I actually work on a bigger project, showing a gothic cathedral. I am
planning a cam-flight from far away toward and round the building, later a
walkthrough inside the building (90-120 secs).
For animating the cam-track, I was not very happy whith the implemented
POV-animating possibilties.
I used POV-Ray many years and even under DOS I did a lot of scene scripting
by using external script-generating tools. First POV-vrersions had no
#macro, so I scripted some tools, generating from a text file whith mixed
POV- and Expression-code complete POV-scene files. Since I am using
UNIX-System my possibilities got a lot better, especially using perl:-)
Back to animation: to creat my cam-track, i make a simple text file, where
all relevant cam-options are listed in keyframes e.g. like this:

frame distance<0,0,0>   height  rotation  look_at_x  look_at_y look_at_z
0000        500           200      0          0           23       0
0200        200           100      45         0           23       0

For my current project for each keyframe I declare about 26 options
including cam-angle(for Zooming and wide-angle), focalblur, fog, lights as
dynamical options.

This KEY.INC-file runs through a perl-process which generates a
POV-include-file for each frame of the animation by interpolating curves
through the given control points in the keyframes. After the
POV-Include-file is generated for a frame (or a set of frames), these
frame(s) are rendered and attached to the animation. All these processes
are managed by one perl script and can be stopped, continued or changes can
be made to the cam-track whithout losing all rendered data.
At the moment, this wroks only with global keyframes, but I am working on
the implementation of the possibility to key each single option on
different frames.
Also I'm working on the possibility to change the orientation of the cam
between global look_at-mode and relative rotate_xyz-mode to the actual
moving vector of the cam.

Anyone tried this or something similar?
Coments welcome ...
Siggi

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Why not using splines?



news:web.40a4ebc89de6780ab2365a790@news.povray.org...
> I actually work on a bigger project, showing a gothic cathedral. I am
> planning a cam-flight from far away toward and round the building, later a
> walkthrough inside the building (90-120 secs).
> For animating the cam-track, I was not very happy whith the implemented
> POV-animating possibilties.
> I used POV-Ray many years and even under DOS I did a lot of scene scripting
> by using external script-generating tools. First POV-vrersions had no
> #macro, so I scripted some tools, generating from a text file whith mixed
> POV- and Expression-code complete POV-scene files. Since I am using
> UNIX-System my possibilities got a lot better, especially using perl:-)
> Back to animation: to creat my cam-track, i make a simple text file, where
> all relevant cam-options are listed in keyframes e.g. like this:
>
> frame distance<0,0,0>   height  rotation  look_at_x  look_at_y look_at_z
> 0000        500           200      0          0           23       0
> 0200        200           100      45         0           23       0
>
> For my current project for each keyframe I declare about 26 options
> including cam-angle(for Zooming and wide-angle), focalblur, fog, lights as
> dynamical options.
>
> This KEY.INC-file runs through a perl-process which generates a
> POV-include-file for each frame of the animation by interpolating curves
> through the given control points in the keyframes. After the
> POV-Include-file is generated for a frame (or a set of frames), these
> frame(s) are rendered and attached to the animation. All these processes
> are managed by one perl script and can be stopped, continued or changes can
> be made to the cam-track whithout losing all rendered data.
> At the moment, this wroks only with global keyframes, but I am working on
> the implementation of the possibility to key each single option on
> different frames.
> Also I'm working on the possibility to change the orientation of the cam
> between global look_at-mode and relative rotate_xyz-mode to the actual
> moving vector of the cam.
>
> Anyone tried this or something similar?
> Coments welcome ...
> Siggi
>
>
>

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"Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Why not using splines?
>
>

