Preview - Sketchup Floating Camera [Update 2011-03-19]]

bentleykfrog

looks pretty cool... nice model too.

Thanks Krisidious, the models about 2 months of hard work so I'm trying to get as much use out of it as possible

bentleykfrog

@solo said:

Looks like a very promising plugin.

Any chance of including a roll feature?

Roll would be pretty cool, but i'll have to look into some new keyboard assignments for this. Is there a way of disabling the user set keyboard shortcuts when within a tool?

A quick search reveals that its not possible I'll have to toggle some keyboard layouts on and off to do this or use some keycodes as in this: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=34002

bentleykfrog

Afternoon All,

I've been hard at work on the Floating Camera for the last week, focusing on Camera Collision, Gravity (maintaining eye height), Camera Roll & FOV changes and User Customisation in controls and the camera settings. Its been a very long week! Below is a rough draft showing off the camera features I've been working on. At the end there is also an example of Floating Camera -> Camera Recorder work flow.

[flash=800,480:a5jpqin3]http://www.youtube.com/v/vh-BOHdcK_Y[/flash:a5jpqin3]

There's still some bugs to work out before the release, and I need to reduce its load on the computer to an acceptable level. A beta release shouldn't be far off though.

The features not shown include:

Look customisation (finite|infinite rotation)
Look x & y sensitivity
Maximum speed
Camera Inertia
Collision Buffer Zone
Lock vertical movements
Maintain Camera Upright
User customisable controls

Krisidious

fantastic... I can't wait...

Pixero

Looking great! Much better than my own humble experiments. Can't wait to try it.
It's however a little hard to see how it performs in the video.
Is the small jerkyness in movements also present without screen recording software?
I especially liked when the camera walked down the stairs. I though I saw some damping in the movement.
And I guess we will see a lot of camera rolls in the near future...

bentleykfrog

Thanks guys,

@pixero said:

It's however a little hard to see how it performs in the video.
Is the small jerkyness in movements also present without screen recording software?

There's two issues causing the jerkyness in the movements. The first was the screen recording software that I used. I'll have to play around with some encoders until I get something acceptable. The second issue is the script itself. I've been putting off optimising the code until now and there are a few measures that I can try to improve the performance of the script. There's also some boundingbox degrading that Sketchup does naturally when you modify the Sketchup.max_draw_time to something below what your system can handle, but I haven't been able to replicate this when the script is running.

@pixero said:

I especially liked when the camera walked down the stairs. I though I saw some damping in the movement.

Heh, thanks. The unusual way that the camera walks down the stairs in the video is due to the speed set on the camera (20km/h). This speed is equivalent to a quick jog down the stairs so you see some unusual movements at this speed. I've noticed that in some video games the camera moves up stairs even faster than this, and I think they use some hidden smooth ramp to make sure the camera moves in a nice fashion. I'll have to modify some of the dampening to mirror this, but its a bit complex.

mitcorb

Congratulations on your work so far. This is a significant development.
I was going to ask the same questions regarding the relative smoothness in negotiating the stairs.

Chris Fullmer

Yeah, this is looking really super! I better go fix my script's inability to handle FOV changes then I guess

Chris

JClements

Looks pretty neat.

I do like the idea of holding the camera at a fixed altitude.

If you could then have ability to focus on a point or selected object or just the center to the screen and orbit about it at a fixed radius, that would be very useful .... like what what can be done in Google Earth with the Shift-Alt-left-arrowkey or Shift-Alt-right-arrowkey combinations.

wimve

Wow looks great. Although not tested yet I have a question already: is it possible to include a "flightpath" ? So a predefined camera path.

For instance when you want to walk through several rooms it is hard to move around nicely with only the keyboard keys. But if you draw a line at the desired eyeheight which the camera has to follow this would be easier.

dtrarch

Just brilliant.

