Camera Animation Probs!

[claudia777]

I am attempting to do a walk through and I need to be able to stop in each room, look around, then walk back out the door and continue through the facility on to other rooms. Two questions..(I am completely new to animation so please excuse my ignorance.)

1) How exactly can I get a smoothly animated camera? So far I have tried creating 2 paths. One path the cam is on constrained to and the other, a dummy object is constrained which is also what the camera is supposed to be following. My problem is that the times don't line up and I run into walls. By the time the dummy object has finished making it's path through the room, the camera is already down the hall attempting to look through walls... ??

2) How do I animate the opening of doors in conjunction with the camera animation?

 

Sorry it's so long but any help would be greatly appreciated!!

[Victor Erthal]

Hi Claudia,

Same animation as the other post?

After you assign to the camera and the dummy the path controller, you have to adjust time with the curve editor, by creating keypoints on the curves and sliding them to the desired time (with bezier to smooth things a bit). At first its a little complicated, but after you start understanding the graph you will be more comfortable. I guess max has its own curve editor tutorials.

[claudia777]

Yes, yes...this project will be the death of me! Do you think that using the path constraints is the right way to go about this? The manual suggested using a free cam so I tried that as well and I ended up manually changing each view and setting a key frame...it's a little jerky, and every time I add frames and start from the beginning, my starting point is always off and I have to readjust it :-( What do you think will be the simplest method?? THanks again!!

[Victor Erthal]

I guess there are little rights and wrongs in 3d. There is what i prefer to use, and what others do, but that is another loooooong thread.

Well, i think that the path contraint gives you much more control and smoth movements as soon as you get long with the curve editor. And the door animation can be simply done by adding keyframes and re-adjusting it directly on the time slider.