LW Rostrum Camera
Hi James,
Sorry for the delay in reply to your question..
Here's the basics (well maybe more than the basics) for doing Rostrum Camera
moves – the kind of zooms and pans one sees being done to still images in
productions such as those done on public TV programs such as Ken Russell's
"Baseball" or "Civil War" series:
1 – scan in your image. Use the highest level of resolution your computer
will permit (depends on how much memory you've got) i.e using Imaage Effects
and an Epson 800C scanner LightWave will accept a 24 bit scan of about
1500×1000 pixels on my A4000 with 32 megs. LightWave interprets this as about
15 megabytes when loading it and tends to "choke" on larger image files (oh
yeah save the scan as iff or ilbm not framestore).
2 – load Lightwave
3 – load the image
4 – note the pixel dimensions of the image when you've loaded it
5 – go into modeller
6 – create a 1 polygon (flat) box with the dimensions in millimeters the same
as the pixel dimensions
7 – name the boxes polygon surface
9 – save the box with a relevant name
10 – go back into LW
11 – load in the box
12 – use the image as a PLANAR IMAGE MAP under Surfaces/color
13 – map to the Z axis and click on Automatic sizing
14 – set up and zooms and pans by moving the camera not the object.
15 – your first and last key-frames should have tensions set to 1 to give
ease-in and ease-out and you might want to fiddle with Bias to smooth out turns
(use with care, its tricky)
16 – you might want to turn up ambient light to 35% or more
17 – render at medium resolution
18 – turn OFF adaptive sampling if your scan came from a book or magazine
where the image was screen printed (this minimizes moire patterning but takes
longer to render)
19 – antialiasing is not necessary either unless you rotate the image and the
edges show (not something you'd normally do with a Rostrum shot)
20 – as I told Mark if you want to see what your moves look like put "fake"
objects (i.e. small versions of a box object) in front of key areas in your
image and create a preview then, don't forget to remove them before your final
render
21- render away
22 have al lot of patience – this takes way more time than using a camera to
do zooms and pans by you have complete and total control over moves and timing
– and its way cheaper than buying a Rostrum Camera
Let me know how you make out.
Good luck,
Russ