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View Full Version : camera banking problem - losing hair over this one!

purdisc
03-26-2004, 06:54 PM
Dear all

my aim:

1. to animate an aircraft through several turns include banking

2. to follow the aircraft from any chosen distance with a camera and a Camera Target

to do this:

1. the aircraft follows an Align to Spline path with the banking controlled by the Rail Spline - so far, so good

2. i place the Camera Target in the aircraft and then dump Camera and Target as Children of the aircraft - camera follows ...however:

the problem:

- i want the camera to stay steady and not follow the banking


my thoughts:

i could copy the same Align Spline path and use it for the camera - however this gets complicated (ie. catching up, slowing down etc)

i could animate the camera "manually" but this seems to defeat the purpose of owning a relatively high end package like C4d v8.5

any ideas or thoughts anyone? .... please! i am tearing my hair out here (and believe me, there wasn't much hair to start with!). There must be a way of keeping the camera steady.

i can mail the file to anyone who wants to see it

thanks in advance

John Purdie
ps: i have mailed the problem to Luke at Maxon UK but he's been busy with training this week and i haven't had a reply yet.
plasmaworX
03-26-2004, 08:07 PM
i have given it a thought (and a try), and i have come up with this:

maybe it's more complicated than you want, but i think it works:

you have: a plane, a camera and two splines (path and rail)
you need: a copy of the path spline, which you place, let's say above (y-axis) the original path, and two nulls.
now have the first null follow the second path exactly the way the plane does with path1 (but without banking).
put null2 in the position of your plane (transfer settings) and put it as child of the plane.
give the null2-under-plane a point-to expression and have it point to null1 on path2.

the trick: obviously, the point-to expression overrides the banking, so you can put the camera as child of the null-under plane, and it doesn't bank... (hopefully)
plasmaworX
03-26-2004, 08:17 PM
on second thought: try expresso.
i'm no good at all at it, but you should be able to give the cam a simple expression saying 'rotation B = constant'
(i haven't tried, though, because i just had this idea in the bathtub, where i'm returning to just when i finish these lines)
plasmaworX
03-26-2004, 09:52 PM
just tried the expresso thing: works like a charm, the expresso expression overrides the banking, too!
here the expresso node:
http://www.plasmaworx.de/cgtalkstuff/cam_bank.jpg
the 'cam' node of course represents the camera!
purdisc
03-27-2004, 10:59 AM
Plasma

thank you so very much for that

you gave me a lesson in Xpresso which i had been putting off! - Just the basics were enough to understand what you had done. Very complicated (a kind of trial and error approach is needed even after reading the tutorials!)

just what i needed - keep taking those baths - i'm more of a shower person myself (living in the UK the water pressure is not usually high enough so the only ideas i have tend to revolve around getting out as soon as possible!)

thanx again

johnp
purdisc
03-27-2004, 11:22 AM
hi Plasma and anyone else interested

i have another solution from the Postforum

http://www.postforum.com/forums/read.php?f=6&i=101840&t=101808

simpler and something that i had tried earlier (without success) but one small change was all i needed.

thanx again

i will post the finished result in a weeks time orso

ttfn johnp
plasmaworX
03-27-2004, 11:26 AM
glad i could help! :thumbsup: see you around!
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