Some more questions
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Thanks Wo3Dan, those tutorials very helpful. I can deduce then there is no way to 'show' the camera position from an existing scene unless one previously set the camera to specific object's postion. IOW, you have to create an object first, then set the camera position to it.
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Wo3Dan,
I also found many of your other tutes valuable, especially the one on aligning a polygon face perpendicular to an arbitrary path in space. Thanks!
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Chipp, to get the camera position of an existing page/scene:
Draw a horizontal (parallel to the bottom edge of your screen) line/edge anywhere on a horizontal face in the model, then move that edge vertical (blue-axis) until it matches "exactly" the model horizon.
Now, starting at the "exact" center point of your screen, on the edge now located at the horizon, draw a blue-axis vertical edge down to your horizontal face, then draw a line on that face to the "exact" center of the bottom of your screen...this is the first line pointing to directly below your camera position.
From another point on your horizon edge draw another vertical line done to the same horizontal face, but now, using your "lookaround" eyeballs, rotate this vertical so that it is at the "exact" center of your screen again (move the eyeballs along the horizon so you can keep the start and stop points horizontal). Repeat the line from the bottom of your vertical to the bottom center of your screen...your second pointer is drawn.
Now zoom out and continue the two lines until they intersect: below the camera, so draw up vertical to the height of the horizon edge and you have it!
Now I can go to sleep, thank you very much.
Best, Tom. -
Tom,
Thanks for that! Thought about it and I think one part may be wrong. The height of the camera is not necessarily the same height as the horizon, is it? For instance, a camera could be pointing up, no?
After thinking about it some more--the camera's pointing has nothing to do with it's position. Maybe you are correct. I'll check it out
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@chippwalters said:
Thanks Wo3Dan, those tutorials very helpful. I can deduce then there is no way to 'show' the camera position from an existing scene unless one previously set the camera to specific object's postion. IOW, you have to create an object first, then set the camera position to it.
Chippwalter,
Sorry, I didn't notice that you want to approach this the other way around.
Just upload a simple favorite example skp so that I can show you how. Include a scene that you want to be reproduced in another scene (NOT A SCENE COPY!) with the camera in the skp in 3D-space. Mind you it's not going to be 100% but almost. -
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@chippwalters said:
Wo3Dan,
Here one:
Chippwalter,
(Working on it, the "hardest" thing is to save steps to make things clear, not forgetting anything)
b.t.w. in 'Shadow Settings' you can adjust ligth/dark and especially in your case: Display (shadow): on ground. I disabled that for good reasons
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Yeah, sorry for leaving it on. I was rendering in Podium and wanted the shadows! BTW, do you know if there's a way to extrude a curved surface, or a curved path? Thx.
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@chippwalters said:
Yeah, sorry for leaving it on. I was rendering in Podium and wanted the shadows! BTW, do you know if there's a way to extrude a curved surface, or a curved path? Thx.
What I meant is not turning off shadow but just that "ground (Z=0) will not show shadow". Your floor is below Z=zero. It's "underground", so to speak. The shadow at groundlevel is in the way. See your scene5.
(camera W.I.P)
Extruding a curved face: no
Extruding along a curved path: yes(*)(*)
- the curved path is coplanar: no problem
- the curved path is 3D: the cross section of the extrusion will twist along the path.
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Huh. Didn't know about shadows not projecting below sealevel. Thanks for that. Podium didn't seem to mind and rendered just fine.
What I meant by extruding a path, was actually taking a path, and offsetting it, and stitching the polys in-between.
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Nevermind about the extrude curve thing. It appears the CurveStitcher plugin will do the job.
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Chipp, your question about the height of the camera gave me pause...but I still think I right(?). If you use the eyeballs to change your view you'll see the reference edges on the horizontal face and at the horizon move together, but if you use the orbit tool you are changing the height of the camera.
Keep me posted (though I keep expecting someone to point us to a ruby that will do this for us...and exactly! :`)
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OK, I looked at it. Thanks for doing this, but while I understand how to find the target, and the height offset, I'm not sure I follow the rest of your construction. You have constructed several polygons. Which came first? TIA.
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@chippwalters said:
Wo3Dan,
Here one:
(see previous posthttp://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=3bde59bd2cb2eb715953c2937bcaaf81)Chippwalter,
Here is your skp with one scene (nr.6) reproduced:
(click on C1, C2, C3 and so on till 'closup of target')Several tools you can use:
-From scene6 zoom in real close using the eyeglass (=Zoom tool), not your mouse.
This will let you pinpoint (mark) your target.
-The Walk tool will reveal the actual height from scene6 in the VCB
The camera is located on the line that I drew towards the little vertical line in the canon (CANNON?!?#)
The rest is pure constructial and a bit of trial and error to find the camera
Try to figure it out and let me know. -
OK then, maybe this is what you mean by "extruding a path" (see attached skp file).
You can also copy it along the z axis and hand stitch the polylines together but that's slower.
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@gaieus said:
OK then, maybe this is what you mean by "extruding a path" (see attached skp file).
You can also copy it along the z axis and hand stitch the polylines together but that's slower.
really great stuff in here.....
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Hi bonj (and welcome)
I hope you can find some useful stuff here...
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Yep, that does work for extruding a path-- though a bit convoluted. Perhaps SU can accomplish this simple task in the next vers?
I did talk to TBD and he says there's an easy way to identify the position of the camera using Ruby. So, I'm off to figure that out
Thanks everyone for your generous and helpful support!
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You can also just elevate a copy of the curve and then select both and use the curvstitcher.rb or the skin.rb to create the surface. The above method was only about one minute to accomplish however.
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@chippwalters said:
OK, I looked at it. Thanks for doing this, but while I understand how to find the target, and the height offset, I'm not sure I follow the rest of your construction. You have constructed several polygons. Which came first? TIA.
chipwalters,
By now you must be thinking: “this guy is cheating, he just copied that scene”.
I only do admit that in my previous explanation not every step is obvious.
Also, there I found the camera location by zooming out from the scene to be reproduced.
And then when seeing the use of the ‘Walk’ tool, revealing the camera height I new that I could do better.
Here is a slightly different approach that is quite accurate (maybe several mm off / over 50m).
The difference is that here I use a second target just in front of the camera.See this model (tutorial) in 3DW:
But now I would like to know what the benefit might be for you to reproduce a scene?
What is your goal?
To me it was just the challenge and you ‘forced’ me to refresh my knowledge about the Zoom, Position Camera and Walk tools, so thanks!hope this helps,
Wo3Danp.s. You can also play the animation.
and toggle between first scene "(STANDARD SETTING (N))" and scene "reproduced camera location" to see if they are different. Hard to tell!
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