Ok, then here comes a little bit more info on the rig.
As there has been some discussion in the Messiah IRC, if a camera shaker is usefull in a 3D application at all, I’d like to point out, that we will be building a shaking node that has controls for all kinds of controlable noise and jitter. Of course, no one forbids using this shaker node (once build) and apply it to other things.
For example:
[ul]
[li]A shivering, freezing character
[/li][li]Objects that start to jitter because the earth is trembling
[/li][li]etc.
[/li][/ul]
You get my point.
Task Description
The challenge is to build a camera rig, that has all features of a motion control plus a shaking control. That means, you need to have:
[ul]
[li]a base that can be freely transformed in X and Z (not in Y, because that’s what the rigs “arm” is for)
[/li][li]the same base can also rotate in heading (but normally not in pitch or bending, because it is “standing” on the floor)
[/li][li]an arm, that can be pitched to get the camera into higher altitudes
[/li][li]a realistic camera head (that means the rotational order should be the same as in a real camera mount)
[/li][li]a node/control/whatever to get a natural jitter/shaking
[/li][/ul]
In addition to that it would be nice, if your rig had a way to control all rotational axis seperately to avoid gimbal locking.
Make you rig easily controlable and you will get extra points. 
More info on the shaking node:
Well, I didn’t come up with this all on myself. There is a nice tutorial out there that describes the methods used in this challenge. It needs a lot of adapting to make it work for Messiah, but I will post the link only if you guys insist on it. I guess it depends, if this is a challenge to make it work from scratch or to make it work at all. That’s up to you.
I will post the relevant descriptions though. The shaking node consists of controls for four kinds of jittering/noise:
[ul]
[li]shake
[/li][li]destabilisation
[/li][li]wander
[/li][li]jitter
[/li][/ul]
All of them are individually controlable on every axis seperately, but have a master controller (one for each of the four types of noise), too.
Shake
Shake is designed to produce a random movement and rotation at each frame. It is not just driven by a random number however. Imagine a camera shaking - to a certain extent there would be a certain distribution of movement as opposed to a completely random motion. i.e. most offset from the camera’s true position would occur within a more local area of worldspace about the camera. Larger deviations ( really big shakes) would happen less frequently.
The property of shake therefore creates translation and rotation by generating a random gaussian number of another random number.
Destabilisation
The best example is too imagine someone holding a camera and that person is standing on something which is vibrating or is in a vehicle going over a bumpy road. Through the lens you will see lots of violent shake but also, over time, there will be another offset. The person holding the camera will also have his limbs and body moved locally over time as a result of the initial shaking.
If a camera was firmly attached to a rollercoaster then there would be no secondary movement as a result of the initial shake (unless the bracket fixing the camera to the coaster was loose or flexible). In this example, Destabilisation would be of no use.
The Destabilise property represents this second random movement and is created by using the ‘noise (time)’ random number generator.
Wander
If an object is the subject of a lot of shaking or vibration, it is quite likely that a third type of movement - wander - would be seen. That is, the object would tend to actually move its overall position as a result of the initial shake.
During an earthquake, the pair of shoes you left by the front door would vibrate and shake about but also, after a while, they may well end up in the living room. This is what I call Wander.
Wander is simulated simply by using a ‘rand (x,y)’ function which returns a random number between x and y at every frame but it is applied cumulatively to the translation and rotation channels.
Jitter
Jitter is the simplest property of the four. It is the same as shake, but does not use the gaussian distribution. It just creates an offset of movement and/or rotation with the
rand (x,y) function.
I am not quite sure if I can post images or playblasts showing any of the functionality without showing the internal workings. If you have suggestions, please be my guest.
Also if the above text is unclear, incomplete or just plain wrong, please correct me.
Read this first post from time to time, as I will incorporate corrections and suggestions here. All changes will be highlighted in Cyan for easy recognizability.
Well, that’s it so far. I hereby open this mini challenge. Have fun guys! fires his imaginery gun :applause: :bounce: :buttrock:
EDIT:
I uploaded my version of the camera rig. See this post.
