"Copy camera position" possible?

Started by Daniel Kurth, December 16, 2021, 01:56:30 AM

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Daniel Kurth

Hello, I need your help again.
I'm trying my hand at animation for the first time.
It is a trade show booth. But I am not allowed to show it yet. So I can only describe it.
I have created a fresh scene and positioned a camera for the first animation:
Animation No. 1 = Camera 1 with a bird's eye view tracking shot to the center of the booth.
Worked beautifully.

Animation No. 2 = Camera 2 with 360° rotation in the center of the stand. I had also created and ran also wonderfully.

Only now comes my problem.
I had to make some position adjustments in the first animation and now the end position of the camera movement is no longer exactly the start position of camera 2. How can I make the positions congruent again? Because the position in the center is also important for further animations. From there, further camera movements should start later.

I miss here somehow an option like "Copy camera position"
Because the position data in the camera menu are always only the starting points. It would be cool if this data would be updated during animations. That would be also already helpful with the determination of the position data. Or is there somewhere else to see this data?


mattjgerard

if you click on the keyframe, can you see the data? I have acutally never done an animation in KS, but i though there was a way to copy and paste keyframes....

Daniel Kurth

Quote from: mattjgerard on December 16, 2021, 01:10:25 PM
if you click on the keyframe, can you see the data? I have acutally never done an animation in KS, but i though there was a way to copy and paste keyframes....

I did not use the keyframes until now.

I started my first animation with the "normal" Animation Wizard and the available tools like Turntable, Zoom, Inclination, Dolly and so on.
And in the screenshot in post #1 you can see my choices what I can do with the camera.

But I'll take a closer look at the keyframe animation tutorial now ->>

Maybe I could learn from that and reorganize my animation.

mattjgerard

I come with an After Effect background, so the whole animation wizard thing is very foreign to me. I grew up on keyframes, so that is how my mind works. I'll see fi I can dive into it today and try it out, I've been meaning to try some exploding animations in KS, but keep defaulting to animating in Cinema 4D, its what I know.

Daniel Kurth

So, I think I can show a small section.

In the screenshot you can see my timeline, geometry view, camera list (unfortunately in German, sorry).
At the bottom of the timeline and also in the realtime view you can see the end position of the first camera movement.
And from this end point I would now like to continue to the center of the booth. This is roughly the grayed out camera in the geometry view.
From there the first 360° rotation takes place and so on...

But my problem is that the first camera animation has an different camera aim and angle etc. than the following 360° rotation.
And for me the following values are important.
Where exactly does the first tracking shot end?
Because from there further moves (cameras) will start later.

And how do I get the camera exactly in the center for the 360° movement?
So not the camera target is now the center. But the camera itself.
Currently, I always have to move the camera a bit so that it catches the 45° or 90° steps halfway.
I wouldn't have to do that if I were exactly in the middle.


jblaze

#5
Hi Daniel,
If I understood correctly you want to move Camera 1 to the position and angle of Camera 2 after the sequence for Camera 1 movement finishes. As far as I know there isn't a direct approach to do that and you will need some sort of workaround.
Judging by your timeline there are ~10s of actions (zooming, translation, rotation) of that camera before reaching the end position. So I would suggest to calculate the translation needed and add an addition translation animation to Camera 1 (looking at the geometry view it looks like there is only a -X translation needed and probably on the Y axis) to move it to the location of Camera 2.
You're saying that the angle is different so you'll have to do the same as above with the translation.

As alternatives you could try the camera path animation but you'll still need the Cam2 coordinates, so it won't be 100% accurate.
Another idea is to animate camera 1 moving approximately to the position of Cam2 really quick (1/2 or 1/3 sec) and right before the end of the translation to add a switch camera event acting as a transition between the two cameras.

I hope any of the ideas above come helpful.
Good luck! :)

PS can you share your scene? The actual trade show booth is not needed - you can delete it and add a cube/cylinder/etc. Only the cameras and their animations are the objective here.

INNEO_MWo

Not sure if I understand the problem right.
Do you need a new camera at a specific position of an animated camera? The just move the timeline to the (e.g. end) frame and create a new camera.


Or perhaps send me a PM in German.


CheerEO
Marco

Daniel Kurth

#7
Quote from: jblaze on December 21, 2021, 10:46:13 AM
PS can you share your scene? The actual trade show booth is not needed - you can delete it and add a cube/cylinder/etc. Only the cameras and their animations are the objective here.

I kicked out all exhibits. So that should be okay to share here.

Daniel Kurth

It seems that no solution is yet available, right?