Hello everyone.

    After a couple of years of rendering images in POV, I am now
entering the joys?? of animation, what I would like help on is how do I
create a camera path through a meandering canyon without passing through
the sides or bumping into same.

    I have created the canyon landscape using heighfields, from a
Windows paint image of my own design.
    I know where the canyon is on the image map, but how do I translate
that into x, y, and z co-ordinates in POV.
    btw, I create the landscape in Moray and export in POV.
    I have looked at a few animation and heightfield turorials as listed
in the links page, but I can't seem to find the information that I am
looking for.
    Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Alex.

--
  ,-._|\  Alex McMurray
 /  Oz  \ ale### [at] melbpcorgau               Melbourne PC User Group.
 \_,--.x/Melton.                                           Australia
       v

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If you have no objection to using MegaPOV, there is a trace function
that
can tell if a vector from a given point passes through a given object.
This could help you avoid the walls.

Alex McMurray wrote:
> 
> Hello everyone.
> 
>     After a couple of years of rendering images in POV, I am now
> entering the joys?? of animation, what I would like help on is how do I
> create a camera path through a meandering canyon without passing through
> the sides or bumping into same.
> 
>     I have created the canyon landscape using heighfields, from a
> Windows paint image of my own design.
>     I know where the canyon is on the image map, but how do I translate
> that into x, y, and z co-ordinates in POV.
>     btw, I create the landscape in Moray and export in POV.
>     I have looked at a few animation and heightfield turorials as listed
> in the links page, but I can't seem to find the information that I am
> looking for.
>     Any help will be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Alex.
> 
> --
>   ,-._|\  Alex McMurray
>  /  Oz  \ ale### [at] melbpcorgau               Melbourne PC User Group.
>  \_,--.x/Melton.                                           Australia
>        v

-- 
Mr. Art

"Often the appearance of reality is more important 
than the reality of the appearance."
Bill DeWitt 2000

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My bezier.inc file does this wonderfully. You define a path and can preview
it, then use certain functions to animate the camera.

You can find the file here.
 http://www.spiritone.com/~english/cyclopedia/include/bezier.inc

I am working on the documentation, but here is a quick rundown.

Declare a spline in an array of 4 points:

#declare CamLocatePath = array [4] { <0,0,-1> <-2,3,0> <3,-1,4> <0,0,7> }

You can preview this spline in the scene with
DrawSpline(CamLocatePath)

and adjust the spline to make sure that the camera doesn't run through
walls.

Then animate the camera with

camera { location ReturnPosition(CamLocatPath,clock)
               look_at ReturnPosition(CamLocatePath+0.1,clock) }

Of course you can define a seperate spline for the look_at statement as well

The Include file is not well documented. I am working on a tutorial but it
doens't seem to ever get finished.

Josh

Alex McMurray wrote:

> Hello everyone.
>
>     After a couple of years of rendering images in POV, I am now
> entering the joys?? of animation, what I would like help on is how do I
> create a camera path through a meandering canyon without passing through
> the sides or bumping into same.
>
>     I have created the canyon landscape using heighfields, from a
> Windows paint image of my own design.
>     I know where the canyon is on the image map, but how do I translate
> that into x, y, and z co-ordinates in POV.
>     btw, I create the landscape in Moray and export in POV.
>     I have looked at a few animation and heightfield turorials as listed
> in the links page, but I can't seem to find the information that I am
> looking for.
>     Any help will be greatly appreciated.
>
> Alex.
>
> --
>   ,-._|\  Alex McMurray
>  /  Oz  \ ale### [at] melbpcorgau               Melbourne PC User Group.
>  \_,--.x/Melton.                                           Australia
>        v

--
Josh English
eng### [at] spiritonecom
"May your hopes, dreams, and plans not be destroyed by a few zeros."

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