animation

[digidon]

I produced TG9.43 animation movies using CamPathEditor.

As a new user of TG2 Deep-Anim. I haven't seen a step-by-step guide of producing keyframe(.bmp) images.

Any procedural tips would be appreciated.

Thanks

[old_blaggard]

Very few people have done that much work with animation yet, because of TG2's large time requirements for rendering images and because of the fact that it isn't multithreaded yet.  With TG2, almost any parameter is animatable.  The really basic explanation is to select the frame from the slider at the bottom of the TG2 window and select "Set animation keyframe" for the parameters you want to animate.  I'm sure someone else can give you a more detailed explanation, but this should be enough to get you started.

[burtward]

I am a newby and would appreciate if you could tell me exactly WHERE to find "Set animation keyframe" - I can't find it anywhere!  Also, I can't find an "Undo" button - does one exist in Terragen 2?

[rcallicotte]

No 'undo' button.  You can Revert to Saved from the File menu option.

To find Set Animation Keyframe, go to anything in your scene.  Let's use a heightfield shader, for example.  Go to the shader and in the Position row (in the details below the list of terrains) see the small square that has an SA>?  Click on that and you'll see the Set Animation Keyframe.

I am a newby and would appreciate if you could tell me exactly WHERE to find "Set animation keyframe" - I can't find it anywhere!  Also, I can't find an "Undo" button - does one exist in Terragen 2?

[bigben]

I am a newby and would appreciate if you could tell me exactly WHERE to find "Set animation keyframe" - I can't find it anywhere!  Also, I can't find an "Undo" button - does one exist in Terragen 2?

Firstly, you need to purchase the Deep + Animation version and then you'll find them everywhere in a pullout menu from these buttons.
[attach=#1]

I produced TG9.43 animation movies using CamPathEditor.

As a new user of TG2 Deep-Anim. I haven't seen a step-by-step guide of producing keyframe(.bmp) images.

Any procedural tips would be appreciated.

TG2 uses CHAN files for importing camera positions. These are basically tabulated text files with the camera position and orientation settings.  It is possible to convert TGS scripts to CHAN files but it involves some manipulation of the text first, and then some math to convert the TG coordinates to metres.
I use a MS Word macro for the first (for converting TGS from Terranim) and a database for the second http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1841.0.

I have plans to incorporate Campath into this workflow and will need to do so by the end of my current project as it supports arbitrary planes as well as loaded TERs. I will be working backwards in this case, selecting key camera positions in TG2, converting that to a Campath project, exporting a TGS converting that to CHAN and then re-importing into TG2... Fiddly yes, but it fits within my budget 

The only drawback to using Terranim or Campath for creating camera paths from TERs is that the camera position does not allow for the curvature of the earth. If you are working with a flat terrain in TG2 then it's not a problem (http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=1843.msg17951#msg17951), but then that limits the size of your terrain.