Hi,
I’m using Keyshot 9 principally to create animations of underwater architectural models originally created using photogrammetry, for educational/outreach purposes.
I’ve been struggling with implementing a particular animation I need, hopefully someone can help. My model consists of two main areas of interest connected by some seabed. The camera animation I have in mind needs to perform an orbit around one area, then fly along the seabed to the second area, perform an orbit around that, then return to the starting point of the first area. For the specific purpose I have in mind, the animation needs to be a continuous, unbroken, smooth loop.
Using Camera 1 creating the first orbit followed by the flight along the seabed is no problem, but I got stuck when trying to combine with the second orbit while still using Camera 1, because the Camera 1 target is still the first area of interest. I tried a couple of methods to solve:
Method 1
1. Animate Camera 1 using Orbit followed by Transition animations, ending up with Camera 1 at the position required to start the orbit of the second area
2. Create Camera 2 based on the end frame of Camera 1
3. Set Camera 2 target to the centre of the frame (using the grid to guide the mouse pointer)
4. Create a switch to Camera 2 at end of Camera 1 animation
5. Create orbit for Camera 2 around second area of interest
This works after a fashion, however there is a risk of a jerky transition between Camera 1 and Camera 2 due to the fact that the Camera 2 target is being selected manually.
Method 2
1. Create Camera 2 at the position required to start the orbit of area 2, setting up Camera 2 target as required
2. Animate Camera 1 using Orbit, followed by a Path animation using the location of Camera 2 as the second Control Point
3. Create switch to Camera 2 at end of Camera 1 animation
4. Create orbit for Camera 2 around second area of interest
On paper this should work better than the first method, however I simply could not get the Path to work, and when I ran the animation Camera 1 ended up at totally wrong coordinates, even though when I selected Camera 2 as the second Control Point the Camera 2 coordinates were shown correctly in the coordinate list. There must be something I am not understanding regarding how the Camera path animation works. I also tried playing around with a very simple path to understand how this function works, but for example a simple straight path gave me a 180 degree camera twist for some reason I cannot understand.
Grateful for any suggestions cos this is driving me nuts!
Thanks in advance
John