Posts made by Alex Jenyon

@sepo - I don't know, and don't have any way of testing it.... Only one way to find out, I guess.

I'm using fairly basic python commands in Vue, but I think the command to select the camera changed between Vue 6 and Vue 7, which might mean the script doesn't work.

You could try deleting the first two lines of the python script, manually selecting the camera in Vue, and then running the script normally.

Otherwise, you might need to do a bit of digging into the python documentation for Vue 5 to get it working seamlessly, but it shouldn't be too tricky.

AJ

Okay, I've got a workaround for folks who only have SUfree.

I have absolutely no idea WHY it works, but it seems to - so please test it and see if you can work it out yourself.

1. Export the geometry as a google earth .kmz file

2. Rename the file from name.kmz to name.zip (i.e. change the file type to .zip)

3. Unzip the .zip file

4. Open the 'models' folder, and find 'name.dae' - this is a collada file

5. Import the collada file to 'Vue'

6. Scale it by 3.937. No, I have no idea why, but it seems to work. Anyone know why it's this value?

(To do this, if you're not sure: Select your object, and click on the 'size' icon - the cube that's been stretched vertically. Calculate what the 'x' size of the object multiplied by 3.937 is. Then lock x, y and z sizes together - using the padlock icon - and enter this value in the 'x' size field. All the values should scale together.)

7. Follow the rest of my method to match the camera.

AJ

@Solo: That's brilliant - thank you so much for taking the time to put that together. Mind if I host a mirror of it on my own server?

@craftycurate: Can you upload / email me the skippy file, and let me know which version of 'Vue' you are using? I'll look into it, see if I can some up with a solution for you. alex [at] aj-concepts.net

Cheers

AJ

@craftycurate:

I'm honestly not sure - I just tried to record my own process as closely as possible.

It's worth checking in 'vue' to see if the orientation of the object is nearly right - i.e. the vertical axis in SU is the same as the 'up' in Vue.

If it is, there are a couple of things to check:

1. The field of view matches (SU's 'field of view' is the VERTICAL field of view in 'VUE'

2. The units are the same. My script outputs the camera data in METRES. If your obj exporter uses mm, feet, or something else it's not going to match.

3. The object is not hidden by the ground plane in 'vue' (delete it to make sure). Also check that vue doesn't automatically centre or resize your obj geometry.

Hope you can sort it out!

@matteo:

Vue d'esprit can only read python scripts that e-on has created themselves. I don't have a copy, so I can't test out your problem. It should be possible to use the FoV and the aspect ratio to calculate the camera focal length - there's plenty of info around on how to do this, but it's a bit tricky. Let me know if you find a workaround, and I might try to add it to the script.

@Solo:

Yay! Great news - glad you got it playing ball. Did it work the way I described, or did you have to put in a bit of extra legwork?
Please put together a video tutoral if you've got the time - I'm not sure it's something I'm going to be able to do.

Thanks for your time everyone - most appreciated.

AJ

@Solo:

There's a 'readme' file in the zip folder I uploaded, which hopefully explains everything.

Let me know if you have any trouble getting it to work - I haven't tried it on any system apart from mine yet, so a bit of testing is probably in order.

If it's working well for you, then please post the script / tutorials wherever you want.

Enjoy!

AJ

Thanks to some help from some ruby masters, I've managed to adapt Grant Marshall's 'Camera2Modo' script to export SketchUP cameras to E-on software's 'Vue' digital environment software.

I hope it's useful. I've tested it on SU6 with Vue 7 infinite on a Mac. It will almost certainly work with SU6 on a PC, and with Vue7 / 7.4 infinite / xstream on either platform. Not tested with SU7.

Here's my 'proof of concept'

SU Render:

Vue Render:

Combined:

You can download the script, a vue scene ready-setup and a tutorial here:

camera2vue.zip

I don't seem to be able to make the files into an attachment (might be safari), so if someone else / a mod can do it, that would be great. Let me know if there are any problems.

Enjoy.

AJ

I've solved both problems now - please see my other thread for the finished plugin

Thanks Chris...

It's currently working perfectly for SketchUP scenes in which the camera isn't rotated in the z-axis (i.e. rolled / dutch tilted), and is above ground level.

You also have to enter the camera 'field of view' by hand once you're in Vue.

That's why I haven't posted it up yet - super user-unfriendly!

If I can solve these two problems with Ruby, and the 'FoV' issue with Python, SketchUP and Vue are ready to go.

AJ

EDIT: I've just got problem#1 to work, using .to_f.to_m.to_s - your script still produced a value in inches. Thanks for the pointer, though...

I've been working on a ruby script to take a SketchUP camera into 'Vue'. It's heavily based on Grant Marshall's 'camera2modo' ruby, and it's ALMOST working.

However, I've come across a couple of issues I'm trying to solve, and my head is just about fried. The information may well be around, but if it is, it's not in a form I'm currently capable of understanding - so your time / patience is appreciated!

Problem #1:

 camscript.puts("cam.SetPosition(" + vx.to_s + ", " + vy.to_s + ", " + vz.to_s + ")")

outputs something that looks like this:

 cam.SetPosition( 5.44m, -7.92m, 9.85m)

I would like it to output this, WITHOUT the units:

 cam.SetPosition( 5.44, -7.92, 9.85)

I thought that 'to_f' would be the correct command, but that doesn't seem to work... Any ideas on how I could do this?

---

Problem #2:

I need to calculate the 'roll' (i.e. z-axis rotation) of the camera.

