camera shaking problem

[stinkyz]

Problem: Free camera in max6 is animated, but the frames along the camera path appear to be randomnly offset. This makes for a jagged animation, which is nice but not desired. My desire is to have a smooth camera movement. How do I get rid of the randomnly offset frames and have smooth camera path?

 

the attached image is a closeup of the path with screwy looking keyframes.

 

 

Ken z

[Jason Matthews]

It looks like your problem is in the keyframes. They look very jagged. Try creating a spline and animate the camera along the spline (if you haven't already). It looks like that is your problem. Look it up under the help menu.

[stinkyz]

I've tried animating the camera along a path and manually.Neither seem to work.

 

Can anyone help?

 

By the way, Max is automatically making the path jagged.

 

ken

[skogskalle]

it looks like youve drawn your path in photoshop, and then imported it to max (which allways creates jagged curves)...

 

other than that, ive no idea... if you create the path / spline in MAX it should be smooth and nice....

[Vince Paske]

Try not using a line at all. Place your free camera in the scene, move the time slider to amount of frames you need between points where you want your camera to be. Turn on the AutoKey button and move, rotate your camera into the next position.

Use the mini-curve editor to make adjustments (your can move key frames in time to adjust speed, and you can adjust the camera in space over time using the x,y,z curves, and the rotation). You can also adjust your camera tangents there as well. It makes animating a camera a breeze.

You can get a view of your path by going to the motion panel and clicking the Trajectories button.

[Ted Boardman]

>>Free camera in max6 is animated, but the frames along the camera path appear to be randomnly offset. This makes for a jagged animation, which is nice but not desired. My desire is to have a smooth camera movement. How do I get rid of the randomnly offset frames and have smooth camera path?

 

Ken,

 

This is often a symptom of having the model too far from the 0,0,0 origin. VIZ and max are only single precision math programs and you encounter rounding errors. This can happen with imported files, especially.

 

Move everything in the scene over 0,0,0 and it may help.

 

Ted

[stinkyz]

Problem solved gentlemen. Mr. Boardman hit the nail on the head. You'e a wise man. Thank you for your help.

 

I originally got the topo info from the civils and their cad info was way off in space. I didn't think anything of it while I was modeling the site. But now I know better.

 

I do have one more question...how is a single precision math program different from other programs? Is autocad a single precision math program?

 

thanks again

 

ken z

[Ted Boardman]

>>Is autocad a single precision math program?

 

No, most cad programs are double precision, Ken. Max is designed to use available computer resources for lighting and rendering rather than on modeling precision...and that's a good thing!

 

Don't get confused between accuracy and precision, though. It's easy to work at an accuracy level of 1/100 of an inch or better but that has nothing to do with the way math is handled at the program level.

 

Good luck

Ted

[Negativghostrdr]

I have an alternative solution that may work in some circumstances. I'm sure Ted's solution works for pretty much every circumstance, but I noticed you said you were using a free camera. The reason I'm here is because I had a free camera bound to a dummy object that was using a circle as a path constraint, and I was getting the shaking (jittering) problem. Your saying it was a free camera made me consider the camera type. I deleted the free camera and created a target camera instead. Since I'm just trying to get an orbit sequence I placed my target dead center on my object, and bound my new target camera to the dummy object that is using the circle as the path constraint. The shake is gone. I have a nice smooth sequence. I hope this helps somebody. It might even help me when I forget this and end up back here!

[brr]

On 7/29/2011 at 3:31 PM, Negativghostrdr said:

I have an alternative solution that may work in some circumstances. I'm sure Ted's solution works for pretty much every circumstance, but I noticed you said you were using a free camera. The reason I'm here is because I had a free camera bound to a dummy object that was using a circle as a path constraint, and I was getting the shaking (jittering) problem. Your saying it was a free camera made me consider the camera type. I deleted the free camera and created a target camera instead. Since I'm just trying to get an orbit sequence I placed my target dead center on my object, and bound my new target camera to the dummy object that is using the circle as the path constraint. The shake is gone. I have a nice smooth sequence. I hope this helps somebody. It might even help me when I forget this and end up back here!

Hi, and hello after 13 years! I hope you’re doing well. Despite all this time, the problems are still the same. 🙂 Thank you for your post; it was very helpful and solved my problem.