Camera controls

Roygee

Hi all :)

I have a q regarding camera controls - when I first open a new scene, I have all the camera controls available. I like to use trackball and centre to selection because they dolly around my subject. Sooner or later it will default to free camera. This is a real nuisance because it seems to dolly around the centre of the universe. The other options get greyed out. Anything I can do about this?

Something else which crops up now and again is that, instead of real-time camera movement, I'll get a preview of the camera view movement overlaying the camera controls and the actual view snaps into place when I release the mouse.

Dave Savage

Maybe the difference you are seeing is the difference between the Director View and the Camera View?

I tend to use Director view for most things because it has more movement options available (Camera View has these options greyed out).
But if you save a particular view using the memory dots, it also stores the camera/director part too and it can get confusing.

Because of this, I'm forever using the Camera to Director command so that the two options are the same.

Horo

@Roygee - just to give some contrast: I never use the Directors camera. I start setting the free camera to X/Y/Z 0/30/-100 and all rotation angles to 0. In this position, the sun and HDRI positions are in synch with the camera and the custom starfield shows the one seen from Earth in the northern hemisphere at the spring equinox. There is no better way, it depends how you prefer to work.

Roygee

I found that resetting the view brings back the option to use the trackball to dolly around the selection, but that puts the camera back on the wrong side of the object - either in harsh light or in darkness.

Horo, the settings you gave do indeed give a good starting point for light and shadow - thanks for that.

I recall there is a method to save a scene as default, but can't recall just how to go about this - any help there, please.

Horo

@Roygee - save a default scene is the easy one: set up your scene you'd like to start with (sky, camera, document size and whatever) then save it as "default.br7" (without the quotes) in the folder where the Bryce main program is. Next time you start Bryce, you'll get your default settings.

Roygee

Thanks Horo :)

Rashad Carter

TheSavage64 said:

Maybe the difference you are seeing is the difference between the Director View and the Camera View?

I tend to use Director view for most things because it has more movement options available (Camera View has these options greyed out).
But if you save a particular view using the memory dots, it also stores the camera/director part too and it can get confusing.

Because of this, I'm forever using the Camera to Director command so that the two options are the same.

Ditto. I thought I was the only one who worked in this manner. Glad to know I am not alone.

This is especially interesting because you and I tend to make very different types of scenes. While we both make all sorts of scenes from time to time, I've noticed you often employ product visualizations which are typically smaller scenes; an object at world center with a black or otherwise uniform background color. I find that the Director's camera orbits around the center point of the scene by default. This center point isn't necessarily 0,0,0, it is the triangulated center based on the positions and scaling of the total geometry.
The Director's Camera is very user friendly in such intimate situations, remaining safely in orbit around the center point of the scene.

Using the Director's Camera in complex scenes is a little different, but doable and for me still much preferred to the Camera. In really complex scenes, I usually have some sort of giant object in the wire frame that is hidden from rendering and showing only as a box in the wire frame. By making this invisible object larger than the entire scene itself and setting it to the 0,0,0 position, I can stabilize the Directors camera so that it always orbits the point in space I choose no matter how distant some object might be from the world center.

Roygee

Thanks for that explanation, Rashaad. This explains the strange behaviour of the cameras and with that I can adjust my methods to reduce the frustration levels :)

Dave Savage

Rashad Carter said:

This is especially interesting because you and I tend to make very different types of scenes. While we both make all sorts of scenes from time to time, I've noticed you often employ product visualizations which are typically smaller scenes; an object at world center with a black or otherwise uniform background color. I find that the Director's camera orbits around the center point of the scene by default. This center point isn't necessarily 0,0,0, it is the triangulated center based on the positions and scaling of the total geometry.
The Director's Camera is very user friendly in such intimate situations, remaining safely in orbit around the center point of the scene.

At the moment I'm working on some quite complex (for me) animation stuff for a client and it's when doing that that the pitfalls of camera views are most obvious because I animate the camera but need the director view to look around my scene to see how the elements within the scene are looking without messing up my camera movement. My most common mistake is to set a good camera view start point (so I'm in Camera View) and then go top view to adjust something in the scene and then from habit go to Director View and scratch my head as to why the view has completely altered.

I have however, learned to save Camera Views in the memory dots for various positions through the scenes so that when it comes to creating the animation path for the camera, I can go to the correct point on the timeline and click the corresponding memory dot and create a keyframe to instantly put the camera in the correct place.

GussNemo

If I have the camera set up so that I've got a scene shot I like I'll switch to director view to move around the scene. I'll also use the key pad to get different views when trying to line up something.