> I'm having (again) a little trouble wrapping my mind around a specific homemade
> probelm.
> I'm animating a camera along a complicated path with hundreds of nodes. My nodes
> are hand generated and therefore have not equal distances to each other. This is
> why I use a spreadsheet program to generate time indexes dependent on the
> distance between nodes in order to smoothen the overall speed. I wrote a
> unix(awk) script that converts my csv file to a povray natural spline.
> Everything works well. I can fine-tune my path by changing the coordinates in
> the spreadsheet and then quickly convert the new spline to povray using my
> script.
>
> Now I would like to alter the speed of my traveling camera while it is on the
> way. This is where my trouble starts. I want my camera to slow down in certain
> places and then speed up again.I know how to use Chris's ClockMod for camera
> animation with smooth start and stop at the very beginning and end of the
> complete spline (using S-Curve) but I don't want to tear my animation path
> apart.
>
> Does anybody have any idea how I could use C. Colefax's clockmod in a way that I
> can choose between what time indexes a S-Curve will be applied several times in
> succession? I tried clock_start and clock_finish but with no success.
>
> THANX!
> Andi
>
>

You have a spline for the location of the camera and another for it's 
look_at point. Why not another for it's speed?

You follow that last one linearly, and you get the instantaneous speed 
of the camera. It can also include the speed of the look_at point and, 
if you want, the angle of view so that you can have the camera smoothly 
zoom in and out at specific moments.



Alain

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