Camera Animation Problem
Camera Animation Problem
(OP)
hi all,
Has anyone successfully done a walk through animation? I am following the example in the help with no luck. i have the camer a attached to the sled, and i can drag it all thru the spline path. But when i try the distance mate to make it move, it follows the staright line, and when it gets to a turn it chokes and stops. thoughts. this process seems to be extremely difficult. :( thanks!
Has anyone successfully done a walk through animation? I am following the example in the help with no luck. i have the camer a attached to the sled, and i can drag it all thru the spline path. But when i try the distance mate to make it move, it follows the staright line, and when it gets to a turn it chokes and stops. thoughts. this process seems to be extremely difficult. :( thanks!






RE: Camera Animation Problem
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
What did you dream? It's all right--we told you what to dream.
--Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine
RE: Camera Animation Problem
RE: Camera Animation Problem
You're right--camera in help seems always to refer to a sled. I saw this no-sled mentioned in the What's New for 2007 or a VAR presentation (don't remember which).
Anyway--you may want to stick with the sled idea. I normally create a point on my sled, and the point mates to the path (you need a single-entity path--not a series of segments--to get that, use the Fit Spline tool to convert your segments to a single spline [if not already using a spline for your path]). Mount the camera to the sled and change the focus of the camera within the animation to update what the camera sees as it moves. This can be a pain in more complicated assemblies, so you may need to be careful.
To best control the motion of the sled, move it in small-increment steps (instead of moving along the whole path in one step). The trouble with this is that it's tough to keep the movement speed constant. Takes a lot of tweaking.
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
What did you dream? It's all right--we told you what to dream.
--Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine
RE: Camera Animation Problem
RE: Camera Animation Problem
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Camera Animation Problem
Rob Rodriguez CSWP
www.axiscadsolutions.com
www.robrodriguez.com
http://designsmarter.typepad.com/rob_rodriguez/
Eastern Region SWUGN Representative www.swugn.org www.nvtswug.com
SW 2007 SP 2.0
RE: Camera Animation Problem
And yes, almost anything would be simpler to use than Animator. Lots of limitations and bugs, not much help, lots of heartache. I use Animator all the time, but it's quite broken for "production" use.
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
What did you dream? It's all right--we told you what to dream.
--Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine
RE: Camera Animation Problem
And the materials editor is much better than most of the other options on the market.
Eltron, thanks for the tip. Never thought about contraining the camera to a sketch. Does this work on 3D sketches too?
"Never offend people with style when you can offend them with substance." --Sam Brown
http://www.danielanderson.info
RE: Camera Animation Problem
I've been able to get decent animations (and I really like the power of PhotoWorks' rendering engine)--but the animations of the sort I do are much more difficult than necessary. I think the programming interface and manner of part motion could be improved dramatically (and should be if Animator is ever to be considered for animations more complicated than exploded views or part rotations). My only options for most of what I do is a series of crazy hacks and work-arounds that could be considered nothing short of heterodoxy.
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
What did you dream? It's all right--we told you what to dream.
--Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine
RE: Camera Animation Problem
I agree with Theo. Animator is much more buggy than it should be. Yes, you can eventually end up where you want to be, but you have to use all of your brains up trying to get there. I believe the most fundamental limitation with animator is its inability to "understand" remotely complex motion (especially something as complicated as spinning objects over 180°). I think it's frustrating because it is on the verge of being uber-powerful, but for some reason these motion-related issues remain release after release.
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Camera Animation Problem
RE: Camera Animation Problem
Dan
www.eltronresearch.com
RE: Camera Animation Problem
RE: Camera Animation Problem
Jeff Mowry
www.industrialdesignhaus.com
What did you dream? It's all right--we told you what to dream.
--Pink Floyd, Welcome to the Machine