Millennium falcon flying

Started by Hannes, September 23, 2019, 05:21:32 AM

Previous topic - Next topic

Matt

Quote from: Hannes on September 26, 2019, 09:41:15 AMHere is a single frame of the sequence with a cockpit camera. It's rendered as a 400 px image upscaled to 800 px. Tiny, but good enough for testing purposes.

Unfortunately the imported camera is rather shaky. In 3ds max it was an absolutely smooth animation. I tried everything and did some tests with FBX and the plugin by emecstudios (which seem to be gone...) as well. Couldn't get rid of the shaking. I was planning to add some handheld effect, but it's a bit too much. I'll post it, when it's finished.

It may be an issue with floating point precision. This is usually a problem when animating something that travels over large distances, and is an issue with the FBX file, not Terragen. I would try to render the ship as a separate pass with the translation removed and reset to 0,0,0. Then the camera motion only needs to be relative to the ship and the numbers should be precise enough.
Just because milk is white doesn't mean that clouds are made of milk.

Hannes

Thanks for the explanation, Matt! I don't think either, it's a TG issue. I'll see, if I can fix it, and if not, I'll probably take your advice and render the falcon separately.

Hannes

Here is the low res cockpit view animation:
https://vimeo.com/362956722
I spent a whole day trying to get rid of the shaky cam, but without success. I researched for the floating point stuff Matt had mentioned, and found out, that 3ds Max doesn't export the exact coordinates, but rounds up or down. I guess, this is, what causes the noisy cam path.
I also tried to delete all animation keys between every each 20 frames (for the camera position and rotation in X, Y, and Z, and for the falcon as well), which was a pain in the ass!!! Finally the whole camera movement went crazy, so I'll take the shaky cam and consider this as heavy turbulences. ::)

I didn't render the first 80 frames, because the wiggling was even stronger, and the last frames, when the falcon flies into the thruster of the destroyer will not be used.
I'm rendering a view from outside as well, and when it's OK, I'll mix these shots. Maybe I'll animate the falcon also inside the destroyer...

Dune

I actually like the shaky camera very much. It's like the cameraman is shaken by the turbulence in the craft! Very nice!

KlausK

I as well do not find the camera shaking too distracting or annoying.
Gives the ship rather worn and torn feeling. It had seen better days is my impression.
If you could manage to animate the pilots head a little bit - like leaning into the banking of the ships flight path -
that would really sell it to me.
If it is possible to export the camera animation as a fbx I`d like to take a look at it and see how Softimage imports it.

CHeers, Klaus
/ ASUS WS Mainboard / Dual XEON E5-2640v3 / 64GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 TI / Win7 Ultimate . . . still (||-:-||)

Hannes

Quote from: KlausK on September 28, 2019, 05:35:24 PMIf you could manage to animate the pilots head a little bit - like leaning into the banking of the ships flight path -
that would really sell it to me.
That's what I had in mind as well. I'll do some tests for sure!!


Sure I can attach the FBX, but I'm not sure if you can check the wiggling, when there are no close reference objects. I also attached the .chan file.

KlausK

Thanks, Hannes.
I imported the fbx in XSI and one could clearly see the stepped fcurves in the Animation Editor.
Even though the channels were marked as spline curves. I smoothed, resampled and simplified the curves.
Maybe you want to give my exported fbx a try in 3DSMAX (which I don`t have).
I`d be curious what XSI made of your fbx. The scale factor was set to "Automatic".
On Import the factor was 100 (cm) and on Export it was 1 (cm).
CHeers, Klaus
/ ASUS WS Mainboard / Dual XEON E5-2640v3 / 64GB RAM / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 TI / Win7 Ultimate . . . still (||-:-||)

Hannes

Thanks a lot, Klaus. I'll have a look. :)

Ariel DK

Quote from: Hannes on September 30, 2019, 09:52:23 AMMuchas gracias, Klaus. Le echaré un vistazo.:)
Waiting for the result Hannes!
Just in case, i can also re-made the animation in C4D, wich export camera animation with exactly coordinates and scales in FBX format...
Hmmm, what version of Terragen does God use?

Hannes

Thanks for your efforts, guys. I imported your FBX, Klaus, and it's still shaky. But don't worry, in the meantime I started to like the shaky animation as well. :)

Ariel DK

Hey Hannes
Just in case, it took me a few minutes, and it seems to work nicely in TG... check this out  ;)
Hmmm, what version of Terragen does God use?

Hannes

Thanks a lot, Ariel! I tested it, and yes, it works, but it's shaky as well. It's not noticeable, when you're quite far away from the cam, but once there is the cockpit with the cam inside, it's shaking.
and apart from that, the movement of the falcon is imported as well as a chan file, so both are shaking a bit.
However thanks again, I like it like it is now.

Ariel DK

Quote from: Hannes on October 01, 2019, 06:54:55 PMThanks a lot, Ariel! I tested it, and yes, it works, but it's shaky as well. It's not noticeable, when you're quite far away from the cam, but once there is the cockpit with the cam inside, it's shaking.
and apart from that, the movement of the falcon is imported as well as a chan file, so both are shaking a bit.
However thanks again, I like it like it is now.
I tested it with a animated torus and sphere object simulating the cockpit (i don't know the real scale of the yours, but i assumed that is human-real scale), and, although i don't noticed ANY shak, the thing is that i used the movement data of the camera to create the animation of this objects... so... if you copy this FBX animation to your Falcon object, you gonna get both elements moving as the same, still shaky, but maybe unnoticeable regarding to the ground or far objects. just try out  ::)
Hmmm, what version of Terragen does God use?

Ariel DK

Ok, 10 mnts render just to be sure i wasn't babbling ;D
Hmmm, what version of Terragen does God use?

Hannes

Thanks again, Ariel! Yes, I assume, it works, if everything in the scene uses the same chan file. Unfortunately in my scene things are different. The falcon has its pivot at 0,0,0 of course (when it's not animated). But I can't offset the pivot of the cockpit cam in 3ds max, so that it's at the same place like the falcon's pivot. And then there's a new Han Solo in my actual scene, which is an object sequence of 600 (!) items with the pivot at 0,0,0 originally as well (but sitting in the cockpit in front of the cockpit cam). So there are three different camera paths, which lead to this wiggling.

Maybe I could offset Han Solo's pivot in 3ds max, so that he might use the same chan file like the falcon's, but altering the falcon's pivot, so that it matches the camera's pivot seems difficult. Apart from that the view from inside the cockpit might look too static in case that would work.

But great ideas! I'll do some more tests to maybe get some controlled random motion.