CompuServe Thread

SUS— OK, just build your models and animate as usual, the only thing you need to do is build a little gizmo for the camera and a little video post. The only tricky part is determining a good eye distance, too much and the image won't 'meld'. Setting: model lights and a camera. Make the camera so it's line of view is parrallel with the Y axis (vertical in top viewport) Select camera/move then go to the top view tab the cursor so it only moves horizontally then hold down CTRL and SHIFT while you click on the camera. This will make a copy of the camera and move the viewpoint also (I'm not sure, you may need to hold these keys down while you move the copied camera also). Moving the camera horizontally makes sure the camera moves perpendicular to the viewline, otherwise you may lose some 3D effect. I used to have both cameras converge their views onto a single point, but I was told that a forced focus is not good, that's why the camera views should be parrallel and not converge. Now to test the distance between the cameras. Make the bottom left viewport the right camera, then make the bottom right viewport the left camera. Now you can cross your eyes and the wire models in the viewport will appear in 3D. If they don't,move one of the cameras horizontally(using CTRL so it stays parrallel) until it does. You can put a test object as near the camera as the closest object will get to test the safety of the eye distance. After a couple animations you know what the best eye distance will be without testing. Your cameras are set up, now how to animate them. The best method I have found is to create two dummy objects around the cameras (one bigger than the other so it's easy to select). link both cameras and their viewpoints to the smaller dummy object. Then link the smaller dummy to the bigger dummy. restrict the movements of the smaller box to rotations about X only (set this in the keyframer). And restrict the larger box to rotations about Z only (you may also want to turn translation off for the inner dummy). Rotating the inner dummy will have you look up and down. Rotating the outer dummy you will look side to side. To move the camera click on the outer dummy and move it, the cameras will follow. When you animate the cameras you use the dummies instead. Don't move the cameras or their viewpoints because that may mess it up. The only problem is camera roll, I'm not sure if the stereo IPAS will handle this. If you need to have roll it takes a little work. You need 3 dummies smallest, rotates in Y only, middle dummy in X and the largest in Z. When your animating roll the camera. When your done copy that camera roll to the other and copy the values of roll to the Y rotation of the smallest dummy. ie. create keys for the dummy in same place as the camera then for each key, enter the value of the camera roll into the angle value for rotation (of the dummy) and put a 1 in the Y field. I don't have r4 yet but you may be able to write a script that will do this for you. Also, when rotating the cameras their views don't update, so hit SHIFT+~ to update the camera views. Now to render. Render both camera views into say left.fli (for left camera) and right.fli (or a targa list, what ever). In Video Post add two entries. Edit one like this: select bitmap then select the .fli (or .ifl) that coresponds to the left camera. At the bottom of the queue entry click on align and the sixth align type from the left (This will put the left camera animation on the right). click OK. Edit the other entry as: bitmap->animation for right camera. Then align and the 4th align type from left (this puts the right camera on the left). OK. click Render. click Configure, set the resolution to twice as wide as the camera animations are, ie if left and right were rendered at 400×300 then put in 800×300. Then render. Video post will now combine the animations into one animation with the images side by side. Viola! Sorry for the length of this, it's actually very simple, I just wanted to be detailed. Summary: make camera, copy camera, make dummies and put on restrictions, animate cameras, render, video post. Hope this helps ————–Will

<<<I would like to learn about your method on how to do Stereographic animation.>>> Black Box has an *.kxp and *.ixp that will do this. It does two diferent kinds of stereoscopic, Crystal Eya's, and Cyber Vision. Mike White [SDP]