> news:web.40a4ebc89de6780ab2365a790@news.povray.org...
> > I actually work on a bigger project, showing a gothic cathedral. I am
> > planning a cam-flight from far away toward and round the building, later a
> > walkthrough inside the building (90-120 secs).
> > For animating the cam-track, I was not very happy whith the implemented
> > POV-animating possibilties.
> > I used POV-Ray many years and even under DOS I did a lot of scene scripting
> > by using external script-generating tools. First POV-vrersions had no
> > #macro, so I scripted some tools, generating from a text file whith mixed
> > POV- and Expression-code complete POV-scene files. Since I am using
> > UNIX-System my possibilities got a lot better, especially using perl:-)
> > Back to animation: to creat my cam-track, i make a simple text file, where
> > all relevant cam-options are listed in keyframes e.g. like this:
> >
> > frame distance<0,0,0>   height  rotation  look_at_x  look_at_y look_at_z
> > 0000        500           200      0          0           23       0
> > 0200        200           100      45         0           23       0
> >
> > For my current project for each keyframe I declare about 26 options
> > including cam-angle(for Zooming and wide-angle), focalblur, fog, lights as
> > dynamical options.
> >
> > This KEY.INC-file runs through a perl-process which generates a
> > POV-include-file for each frame of the animation by interpolating curves
> > through the given control points in the keyframes. After the
> > POV-Include-file is generated for a frame (or a set of frames), these
> > frame(s) are rendered and attached to the animation. All these processes
> > are managed by one perl script and can be stopped, continued or changes can
> > be made to the cam-track whithout losing all rendered data.
> > At the moment, this wroks only with global keyframes, but I am working on
> > the implementation of the possibility to key each single option on
> > different frames.
> > Also I'm working on the possibility to change the orientation of the cam
> > between global look_at-mode and relative rotate_xyz-mode to the actual
> > moving vector of the cam.
> >
> > Anyone tried this or something similar?
> > Coments welcome ...
> > Siggi
> >
> >
> >
I've tried it with splines, but if your moving options get more than only
position and rotation (for Cam Pos and look_at) and the pathes got longer
and have more than 10 control points, splines have the tendency to
interpolate not accurate enough e.g to set a proper path of the cam between
columns of a building. The other point is, that if you change a single
sequence of a spline, it can change the whole curve. Defining each sequence
separate avoids this.
Third, if I define the cam-position path not as one single 3D-curve, but as
three curves for height, distance from <0,0,0> and Y-rotation gives me the
opinion, that the cam moves slightly around my building (Y-rotation &
distance are constant curves) while the cam is moving up and down even with
hard changes in the movement.

Regards Siggi

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siggi-gross wrote:
> "Nicolas Alvarez" <nic### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 
>>Why not using splines?
>>
>>

>>news:web.40a4ebc89de6780ab2365a790@news.povray.org...
>>
>>>I actually work on a bigger project, showing a gothic cathedral. I am
>>>planning a cam-flight from far away toward and round the building, later a
>>>walkthrough inside the building (90-120 secs).
>>>For animating the cam-track, I was not very happy whith the implemented
>>>POV-animating possibilties.
>>>I used POV-Ray many years and even under DOS I did a lot of scene scripting
>>>by using external script-generating tools. First POV-vrersions had no
>>>#macro, so I scripted some tools, generating from a text file whith mixed
>>>POV- and Expression-code complete POV-scene files. Since I am using
>>>UNIX-System my possibilities got a lot better, especially using perl:-)
>>>Back to animation: to creat my cam-track, i make a simple text file, where
>>>all relevant cam-options are listed in keyframes e.g. like this:
>>>
>>>frame distance<0,0,0>   height  rotation  look_at_x  look_at_y look_at_z
>>>0000        500           200      0          0           23       0
>>>0200        200           100      45         0           23       0
>>>
>>>For my current project for each keyframe I declare about 26 options
>>>including cam-angle(for Zooming and wide-angle), focalblur, fog, lights as
>>>dynamical options.
>>>
>>>This KEY.INC-file runs through a perl-process which generates a
>>>POV-include-file for each frame of the animation by interpolating curves
>>>through the given control points in the keyframes. After the
>>>POV-Include-file is generated for a frame (or a set of frames), these
>>>frame(s) are rendered and attached to the animation. All these processes
>>>are managed by one perl script and can be stopped, continued or changes can
>>>be made to the cam-track whithout losing all rendered data.
>>>At the moment, this wroks only with global keyframes, but I am working on
>>>the implementation of the possibility to key each single option on
>>>different frames.
>>>Also I'm working on the possibility to change the orientation of the cam
>>>between global look_at-mode and relative rotate_xyz-mode to the actual
>>>moving vector of the cam.
>>>
>>>Anyone tried this or something similar?
>>>Coments welcome ...
>>>Siggi
>>>
>>>
>>>
> 
> I've tried it with splines, but if your moving options get more than only
> position and rotation (for Cam Pos and look_at) and the pathes got longer
> and have more than 10 control points, splines have the tendency to
> interpolate not accurate enough e.g to set a proper path of the cam between
> columns of a building. The other point is, that if you change a single
> sequence of a spline, it can change the whole curve. Defining each sequence
> separate avoids this.
> Third, if I define the cam-position path not as one single 3D-curve, but as
> three curves for height, distance from <0,0,0> and Y-rotation gives me the
> opinion, that the cam moves slightly around my building (Y-rotation &
> distance are constant curves) while the cam is moving up and down even with
> hard changes in the movement.
> 
> Regards Siggi
> 
> 

I have an old system I used to use for 'random' paths that merges an 
external data file with a povray 'template' to create a series of pov 
files, each one was rendered from there, I realize that dosn't take 
advantage of some things, but you can have as many 'random' variables as 
you want going on in a scene.

I posted a demo a long time ago of a walking creature made of 
paperclips, I should put it back up on the net

interested?




-- 
Dan Williams, Owner
http://eds.dyndns.org:81/
Electronic Device Services
(604) 886 0316
RR8 855 Oshea rd
Gibsons BC Canada
V0N 1V8

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