Camera Path I/O, a definitive answer?

[scott8933]

I've looked at a few threads on this, but there still doesn't seem to be a definitive answer (that I could find).

- What kind of data can a TG2 camera use? ".CHAN"? And this goes in the "import chan file" box, or does this go in the "Import animation file..." that comes up when you hit the Sa button?

- Can I get a CHAN out of anything besides Maya or Houdini? (I have Lightwave, EIAS, Vue6, and PolyTrans)

- Can I export as well as import?

I need to be able to tweak some camera choreography, but not being able to even see keyframes in TG2 is making this tricky. Last Q, maybe I'm missing it, but is there a way to delete a keyframe once its made? (Go into the .tgd file and delete the lines I guess?).

[cyphyr]

I have looked for alternative methods of creating/converting .chan files to no avail. I even posted on the CGTALK form and got no answers so far (just re-bumped the cgt posts) I think the files are in an xml format (can someone confirm) and this "should" be readable and editable in a spreadsheet. Good luck finding an answer an be sure to let us know when you do.
Richard

[JimB]

For Blender (don't use Blender so don't know how good it is): http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1071043

[MooseDog]

richard;

as far as i can tell, the .chan file is just a simple text file. 

going backwards to your lightwave requirements, it seems to me you'll need some lscript chops.  i am fairly certain that lscript can print text files to disk, and i'm also a bit more certain that retrieving the necessary channels for a .chan would be very doable.  from there, just manually re-name the text file to a .chan, and bob's you're uncle! 

copy and pasted from jimb's above link:

<Frame> <TransX> <TransY> <TransZ> <RotX> <RotY> <RotZ> <VerticalFieldOfView>

seems to me to be very common channel values:  frame, x-y-z position, x-y-z rotation, and fov.

[scott8933]

I hadn't considered an lscript... that might do the trick. I've got lots of other stuff on this project to keep me occupied right now though, and -luckily- TG's built-in animation system seems to add eases automatically.

Either that or my camera is going so slow that it just appears to look that way.

But right now my bigger problem is that, by my calculations, the final render (862 frames) will take 19.2 years to render. I'm pretty sure the client can't wait that long.

When I first pitched the storyboards for this, I tested C4d, vs Vue6, vs TG2. The decision came down to, "Do I want to animate easily but have the final look like crap, do I want to be crashing literally every 10 minutes, or do I want to have to animate blind but have really nice results...." in that order. Vue's net-render system sure is nice, but what an unstable application.

For some reason I went with door #3.

[JimB]

Any chance of using a renderfarm like this one, run by a user from this very forum?
http://deadline.emecstudios.be/

[scott8933]

Wow, that's perfect. I'll definitely be giving them a call when it comes time to render this brute. Didn't know anyone had any TG renderfarms out there!

For the TG2 stuff, I presume they have a guy who knows to go through the whole project and relink all the files?

Just thinking out loud; can that process be done all in one shot with a find-replace using a text editor?

[JimB]

Send Davy an email, he's really open to any questions. There's also a really useful estimate calculator which should give you a vague idea of cost.

[Oshyan]

You load CHAN data individually into a given setting's animation control with the "Import animation file" function.

Unfortunately you're correct that info on the CHAN format can be scarce. I might suggest looking at one of the existing importers available. If you can deconstruct one it might help. D2 software may also have some info, although I don't know how freely they might share it.

There should be CHAN exporters/importers for most of the major apps, although sometimes they're pretty low-profile apps that can be hard to find or have gone out of development.

I don't think you can currently *export* CHAN data, but import/export will be improved in the future. It generally works better to animate in other apps and import to TG2 right now anyway (due to TG2's lack of a proper timeline).

- Oshyan

[scott8933]

I would also think that PolyTrans could be used as a 'gateway' of sorts, to and from apps with more mature timelines - export the animation data out of TG2, import into PolyTrans, then output to your format of choice. Fine tune the animation there, then reverse the process.

As simple as the format is, it would probably be pretty easy to write the required plugin for Polytrans.