CGTalk - Importing Target Camera to Cinema 4D?

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gallion311

06-07-2008, 06:06 AM

Whats up guys, created a super simple Target camera animation in 3ds max. The Target stays stationary, and the camera sort of orbits around it via a couple XYZ keyframes. Nothing else is aniamted in the camera in terms of pitch, roll, etc...

So I save this file as an FBX, and bring it into Cinema 4D 10. It starts out ok, but about 45 degrees into the rotation it starts to flip upside down, then comes back up...Basically gets all whacky.

Upon closer inspection it is importing a Target Camera in Cinema, but the Target Expression has an "Up Vector" option that is empty. What exactly is this and could it help solve the problem?

I attached the CInema 4D scene in hopes that someone can see whats wrong and think of a remedy.

EDIT: The animation is 605 frames long...the timeline at the bottom is only showing 90 frames of it...It's there you just have to scroll a bit.

Thanks!
Ryan

Decade

06-07-2008, 10:54 AM

Hope this is what you wanted : The attatched file was saved in cinema 10.5
Basically, the up-vector of the tag specifies an object towards which the camera's Y axis will point, thereby preventing it from rolling. I used a null object.

gallion311

06-07-2008, 03:18 PM

Thats damn close to what I'm after but it still seems to be rolling slightly.

The camera in Max is steady as far as it's rotation, only the XYZ positions are keyframed.

Also, the goal is here is render half an animation in Max, the other half in Cinema and composite them together. So the camera moves need to be identical. Considering how nice the FBX format is I'm really surprised I'm having any difficulty at all. There's really nothin complicated going on...but for whatever reason Cinema wants to roll the camera around as it moves along.

Hopefully we can figure this one out.

Srek

06-07-2008, 03:37 PM

max and CINEMA 4D use different axis system. Rotations are not always transferable without loss.
Cheers
Björn

C.Smith

06-08-2008, 01:28 AM

Try this one. I passed the global position into a cam that stays in C4D axis.

Look through "fixed cam".

http://sugarfilmproduction.com/CamFix.zip

gallion311

06-08-2008, 01:49 AM

Wow, that's awesome C.Smith (http://forums.cgsociety.org/member.php?u=91445) thanks for extra effort in finding a solution! :applause:

I think thats exactly what I'm looking for. Is that Xpresso Tag something I can copy and paste into a new camera if I decide to edit it down the road?

Nice Site, btw...some good clientele!

Thanks again,
gallion311

C.Smith

06-08-2008, 02:06 AM

Thanks. 2 notes:

You can't copy paste that directly because it's referring to a specific camera. If that camera doesn't exist it will break the connection. However you can add a user data link widget and tie that into an Xpresso object node. So that you would be able to drop the MAX camera into that link box and the new cam will move with it's global position. But if you look at the Xpresso, you can make it in seconds. Just a matter of dragging the MAX cam and a new cam into the Xpresso window and connecting their global position.

The other thing is it gets the global position. But if you bring in actual rotation data from MAX, it won't address that. With the target tag, there is no rotations being passed. C4D is generating it's own rotations from it's own target tag.

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