CompuServe Messages

Rudy, >> camera crane- what is it ? It sounds fascinating !<< Just a little "diddy" I use in my animations. It's not an IPAS or anything … in a sence its a model of a dolly'd camera boom in 3DS. Basically you start with a dummy object that will be the dolly "dolly.pos". Next you put a nested, concentric dummy .."boom.asmth" Next, I create a "boom.elevat" dummy that is 2D scaled so that it is long. I position one end at the center of the "boom.asmth" dummy, move the pivot to that point, and make it a child of it as well. …. That takes care of the "dolly" and "boom" portion, now to the camera platform. Next, create 2 concentric, nested dummys … "cam.asmth" and "cam.elev". Link those consequtively. Finally, create a camera whose position is at the center of the "cam.elev" and link both position and target to it. You end up with …. "dolly.pos" "boom.asmith" "boom.elevat" "cam.asmth" "cam.elev" "camera01.pos" "camera01.target" Now, you can go back thru the chain and limit movement as much as posible. With this arrangement, you can accomplish many complex camera movements thru the use of "end-point" keyframing of the dummys . which helps a great deal in creating smooth and quickly editable motion. Hope that helps… Ang, President, Dynamic Technologies, Inc. An Autodesk Systems Center for Multimedia in MD