Aha! That worked. Thanks again, justaviking. :D

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
See all my content in one place

Facebook Page: CWK3D Game and Film Content
Cancer Survivor - Retired Teacher - Geriatric Icloner still learning
Hardware: ZX80; Operating System- ZX80 Basic; CPU - ZX80 @ 3.25 MHz; Memory - 1KB; Hard Drive - N/A; Storage - Cassette; Monitor: Any old CRT TV

@justaviking..

I've tried attaching a prop to a car which works fine provided the car is not travelling down a bumpy road. Attaching to an avatar can be problematic as movement from the avatar (walking, running,) can translate into rather heavy camera jitters.

In that case, I've attached a dummy to the avatar's walk/run path (in addition to the avatar) and my second path to this dummy. That smooths out my movements and I have the added bonus that I can have the dummy move down the first path at a different rate (accelerating/decelerating) in contrast to the speed the avatar traverses the path.

Its also worth using a dummy on the camera rail and parenting your camera to the dummy instead of directly to the path. You then have the added flexibility of being able to move the camera away from/close to your 'look at' target, lest you need the 'wriggle room/space.'

I've had fun attaching a 'figure 8' and a 'clover leaf' shaped paths to a avatar 'follow-dummy'
As the avatar completes a rather linear/straight line path, the camera whizzes around the 'figure 8 / clover' whilst the entire path moves with the avatar.

If you want to get even funkier, add in some zoom action by stopping the camera at various points in the camera path; adjusting the zoom and then moving to another 'location + zoom' position (on the path) and repeating. - IC will create key-frames and 'tween' them. ... Afraid it's hit or miss with the timing but the transform track and ensuring you lay down plenty of control points on the respective paths gives you some control handles to affect timing. .. Then it's just a matter of playing till you get it looking cool.


By varying the speed and number of 'loops' my camera completes - create plenty of cool shots to splice into a camera sequence.

This has been a very informative thread.



Doug

_______

____________________

Glad to see you making tutes!:cool: Always liked your posts and advice.

--------------------------------------------------
I LIVE to anymate, irritate and machinamate. Not necessarily in that order.

Confirmed.  Good tip.  Thanks.

Especially with "Ease in AND out" it becomes a nice, smooth reversal of direction.

(Note:  For those new to this, to get to this...  Highlight the camera or prop, and on the Timeline control panel (F3) you will find the Path under the "Constraint" button.  It is not a Transform function.)

TAKING THIS TO ANOTHER LEVEL:

You can Attach a path to a prop.

I want to have a camera circle around a moving vehicle.

With the vehicle stationary, I will work out my camera motion.  Then I will attach the path to the car.  Now I can drive the car down the road and around a corner, and I'll have nice smooth camera motion with the car in motion.

At least the theory sounds good.

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

It can be very helpful to use the transition curves on the keys in the camera's "constraint" track. That way, you can reverse direction without it being abrupt.

@CK,

THE SHORT VERSION:

Move your timeline scrubber to the time at which you want to reach the top of the trench, and then attach your camera to a corresponding Path Control Point.

THE LONGER VERSION:

Initially, the motion will be a constant speed from one end of the path to the other.

Let's say you have a 10-second camera motion, and the path is 10 "units" long.  The camera will move one unit every second.

To slow it up at the beginning, you can move your scrubber to the 3-second point.  The camera will be sitting 3 units from the starting point.

Now right-click on the camera and do "Path --> Select Path," just like you did for the start and end points, only this time pick a Control Point closer to the beginning (maybe at 1 or 1.5 units from the start).

Now it will take 3 seconds to reach that first point.

Remember, now the second section will go faster, becuase you will still traverse the entire path in 10 seconds.

BONUS:

The same method can be used to pause your camera.  If you move your timeline scrubber to the 4-second point, and attach your camera to the same control point you used at 3 seconds, your camera will "pause" for a second (from the 3-second mark to the 4-second mark).

(Technically you could even reverse direction, but it reverses "abruptly," so now you have jarring camera movements again.  But, yeah, you could follow control points in this order: 1-4-3-10.)

ONE MORE THING (MAKE THAT "TWO"):

a) You can add and delete Path Control Points.

b) After you have set an "interior" Control Point using the metod described above, you will see it appearing in the Timeline panel (for the "CAMERA") under "Path."  You can move that point back and forth, just like a Key Frame for any other animated motion.

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD

Hi justaviking
Sorry for not responding sooner. As I said in my PM to you, much appreciated. Tried the camera path with my trench scene and it is pretty good, except for one thing. The camera movement from the bottom of the trench to the second position at the top of the trench is now too fast. Is there any way of slowing this down. I've been busy building set one of the movie so haven't experimented much with the camera path.