And in a $495 program !
It looked like there was a path option but please if possible so that one could create that first and then run the camera gestures.
WOW

dtr

bentleykfrog

@jclements said:

Looks pretty neat.

I do like the idea of holding the camera at a fixed altitude.

If you could then have ability to focus on a point or selected object or just the center to the screen and orbit about it at a fixed radius, that would be very useful .... like what what can be done in Google Earth with the Shift-Alt-left-arrowkey or Shift-Alt-right-arrowkey combinations.

Good suggestion, that would be a cool feature to have. In this release I'm just focussing on navigation from the human proportion coupled with the ability to float if you need to I'll look into more sophisticated methods of camera animation in the next release.

bentleykfrog

@wimve said:

Wow looks great. Although not tested yet I have a question already: is it possible to include a "flightpath" ? So a predefined camera path.

For instance when you want to walk through several rooms it is hard to move around nicely with only the keyboard keys. But if you draw a line at the desired eyeheight which the camera has to follow this would be easier.

I haven't looked into this but it could be possible, but its sort of going in the opposite direction to what the plugin does currently. I'll elaborate a little.

First off, I think Rick Wilson's plugin FlightPath2 handles flight paths, or there's also SU Animate. Have you tried these plugins? This is what comes to mind when I think of implementing a flight path in the plugin, are you thinking of something similar or do you have something different in mind.

In my current internal build of the script, you can use it in combination with either Chris Fullmer's Camera Recorder or Pixero's version of Chris Fullmer's Camera Recorder to record the Camera's flight path whilst using the Camera Float Tool. In Pixero's version, you can then modify this path (ie. remove all the bumps from the flight path) and then produce a final animation from the revised flight path. I used this technique in the first video to get a 'more-smooth' animation through the model and to produce a video that is rendered with shadows (obviously navigating with the Camera Float Tool with shadows on will slow down your movements significantly).

Also from your query, I decided to test the tool on a very tight model (Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye by Robert-34000 on the 3d Warehouse). This model has insanely tight stairs and a ramp and its internal arrangement is all over the place (IMO obviously). I've recorded the video for you to see how it faired:

[flash=800,480:3r7gzeob]http://www.youtube.com/v/fXncZU60Ftc[/flash:3r7gzeob]

If you notice at around the 42 second mark, I accidentally jump onto the ballustrade of the ramp. You should be able to edit this out using Pixero's version of Chris Fullmer's Camera Recorder. Also notice, that since I couldn't be bothered removing all the doors in the building, that I disable collision every time I want to pass through a door.

I'm also planning to add a different scale for looking up and down so you get better control whilst navigating through your model.

Pixero

Looking good! Can't wait to try it.

Bertier

Hello,

is it possible to try your plugin ?

rombout

how is the plugin coming?! has been a couple months already really want to try it

Phil Rader AIA

Any news on a release date?

bentleykfrog

@unknownuser said:

Any news on a release date?

Hi Phil, you can try out the public beta at Floating Camera Public Beta 1.x Thread. I've updated the main post with a link to this too.

tspco

I think I missed something, I tried a test "float" everything was great and working real well until I ended up underneath my model, I could see that was going to happen. I see there is a toggle to maintain camera height, but I can't find a place to enter camera height. So far I like this plugin.

bentleykfrog

@tspco said:

I think I missed something, I tried a test "float" everything was great and working real well until I ended up underneath my model, I could see that was going to happen. I see there is a toggle to maintain camera height, but I can't find a place to enter camera height. So far I like this plugin.

Hi Ryan, I'm working on user input for camera height and field of view for the next version. In your case this would be an issue since camera height works by checking if there is any geometry below the camera position. Since you're underneath your model, there's no geometry, so there's no camera height, so you'll need to move the camera up until you're above the model. The default keys to move the camera up and down are shift and control respectively.

Also, you can modify or find out the keys for specific movement in Floating Camera by loading the controls dialog (click the icon in the toolbar that looks like a c-key).

Hope this helps.

-niall