Floating camera - Interior walkthrough - Simply Maya User Community

# 1 11-01-2012 , 03:06 AM

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Join Date: Oct 2011

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Floating camera - Interior walkthrough

I just finished modelling a house and am going to set up cameras tomorrow. How would you set them to show the whole house off. I want it floating from one room to another, slowing down and looking at various objects as it goes around the house. Kind of like this 3D Architectural House Home Interior Exterior Animation - YouTube
3D Interior walk through animation Villa - YouTube
plus some up and down angles..

I have almost no experience with this.. and couldn't find much online either.

The only way that comes to mind is to create a curve, to attach "camera and aim" to it and have it go from point A to point B (while animating the aim at the same time). Then duplicating the came at point B, creating a new curve, attach, repeat, etc., but this won't result in very smooth natural movement.

I guess I could also create a one extremely complex curve to go through the whole house, attach the camera to it, key it in the main points on the path and the adjust the timing of it in graph editor.. but there must be a better way.. Let me know if you have any suggestions, or know some good tutorials dealing with this..
Thanks!

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# 2 11-01-2012 , 01:30 PM

Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011

Posts: 520

Either record camera movement (hard to do but if you can trick the key recorder to do it, you can make the camera move however you want it). Things to be bypassed: Sometimes, when you move the camera towards one angle while it has mixed angle sizes ( in example a camera looking down but at 190 degrees), if you want to rotate the camera to the left or right, it will rotate in the opposite direction. To fix this, you first straighten the camera on let's say frame 1 and record that. Then move slider to frame 10 for example and move your camera to left or right and down at the same time and record that. Then go back to frame 1 where your camera sits normal and make it look down at the same angle that it was looking at frame 10. Record that. Now your camera should be both watching down and moving left or right without going in the opposite direction or doing a spin. Can also just use frame 2 for straightening the camera instead so that you don't have to go back to 1 and rearrange it). After that, just delete frame 2 and there will be just frame 1-10 doing the rotation. Pretty annoying, huh?

OR
use motion path, I've heard it's simple but all the tutorials around here confuse me too much so I found the 1st way easier.

Last edited by SilverFeather; 11-01-2012 at 01:33 PM.

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# 3 11-01-2012 , 08:35 PM

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Join Date: Dec 2005

Location: Toronto

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It sounds like you're not using the graph editor to fix the splines, silverfeather.

I would create a locator or dummy object, attach that to a motion path, and then parent or use constraints for the camera to the dummy object, that way you still retain full control over it's own relative movement and rotation, but have an overall track to be guided by.

-stwert

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# 4 11-01-2012 , 09:45 PM

Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011

Posts: 520

It sounds like you're not using the graph editor to fix the splines, silverfeather.

I would create a locator or dummy object, attach that to a motion path, and then parent or use constraints for the camera to the dummy object, that way you still retain full control over it's own relative movement and rotation, but have an overall track to be guided by.

Originally Posted by stwert

I keep forgetting where that is or what it can be used for. X_X I hate my short memory. What splines? *acts noobish*

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# 5 11-01-2012 , 09:50 PM

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Location: Toronto

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The graph editor is to edit your animation. The splines show a function of the changing value, (e.g. translate X) over time. That's where you can fix things like maya interpolating between frames incorrectly. Give it a look.

-stwert

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-->How to Effectively Ask Questions on Forums<--

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# 6 11-01-2012 , 10:16 PM

Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011

Posts: 520

The graph editor is to edit your animation. The splines show a function of the changing value, (e.g. translate X) over time. That's where you can fix things like maya interpolating between frames incorrectly. Give it a look.

Originally Posted by stwert

Thanks. I don't fully understand what those curves do, but so far I don't get the same error I used to get before. I don't know how that error was caused, I thought it was just because my camera wasn't set straight from the beginning.

Oh, I finally managed to get the error:
Here's what happens at a new frame recording. Camera flips on the side. This is what the graph shows. What can be done about this?
Do I have to correct this? (pic 2)
Meh, it's a total confusion. No matter how i change the points on the curves, the camera goes on tumbling like crazy.

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Last edited by SilverFeather; 11-01-2012 at 10:27 PM.

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# 7 12-01-2012 , 12:59 AM

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Try viewing one channel (e.g. rotate Y) at a time and scrub through, trying to understand how the graph editor relates to the viewport. The value for rotate will be in degrees, so 0-360 etc.
You can probably delete all the keys in the scale channels, unless you're scaling your camera. Also try keying just the translates (shift W) for the camera, then view the graph editor and scrub through, or just key the rotates (shift E). It takes a while to get a feel for what's going on, especially when you play with different tangent types, but it is essential to know if you're doing animation.

-stwert

Website - Blog - YouTube - Vimeo - Facebook - Twitter

-->How to Effectively Ask Questions on Forums<--

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# 8 12-01-2012 , 01:24 PM

Noober than noob
Join Date: Sep 2011

Posts: 520

Try viewing one channel (e.g. rotate Y) at a time and scrub through, trying to understand how the graph editor relates to the viewport. The value for rotate will be in degrees, so 0-360 etc.
You can probably delete all the keys in the scale channels, unless you're scaling your camera. Also try keying just the translates (shift W) for the camera, then view the graph editor and scrub through, or just key the rotates (shift E). It takes a while to get a feel for what's going on, especially when you play with different tangent types, but it is essential to know if you're doing animation.

Originally Posted by stwert

I did view all channels of the rotation, but somehow there seem to be more keys added all of a sudden to the animation. Which annoys me.
Also, I fix one rotation, another messes up -_-

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Floating camera - Interior walkthrough

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