Thanks again
Bob

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
See all my content in one place

Facebook Page: CWK3D Game and Film Content
Cancer Survivor - Retired Teacher - Geriatric Icloner still learning
Hardware: ZX80; Operating System- ZX80 Basic; CPU - ZX80 @ 3.25 MHz; Memory - 1KB; Hard Drive - N/A; Storage - Cassette; Monitor: Any old CRT TV

Awesome! .. I can think of half a dozen scenes I have recently worked on which could have benefited enormously from the techniques you explained.

The convert to path function... A real gem there. I spent some serious time trying to keyframe camera paths (letting ic do the tweening) and been only slightly less disappointed with the result than I was when laying down a path. Now I can set up a series of static camera positions and 'convert to path' to tune it.

Great follow-through information applying the same technique to a 'look-at' dummy.

Glad you left in the bloopers.... Nice to see we all suffer the same problems re the timeline and forgetting to goto frame 0.

I tend to share your view re the 'smooth camera movement' checkbox. - I'm never quite sure it's doing anything ???? ! ? (Mind you, I haven't exactly spent any time experimenting with it)

Can't wait for the next installment of viking secrets!

Simon

To everyone...  Thanks for the feedback and support.  It was my pleasure to be able to contribute, and if a few people find it helpful then it was worthwhile.

@rampart - Your comments are good and I don't take them as negative comments at all.

I did consider making a "Part 1" and "Part 2" so the Look At Target part was separated.  But I was afraid I'd never get around to making Part 2.

In my announcement I did mention, "If you are in a hurry, the most important and valuable section runs from 2:24 to 4:48" but it was sort of buried near the end of my post, and wasn't stated in the instruction of the actual tutorial, though I did try to let people know when the main lesson ended.  (I'm not arguing with you, I'm pointing out that the communication was probably weak on my end.)

The tutorial does assume a certain knowledge of various aspects of iClone, so it's not exactly a click-by-click tutorial.  I didn't want to have it be a "Path" tutorial, but I did try to put in a few pointers along the way.  Same with the timeline.  I also left out stuff like what you can do if you turn off the Auto Level Camera feature.  Also not mentioned is what happens if you click on the "Follow Path" button.

Wow, there is still plenty of material left for future tutorials if anyone feels motivated.  (Viking nudges himself... but it won't happen soon.)

Thanks for the comments, I appreciate them.

D'oh!

I just noticed something I am missing, and that is stating up front that I'm using Paths.  In my intro narration, and on the title page, I should have said, "How to make smooth camera motion by using Paths."

I think

RELATED TOPICS:

Some little tips I learned (or re-learned) recently from others are:

• TIMELINE... Selecting all key frames
• Double-click on the name of a row to select all the key frames on that row.
• TIMELINE... Track List vs. Object Related Track
• It is embarrassing that I only now learned to understand the difference between those two buttons (in the top-left corner of the timeline)
• I often wondered how people made the timeline show the right object so easily
• I always used "Object Related Track" and was constantly navigating down that list of objects, and when the project started to have a lot of objects, it got really tiresome and annoying
• (I probably first tried it a year ago when I was only had a single prop in my project, didn't see a difference, and never thought about it again.)
• Recently someone's tutorial made a casual comment about clicking on it, and I played with it again, and suddenly the light bulb turned on.
• Wow, I love "Object Related Track."
• PATHS... "Pick Path" actually means "Pick a control point"
• I knew it, at least once upon a time, but hadn't used paths lately.
• Someone mentioned elsewhere and made it very clear, and I wanted to be sure I included that detail in my tutorial (even though it wasn't exactly a tutorial about paths).
• PATHS... Pick a start point, pick and end point.... or pick a point in between
• NOT IN MY TUTORIAL
• You can pick any path Control Point at any time.  You don't have to use them in order (but you will get an abrupt motion if you reverse direction)
• Most useful (to me) is you can pick a mid-control point at two different times, and your camera motion will pause there.
• This is probably easier shown that explained in writing

I've been yearning to do a beginner's guide to understanding UV maps.  I'm certain I could explain it well in a way a novice could understand.  But it would require more than doing a simple screen capture in iClone.  Maybe some day...

---

iClone 7... Character Creator... Substance Designer/Painter... Blender... Audacity...
Desktop (homebuilt) - Windows 10, Ryzen 9 3900x CPU, GTX 1080 GPU (8GB), 32GB RAM, Asus X570 Pro motherboard, 2TB SSD, terabytes of disk space, dual  monitors.
Laptop - Windows 10, MSI GS63VR STEALTH-252, 16GB RAM, GTX 1060 (6GB), 256GB SSD and 1TB HDD