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New Camera Tool: POV Camera

Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 12:09 am
by Peteroid
POV Camera

What it does: for the selected Frame range, have the camera 'look' from the POV of the Layer.

Another way of thinking of this is that the camera is attached to the Layer, and whatever you do to the Layer in a spacial and rotational way now happens to the camera. It is a virtual 'Camera Layer' of sorts now!

There are parameters besides the frame range.

'Use Origin' uses the origin of the Layer instead of its drawn/created location (this establishes the 'virtual origin').

The 'POV Delta' allows moving the camera an (delta_x, delta_y, delta_z) vector away from the virtual origin... for example to get a more realistic 'eye' position.

'Reverse' changes the direction the camera is facing (i.e., if looking out face, now is looking through back of head).

**WARNING**: This also applies to all my other camera tools. All of these work off of transformations performed DIRECTLY to the Layer. Thus, if a Layer is in a PARENT Layer and you move the Parent Layer, this will move the Layer but leave the Camera behind (since the transform was performed on the Parent and not DIRECTLY on the Layer itself).

This can be the source of confusion, or the source of some interesting and powerful tricks! :)

HOW TO OVERCOME:

- only target layers at the top level (not the child of anything)
- target the parent of the Layer and only move the Layer by moving the Parent
- create an invisible 'focus point' Layer that IS a top level layer, and have it attached to a bone in the layer to be used, and then applying the camera tools to this 'focus point' layer instead of the layer directly will accomplish the desired affect.

installation: http://www.peteroid.com/share/pao_pov_camera.zip

This gives a visual idea of what POV Camera does:

ASP7 Screenshot using POV Camera:

http://www.peteroid.com/images/pov_camera_in_asp7.png
http://www.peteroid.com/images/pov_camera_in_asp7_2.png

Posted: Mon Sep 27, 2010 1:36 am
by meltedtoons
nice! I'm going to add this on the Scripts on a Post thread.

Posted: Sat Oct 02, 2010 6:09 am
by Peteroid
I have identified an issue with POV camera. It is not working right in regards to the delta offsets. I'm working on this now...

Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 7:33 pm
by Peteroid
rajlostmarble wrote:This is seems to be shot with a steadicam that is strapped to the actors/cameraman's chest. However, a lot of vests have an arm that the camera is extended from so that the camera is away from the cameraman's body and the footage is viewable. However, in the clip you have the camera is very close to the body so a vest like this would not work. It is definitely not shot over the shoulder as there is too much movement for there to be a second person constantly over the shoulder of the actor.

______________________

natural soap bar
That is the issue I was dealing with. It can't be solved completely (without writing a complete 3D math system on the side), because the rotation system that AS7 uses are not absolute but relative to the direction facing... for example, if facing down the X-axis then roll is about the x-axis, if facing down the z-axis then roll is about the z-axis, etc... This makes figuring out where a point is that is acting like it is attached to an outstretched arm (i.e., the line representing the shortest distance to the plane of the Layer must remain both perpendicular and of fixed distance) very difficult to compute. And this is necessary for what you are talking about (I think).

However. If you only use one of these, the system still works. Thus, if your camera is attached to a layer that only rotates about the y-axis (and the x-rotation and z-rotation are exactly zero at all times) then you can, indeed, specify a delta-Z... which should act as if the camera is being held by an extended arm of the given length.

Right now I'm working on a computer game program, so the camera stuff I did a few month back is hard to remember.... hehe

Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 8:16 pm
by F.M.
Spammer got you! Peteroid.

Posted: Mon Nov 15, 2010 8:52 pm
by Genete
rajlostmarble's post is just a copy of this link:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 918AAdL0i6

Can PLEASE someone ban this user? I can ignore its user name and avoid read its posts but at this rate I have to avoid read mostly all the posts...

-G

Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2010 3:34 am
by Peteroid
F.M. wrote:Spammer got you! Peteroid.
I just thought it was someone who used a 'less-than-perfect' translating application... lol :)