Camera Animation Problem

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Chilly
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue Jan 12, 2010 3:03 am

Camera Animation Problem

Post by Chilly » Tue Jan 12, 2010 3:08 am

Hey Guys,

Hopefully you can help - i've only just got my sticky mits on this great bit of kit, but i seem to be struggling at the mo...

Ive set up a simple 2 scene animation in SketchUp, and the point of focus stays in the centre of the view pane when clicky between the two scenes. However when i render it out in Twilight, the camera seems to pan far to much and loses the object off the side of the screen... I cant seem to get it to copy SketchUps camera path perfectly... Does anyone know what im doing wrong?

Sorry if this is a dumb question...

Thanks :-)

Chilly

Chris
Posts: 5344
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:00 am
OS: Win10
SketchUp: 2016

Re: Camera Animation Problem

Post by Chris » Tue Jan 12, 2010 3:27 pm

When SketchUp animates between frames, it doesn't animate the point of focus correctly. Instead of interpolating between focus points from scene A to scene B, it pretends the focus point is a fixed distance from the camera. This seriously screws up any render with Depth Of Field. So Twilight animates the point of focus on its own.

However, this means that if the distance to the point of focus is shorter than you expect the camera can actually pivot around the view point in unexpected ways.

Try this:
Launch the Twilight View Tool. Select the first view. Highlight a point near or at the center of the scene and hit Ctrl + Left Click. This sets the target point. Then right click on your scene tab and choose update.
Next click on your second tab and choose the exact same point, or as near to it as possible, Ctrl +Left Click, update, to set the target for the second scene.

That way the target is the same in both scenes and you shouldn't experience any drift.

In the future, I think we will provide a way to disable target interpolation; it's only needed when DOF is involved.

tmors
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:02 pm

Re: Camera Animation Problem

Post by tmors » Wed Jan 27, 2010 7:13 pm

@Chris: do you know what the fixed distance that sketchup uses for focus is?

I'm trying to do an animation with sketchup natively and then with twilight to achieve some lighting effects. I will then overlay the resulting image sequences to create a composite animation. However, I'm finding that the images get out of sync in between the Schenes. I assume it's caused by this target interpolation. The trick you described will work if I can be precise about it....

-T

Chris
Posts: 5344
Joined: Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:00 am
OS: Win10
SketchUp: 2016

Re: Camera Animation Problem

Post by Chris » Fri Jan 29, 2010 11:08 pm

Hi tmors,

I'm not 100% sure off the top of my head. SketchUp doesn't interpolate target, so much as direction. When SketchUp is in the process of an interpolation the "target", as SketchUp will tell you, is a very short distance away, maybe like 1 foot away. But you would have a hard time trying to use that as the focus target; it's more intended merely to represent the "direction" of the camera.

I'm not certain that Twilight can do what you are asking, not how it is at the immediate moment. Trying to set the Twilight focus target at the same distance as SU does would be a big challenge.

We are planning to add the ability to switch "off" the target interpolation. That way you won't have to worry about it. ;)

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