I have created some .chan camera animation files.
See sample below.
When I load these in to the camera via the Import Chan File button they load fine except that z (bold) axis is negative.
As you can see the numbers here are not negative but if you copy out the text below (remove the formatting (bold) and save as a text file with a .chan extension you'll see what I mean.
If I import with the z up box ticked the negative value disappears but its in the wrong place, well it would be right if z was up....
Quote
0 8961.416016 858.853638 602.062012 -4.7 -55.3 0 60
1 8951.613281 858.032471 608.516846 -4.69959 -55.3659 -0.045489 60
2 8941.80957 857.210754 614.974121 -4.69836 -55.4316 -0.0909327 60
3 8932.005859 856.388367 621.433838 -4.69632 -55.497 -0.136332 60
4 8922.203125 855.565369 627.895935 -4.69348 -55.5623 -0.181688 60
5 8912.399414 854.741821 634.360291 -4.68985 -55.6273 -0.227003 60
6 8902.59668 853.917664 640.826965 -4.68544 -55.6921 -0.272275 60
7 8892.792969 853.092957 647.295776 -4.68027 -55.7567 -0.317508 60
8 8882.990234 852.267761 653.766785 -4.67433 -55.8211 -0.362702 60
9 8873.186523 851.441956 660.239868 -4.66764 -55.8854 -0.407857 60
10 8863.382813 850.615723 666.714966 -4.6602 -55.9494 -0.452976 60
Should not be too hard to fix I'd have thought :)
Richard
ps: Import will tell you that it dose not have enough columns, its wrong lol :)
Just checking my TGS conversion database... and yes, that is correct for TGS files converted to chan.
QuoteCase ( Prefs_Import_Data_Type = "TGS";
If ( Prefs_TER_centred;
-1*(TGS_Output_CamposY - (Prefs_TER_dimensions * Prefs_Scale_CamPos / 2) + Prefs_IncrementCamZ)
; -1 * TGS_Output_CamposY) + Prefs_IncrementCamZ;
While the format defines the type of values in different columns, it doesn't define how individual applications use them so it will depend on which application the data comes from as to what conversions are necessary. That's why I use a database to handle the conversions (apart from making it easier to add additional tweaks without regenerating the data)
Hi Ben
yes I'm using Access to make the conversion and as I'm not too conversant in Access coding I'm muddling my way through "manually". I don't think that's the problem though, surely once numbers are in a chan doc terragen shouldn't go changing them. I know it will truncate the decimal point (I'm working to 3dp now) but Terragen should not invert a numbers value.
The chan file above when imported to terragen all the bold values go negative.
Hmmm getting there but there's a lot to figure out :)
richard
Posibly just as easy to do in Excel. Paste converted TGS values into one sheet and calculate chan values in another... but then I really dislike Access ;) Filemaker is much nicer.
I got a working solution now using the lightwave TGSExport plugin, rendering now. The script is designed for TG 0.9x so there is a little inconsistency but as long as I stay close to the origin (0,0,0) it seems to work.
I had to get some help, a little script from a friendly chap over at the Excel help forum, StephenR. I run this on the imported TGS script, swaped some of the columns about and changed some of the column values positive to negative (multiplied the entire column by -1), add in the FoV column and coppied out all the cells into a text doc and saved as a .chan file. Job done, well I'll find out in the morning lol.
Terragens fast enough now to make this actually worth doing, I err hope :)
Richard
ps Filemaker looks interesting I'll have to give it a go sometime
The .chan format is not native to Terragen, and it uses a different coordinate system. The values you see in TG2 after importing are not the same as the values in the file, because Terragen has to convert to its own coordinate system.
In more detail:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1409.msg13994#msg13994
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1409.msg14025#msg14025
Matt