrow buttons

3dradmd: Hi I just entered the room, Once I opened a scene file on a CD and there were multiple cameras visible. How did they do this?

gdmsynth: Oh! I see, that's what I was talking about. I meant is there a keyboard shortcut to your "shortcut"?

3dradmd: Is there some secret way to have multiple cameras?

AuntiAlias: multiple cameras visible?

yow! that's the first I heard of it..

what was the scene file?

gdmsynth: Smoke and mirrors....

AuntiAlias: re: shortcuts, only shortcut I know of is to type "s" to toggle back n forth bewteen time and selection palettes....

3dradmd: It was on a version 2 CD I think cant remember the file

AuntiAlias: oh, I'm interested in knowing more about that one; can you find it again?

3dradmd: I'll try, thanks

Ringo: Yeah, couse copy and paste doesn't work for the camera.

AuntiAlias: no short cut for selection, tho you can hold down the control key over one or more objects in wireframe, and when you press mouse down, you get pop-up menu that lists all objects that are currently located "under" your mouse

one thing I've discovered, tho

gdmsynth: Copy matrix and Paste matrix works for the camera.

Rosy: not the same as multiple saved camera positions??

gdmsynth: Close.

AuntiAlias: you can inadvertantly select all and group...

which means that your camera is part of a group

I've done that (unintentionally, of course)

gdmsynth: You save an object as a camera placer and then paste the camera to it.

AuntiAlias: and then copied and pasted the group from one scene to another

the camera doesn't come with....

but....

in terms of defining what the groups' bounding box is, the camera's ghost is there

I'd move the group and it'd be strange

the group's boundign box would get larger or smaller as if there were another object, with a hidden wireframe, still in the group

AuntiAlias: can't remember if I went back to first scene and ungrouped, deselected camera, and regrouped and re-copied, or if I ungrouped and regrouped in new scene to get rid of camera ghost

yes, you can do camera placeholders, too....

AuntiAlias: I believe that I explained that way back in the days of The KPT Bryce Book, even! : )

AuntiAlias: any more questions? any more tips?

We've been at this two hours...

: )

well..... you all are quite silent!

gdmsynth: Lots but we'd be going for another two hours. Did you get the e-mail I sent (two)?

Heather: This Bryce is so big and so deep and so wide

(Seuss)

Rosy: LOL

AuntiAlias: just now? no, I've been in this chat...

don

Betty: no qu. here. Too much to digest before I have a qu.

AuntiAlias: don't have time to type all of this off the top of my head.... AND check email!

tho I appreciate the compliment to my abilities to multi-task, gdm! :D

gdmsynth: I sent something and it got lost!

AuntiAlias: well....

Rosy: Been great Aunti but I must whiz away!

gdmsynth: I have lots of other question but we'd be here for two more hours!

AuntiAlias: I think it's time to wrap up here..

>>>> Next week (Tues): Lighting in Bryce!

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