Ok, folks, I don't know if this has been covered. If it has, my apologies.

But, let's begin:

Ok, this tutorial is largely for the epic sci-fi making folk, but for those who like to move a lot of objects around in their productions, this will come in handy. I'll use part of my upcoming Galactica project as the basis of this tut.

So, two Colonial Vipers and three Cylon Raiders are flyin' over a huge frikkin' asteroid. The foist Raidah says: "Hey look, two Vipahs!" The second Raidah says: "Yeah, let's get 'em, da' bastids!" The thoid Raidah says: "Duuuhhhhh....how are we all gonna chase 'em? Dey ain't enough paths boss?"


LOL...my little attempt at humor...ok here we go:

So, you have the two Colonial Vipers and the three Cylon Raiders....that's five main objects (not counting the laser bolts I've added onto each ship, but we aren't worried about the laser bolts for now). It has been my experience that you can only place (IIRC) up to four paths on the grid at any one time. But I have five ships. This simply will not do.

Well, for this to work, you only need two paths. You can actually make the ships move semi-independently along the pathways.

Does anyone remember the tutorial I gave on how to put different shaped iClone primitives together without having one of the objects seriously skew in appearance? By using a stable object like a cube as a hub with which to connect all the objects?

Well, let's introduce Mr. Sphere! How does Mr. Sphere fit into the scenario? Simple.
Before doing any of this, you might want to lay down about two or three cameras. The main camera for the shot, a pursuit camera, and possibly a side camera. Of course, when making major changes to the scene, always make sure you revert back to the PREVIEW CAMERA so that you don't mess up your carefully laid out other cameras....hahaha.
First, lay down the general paths you want the ships to follow. So, we have a flight path for the Vipers ('cos they are outnumbered slightly), and a pursuit path for the three Raiders. That's two paths, and that's all you'll need. Be sure to set up your control points as well. I personally would not recommend using the "FOLLOW TERRAIN" function for this situation. Also remember, you can only set so many control points, so choose judiciously.


CONTINUED IN NEXT POST...




"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

CONTINUED...

Second, you'll need two spheres. One for the Vipers and one for the Raiders. The first thing you'll want to do is give your Vipers and Raiders initial positions in their formations. Then, once that's done, you'll need to place each sphere near the center of their formations.


Now that that's done, use the LINK function to connect each ship to their respective spheres. For purposes of this tutorial, I've made the Viper sphere blue and the Raider sphere somewhere in the red.


Alright, now you've LINKed the ships to the spheres. Now, whilst we're still in frame one, you'll want to take those spheres, and connect them to the start points of their respective PATHS. Link the Viper sphere to the flight/escape PATH, and the Raider sphere to the pursuit PATH. As you can see, I've not highlighted any of the other PATH functions. You just want the spheres to run their course.



Ok, next is determine just how long you want this shot to last. 3 seconds? 5 seconds? Move your runtime slider to the appropriate position, and then move the END CLIP slider to that point. Done? Done.
Now, take your runtime slider to the end of the frame, and then connect the spheres to the end points of their respective PATHS. Once that's done, do a play through to make sure the spheres are tracking the correct PATHS, and that the ships are following their respective spheres along as you intended. All good? Good. Let's move on.


CONTINUED IN NEXT POST....



"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112

Now comes the dynamics. Making the ships do what you want them to do. The ships are simply LINKed to the spheres, not ATTACHed. Even if they were ATTACHed, as long as you do not MERGE the ATTACHment, you'll be alright...probably. But for this purpose, you really only need to LINK.
Since your ships are only LINKed to the spheres, guess what? You can (along the constraints of the path to which they are second-hand linked) make them bank and pitch, and even shift. At this point, you'll want to switch to the optimal CAMERA, whichever CAMERA is in the best position for the shots, and move you runtime slider until you come to a point where you wish to adjust the position of your ships. Then use your MOVE and ROTATE X,Y,Z boxes to position the ship as you wish. And the cool thing is, if your ship looks like it is about to run into an outcropping or other obstacle because the path takes it there, you can make the shot look really cool having the ship evade the obstacle by simply adjusting the ship with its banks and turns using MOVE and ROTATE. All these motions will fall under the TRANSFORM function in their respective TIMELINEs so you can edit their timing or errors later. (There were a couple of times where I ended up with a bit more maneuvering than necessary. The cool thing was, I could go into the ship's TRANSFORM line on the TIMELINE, and move or delete the offending KEYFRAME, and the ship would pretty much perform the correct move from there on. This is probably the most tedious process of the whole shoot....manipulating each of your individual ships with MOVE and ROTATE at the appropriate frames. But it's not like you have to do it frame by frame....just at the frames where such manipulations are necessary.


Now, you'll notice in the final video, that my Cylon Raiders are firing upon the Vipers. Well, that's another tutorial for later.


Be sure to remember to TURN OFF the spheres when you render your final video.

I hope this will be a useful tutorial.





"Incompetence will always prevail so long as evil men stand by and do nothing."
-Martok2112