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[3D Studio Max] Creating an animated camera

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MDave ZEQ2-lite Ninja View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Hello!

In the most recent builds, found in the development SVN is support for animated cameras.

What does this mean? Well, we no longer use the tier.cfg files to control the camera for transformations.

We can now use an animated tag_cam to animate a camera for any animation, and with full control over it using its own animCam.cfg file, which is similar in structure to a characters animation.cfg file.

So what do we have to do to create a new animated camera sequence?

Simple!

Lets take a look at what is already in there in the latest SVN build.

We have a camera.md3 file. This contains just 3 tags, no models:

tag_cam
tag_camTar
tag_torso



tag_cam is the actual camera as it will be positioned in game.

tag_camTar works like a target camera in 3D studio max, it's where the camera will look towards. It's an optional tag, but its one that makes animating cameras much easier, because we will know where exactly in 3D it is looking at in space while creating animations for the camera.

tag_torso is what we will use to position the camera onto the characters relative position.

Okay, so that's the contents of the camera.md3. Where does it go?

It goes in the characters tier folder, along with the other character's md3 files.

So you could create a different camera.md3 for each tier a character has. And like the other characters md3 files, if there isn't any md3's in the tier folders beyond tier1, then it will fallback to whatever is in the tier1 folder.

If a character doesn't have a camera.md3 in any tier folder, it will use the fallback default one in the player folder instead.

Next up is animCam.cfg. This is placed next to the animation.cfg file, inside the characters main folder.

This is like a characters animation.cfg file, where you tell it what frames, what frames to loop at and the frame rate to play the camera animations at. It is almost identical, except for one more field.

Camera lock.

This last number of each line in the animCam.cfg file is used to tell the game if it should use the animated camera or not for that specific animation. This is important for when we want to allow the user's own camera settings, like range/height/angle/slide to be used instead of the animated camera.

You would remove the camera lock for things like idle animations, unless you have a specific animated camera for that animation for some reason.

That covers all the files needed to get an animated camera working.

So how do you create the camera.md3? How to create the animations?

Simple! If you have exported character before, its exactly the same process.

You create a tag_cam and tag_camTar in the character's max file. You animate these however you like in max. Once you have some animations for them, you export just the tag_cam, tag_camTar and tag_torso to a camera.md3 file.

For the animCam.cfg file, its easy to just copy, paste and rename a characters animation.cfg file, go inside it and edit the frame lines for each animation how you want, and adding a 1 or 0 to the end of the line to indicate if you want the camera to be locked or not.

And that's it! That completes the documentation on animated cameras Smile

Examples will be posted at a later date.

NELLO!! Mitico View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, January 11, 2012

yes a very good idea the camera... Very Happy
In this way you always see the person at the right place in the various actions .. that makes the various visual ..

one question this can work in the 1536 rev?

JayREEZY View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Wednesday, January 11, 2012

That.. is absolutely FANTASTIC!!! Very Happy

Now we can give transformations and super attacks the proper anime feel they've been needing. Especially for Goku's first and Brolly's LSS transformations.

LegendarySS4 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Thursday, January 12, 2012

Brolly, fake non-canon Very Happy
And so little replies.

Linkxp500 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Tuesday, January 17, 2012

We needs this NAO!!! IMMERSION!!

Gideon View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Friday, January 27, 2012

Exscuse me but I don't have 3D studio max is there another program Ican use Question

Linkxp500 View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Friday, January 27, 2012

Gideon wrote : Exscuse me but I don't have 3D studio max is there another program Ican use Question



3DS Max is FREE FOR ALL STUDENTS. But if you don't want that, get Misfit Model 3D, Blender, or Maya.

Skatter #*&@%! View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Friday, January 27, 2012

MDave wrote : Hello!

LOTS OF TEXT

And that's it! That completes the documentation on animated cameras Smile

Examples will be posted at a later date.



Hah, tried it with Tenshinhan's tri-beam to make a zoom Smile It's neato, but will probably require some kind of average distance between Tenshinhan and his locked on target Razz

Gideon View user's profile Send private message

Reply with quote Saturday, January 28, 2012

thanks

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