Tim Nelson Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 I'm trying to animate a target camera that starts from a top view looking down. But for some reason, when the camera is in that position it starts doing all kinds of weird things with rotation & roll, and I can't lock it into the view that I need it to be. This is really retarded, what am I doing wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chad Warner Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 Try linking it to a dummy and rotating/moving the dummy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 27, 2009 Author Share Posted May 27, 2009 Ok I'll try it, thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 27, 2009 Author Share Posted May 27, 2009 No, the dummy didn't seem to help. Try doing a target camera looking straight down and move it around - its infuriating. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 We tried doing this a couple of months ago and never could get it to work right. I could never get a smooth transition from the top view to a perspective view. I tried using free (major pain to animate!) and target cameras, using dummies, animating along a path, and just keyframing the transforms. I ended up giving up on it and just starting from a very high aerial but with some angle to it. If I remember correctly the free camera almost got me there but it was such a nuisance to animate with all the rotations I had to do that it just wasn't worth the truoble.You could try using a look at constraint with a free camera but then you will probably run into the same twisting problems you get with a target camera. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 27, 2009 Author Share Posted May 27, 2009 Thanks for the thoughts Brian. I had in fact started with a free camera, but my animation path looked terrible, so I was going to try to use a target to smooth it out. I'll "look" into the look at constraint. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 27, 2009 Author Share Posted May 27, 2009 I think its pretty funny that even the Max help file makes note of the target camera problem. This is under the LookAt constraint. "The LookAt constraint controls an object’s orientation so that it’s always looking at another object. It locks an object’s rotation so that one of its axes points toward the target object. The LookAt axis points toward the target, while the Upnode axis defines which axis points upward. If the two coincide, a flipping behavior may result. This is similar to pointing a target camera straight up." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 27, 2009 Author Share Posted May 27, 2009 LookAt seemed to work great at first, but I experienced the flipping with that too. There's got to be a way to do this, I mean really! Its not that complicated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted May 27, 2009 Share Posted May 27, 2009 Why not use a non-target camera and simply keyframe your positions? In C4D also you can get odd rotations with a camera on a complete vertical axis, but it's controllable, at the very least, by typing in the angles on the coordinate panel. You can try making the target a sub to the camera to force it to stay put, or maybe put the target AND camera under a whatever-you-call-them-in-Max (in C4D they are 'nulls') so you can position them both at the same time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
William Alexander Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 That's a common problem in Max, and C4D for sure with target cameras. Best thing I've found is to do the basic animation using the target as little as possible and mainly auto-key or manual key the camera. Get it in close to what you want and delete the target or disable-remove the look at constraints. The later you jave a visual reference to "look at" ;) The camera movements remain key framed and all you have to do is key the rotation of the camera... use the target representation in your viewport. ...Yes the curve editor is your friend, know him love him (platonically). hehe Another solution is let go of the idea you MUST BE PERFECTLY STRIAGHT UP AND DOWN. This is a camera based animation-perfect is an animations enemy, can see it a mile away. LOL That aside, sorry, offset the camera a few inches or feet and that will stop the gyration. Honestly the only time anything in a CG animation needs to be 'perfect' is matching CG to live footage and I gaurantee there is no perfect straight line up and down. "Hi my name is William and I too am a recovering CAD perfect thinker in a CG World" Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lester_Masterson Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 Umm... This is just like real life. Grab your digital camera and just try to take a picture looking straight down. Notice how your whole body flips and flops, smashing your head against the piano, loose change flying about...it simply cannot be done. Seriously, this has cheesed me off for years as well. I just end up using the "almost" vertical option as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WAcky Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 Notice how your whole body flips and flops, smashing your head against the piano, loose change flying about... Actually that happens to me daily whenever max does something that defies logic... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crazy Homeless Guy Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 What if you use a target camera, but stop 1/8" before top dead center looking down? ...will anyone really know? ...will it keep the camera from flipping? This is presuming that the flip happens when it hits top dead center. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 28, 2009 Author Share Posted May 28, 2009 What if you use a target camera, but stop 1/8" before top dead center looking down? ...will anyone really know? ...will it keep the camera from flipping? This is presuming that the flip happens when it hits top dead center. It actually starts to flip within maybe the first 5-10 degrees of being vertical. You can see it from the side view how it starts shifting the higher you raise it up. Ernest, I was hoping to use the target camera for this because basically I want to keep everything centered on a fixed position at the center of the building. Its a really typical/generic fly-around, and with a free camera I seem to be getting a lot of bumps and shifts between key frames that look very clumsy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 Here is the rig I use for these circumstances, A master dummy, a secondary dummy, and a free camera, linked in that order with the master at the top, all aligned. then take the free camera and pull it along it's axis (dolly away from the dummies), once the camera is the distance away, rotate the secondary dummy 90 degrees in the x, use the secondary dummy for the x rotation, the master dummy for the position of the rig and the z rotation, and move the camera along it's own axis to get closer or further away. A note, I always use free cameras in animation, and the key is keeping your curves as simple as possible, this rig may be dummy heavy but if you keep the dummies to only controlling one or two components of the animation it can be very manageable to get a perfectly smooth animation, dropping from straight down, and turning around the model in a smooth manner. If this is hard to follow I can upload a file, -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 28, 2009 Author Share Posted May 28, 2009 Hey Nils! Thanks for the help. That IS hard to follow, haha, but I haven't tried it yet. If you want to share a file, that'd be great, or I'll give it a shot myself later today. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 If this is hard to follow I can upload a file, -Nils Please do. I think I get the idea but I'm sure I would screw up the details. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim Nelson Posted May 28, 2009 Author Share Posted May 28, 2009 Yea...I was trying it for a bit and I don't really know as much about this as I probably need to to figure it out. Help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 Here is the rig I use for these circumstances, A master dummy, a secondary dummy, and a free camera, linked in that order with the master at the top, all aligned. then take the free camera and pull it along it's axis (dolly away from the dummies), once the camera is the distance away, rotate the secondary dummy 90 degrees in the x, use the secondary dummy for the x rotation, the master dummy for the position of the rig and the z rotation, and move the camera along it's own axis to get closer or further away. A note, I always use free cameras in animation, and the key is keeping your curves as simple as possible, this rig may be dummy heavy but if you keep the dummies to only controlling one or two components of the animation it can be very manageable to get a perfectly smooth animation, dropping from straight down, and turning around the model in a smooth manner. If this is hard to follow I can upload a file, -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Cassil Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 Oh that's much clearer now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BrianKitts Posted May 28, 2009 Share Posted May 28, 2009 (edited) I also prefer using free cameras and a dummy method, although my rig is nowhere near the professional level the Nils achieves. My preference is to use a nurbs curve (you could also spline it) to set the camera path. Create a dummy and then set your curve as a path constraint for the dummy. Then create a free camera, align it to the center of the dummy and link the two. Then I autokey the free cam's direction throughout the timeline as needed. Pretty much a simple watered down dolly-cam. Allows for a split between the camera position controlled by the path constraint and dummy and the target controlled by the free cam (without a target) Example attached. Edited May 28, 2009 by BrianKitts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nils Norgren Posted May 29, 2009 Share Posted May 29, 2009 Sorry For the confusing posts, here is a max scene with the animated camera rig. Select each object and see what is animated about it, the master dummy controls the z rotation, the secondary dummy controls the x rotation, and the camera moves along it's own axis to get closer or further away. The master dummy could be moved from place to place to focus on specific objects. Hope this helps, I don't use cameras like this often, but when it is necessary this is how I do it. -Nils Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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