I'm new, animation troubles.

[jackblack]

Hey guys, n00b here, does anyone have any good tutorials on animation with TG2?

I've run into a problem, I think it has to do primarily with the IPO curves that are produced between keys.

My problem is with the camera mostly, lets say I want to zoom in from "60" to "45" at frame 100 or what have you, and then zoom back out to "60" at 200, well, in the animation preview it zooms in past the 45, then when it zooms back out it zoom waaaaay out, way past the 60.

If I want my camera to rotate 180 degrees to the left and up, then it rotates the opposite, way around to the keyframe.

How the heck do I solve this?

I've tried everything I know to figure out what I need to do and have not been successful in any of my attempts.

So does anyone know what I should do?



-Jimmy

[Mohawk20]

Right now the animation features are very crude. No curve editing or anything.
Also there are not many of us that have the animation package, so not a lot of help there either.

I do have some experience though. The only solution I could think of when I experienced the problem you have is adding extra key frames until the curve is held in place like you want it.
I know it's a lot more work.
You could also export the terrain via the lwo exporter and load it in another 3d application that supports chan files. Then create the camera path you want in there, and export the chan to Terragen.

Either way it's more work than should be necessary, but I'm confident it'll be fixed one day.

[jackblack]

Hey, that's a quite genius idea!

I have Blender, that's the only program I have that I use for all other types of projects 3d related.

Does Blender support chan files? Is there a python script that would work?

Thanks btw

You could also export the terrain via the lwo exporter and load it in another 3d application that supports chan files. Then create the camera path you want in there, and export the chan to Terragen.

Either way it's more work than should be necessary, but I'm confident it'll be fixed one day.

[Oshyan]

This problem results from the keyframe interpolation method that is used. In the future more interpolation types will be available as well as a curve editor.

As Mohawk suggested, the solution for now (aside from using an external application) is to create intermediate keyframes that more clearly define your intended motion. Although this can be somewhat laborious, you generally don't need a massive amount of them to get it to work. Sometimes even just 1 "correction" keyframe right after your problem keyframe can be enough to put things on the right path since you're essentially stopping the over-shoot with a clear position indicator.

- Oshyan

[jackblack]

Hey, does anyone know how to export anything to blender, 3d max, lightwave, ect. with TG2?

I'd love to know of any scripts that can help me with export and import.

-Jimmy

[cyphyr]

I worked out how to do this in Lightwave and I "think" that it should still work in the demo version.
Heres a link
Show us your results
richard

[jackblack]

Thanks, I will try it out.

I don't have lightwave or 3d max, but I know Blender exports and imports it all.

-Jimmy

[jackblack]

Oh wait, I see it's Lightwave to Terragen, hmm...

Well I guess I do some reading up on python scripting lol.

-Jimmy