I've found a tutorial on highend3d on how to do this:

http://www.highend3d.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=57543&mode=threaded&pid=57740

And I'm pretty sure that in Ruby, (rather than MEL) it should look like this:

 # Calculate Y-rotation of camera (roll)
 globaly = [0, 1, 0]
 normal = zaxis.cross globaly
 projection = normal.cross zaxis
 cosine_roll = up.dot projection
 ry = Math.acos(cosine_roll).radians
  if (upy < 0)
  ry = -ry
  end

But this doesn't return the correct result. Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?

Many thanks for your time.

AJ

@unknownuser said:

Alex: just taken the time to look over your re-vamped (pun not intended) website. Nice to see the new stuff in there! What I particularly like about your work is that even the 'photo-real' matte work retains a subtle painterly quality. For reasons I can't quite pin-down, this style always seems to integrate a litte better with the original filmed footage than the ultra-slick cgi style that is so prevelant now. Perhaps because the paint strokes are reminiscent of film-grain...? (although know you also add grain digitally) I hope the increasing trend to film on-set with digital cameras won't mean a decline in this painterly style.

Thanks man! I got a lot of feedback on my old site (a chunk of it from this forum), and tried to take it all on board.

Interestingly, I think almost all of the 'film work' I've done was on plates that were actually shot digitally - 'Lesbian Vampire Killers' was shot on the RedCam, RocknRolla was shot on a digital Arriflex (A D20 I think). The same issues as film still seem to apply - I am STILL amazed at how rough, soft and indistinct most 'filmed' footage actually is - even on modern digital cameras. So you are 100% correct - super sharp, crispy CG just doesn't cut it. That's one of the reasons I love painting by hand, even with access to Vue, Renderman and an internet full of photo archives. It's also something that is dying off to some extent - there are lots of matte painters (pro-level ones) who will freely admit they can't paint for toffee.

@Pilou - first time for everything! Don't think I've had anything I've ever done translated before... Thank you!

AJ

Thanks for the comments everyone - I'll try to post a bit more often...

All the post processing / painting is done in Corel Painter X. Final colour correction / cropping in photoshop, but it's almost all painter.

Any natural media painting package would be fine for the job, since it's not really about any definite series of techniques beyond what any painting book would be able to tell you . I don't use Artrage, as I'm not used to it, but I've seen some amazing stuff from people who do.

Here is a rough guide to the process - I won't go too much into the painting, since this is an SU forum after all...

Step 1 - native SU output with the style 'sketchy pen black', face style 'hidden line', and shadows on. Saved as a .tiff with 'make background transparent' turned on (will be important later).

Step 2 - load the SU image in the art package of choice. It must support layers, because the first step is to copy the SketchUP image to layer 1, and set the blend mode to 'multiply'. You've then got a blank canvas, with the SU linework sitting on top of it in another layer. Because it's set to 'multiply', you can then happily start painting on the canvas, underneath the linework. I use a watercolour brush for this.

Step 3 - because the SU image had 'make background transparent' ticked when it was saved, it is possible to extract a matte of the buildings as an alpha channel. This is then used a layer mask on a new 'sky background' layer. You can then paint as rough as you want in the sky, knowing that the roofline will stay perfectly crisp and sharp.

Step 4 - make a new layer, and start painting in the detail. I use a square chalk brush for this, since it doesn't blend or pick up any of the colour underneath it. This isn't a worry in photoshop, where no brushes pick up previously applied colour. To recap:
Layer 0 (canvas): Rough watercolour painting
Layer 1: SketchUP render set to blend mode 'multiply'
Layer 2: Sky, with a layer mask extracted from the SketchUP render.
Layer 3: Painted detail

Step 5 - Finishing. For this I use a digital oil brush, which DOES pick up colour that is already sitting on the canvas. I can therefore use it to blend edges, soften gradients, and generally 'bed in' the painted detail. There's a bit of airbrushing for the atmospheric glow, and some fractal brushwork in photoshop for the chimney smoke.

This how I do almost all of my paintings. I've tried skipping the SketchUP part on a number of occasions (and starting with either a hand-drawn sketch, or just painting blindly), and the result is always substandard. It just great to be able to 'try out' all the possible angles, camera lenses, etc in SU, rather than endlessly thumbnailing - the composition always ends up miles better.

Hope that gives some folks here an idea or two...

AJ

Blimey - been a long time since I've posted anything here.

If you live in the UK, you can't have failed to notice that the... erm... 'interestingly' titled 'Lesbian Vampire Killers' film is out.

I did quite a bit of work on it as a concept artist and matte painter, and SketchUP saw quite a bit of use.

These paintings were used as backgrounds in the prologue - with a bit of defocus and lens bloom, they looked surprisingly real...

SketchUP:

Painting:

SketchUP:

Painting:

SketchUP:

Painting:

And another concept painting. Subject matter, if I've done my job right, should be obvious.

SketchUP:

Painting:

EDIT: Forgot about this one too - from the CGsociety 'Steampunk' challenge. Scylla attacks the Odyssey...

SketchUP:

Painting:

Enjoy! All SU images are native renders from SU6. I haven't found any pressing reason to upgrade to SU7 - dynamic components are a bit useless to me, and that seemed to be all that was new. Am I missing anything significant?

AJ

Great idea for a script - thank you! Should come in very useful for a bit of mattepainting.

I'm getting all kinds of errors with wxSU when sketchUP loads, which means that I haven't got 'randompainter' to run at all yet (though it's in the menu bar).

Obviously me having problems with wxsu is nothing to do with you at all , but until I can work out what's happening a version that doesn't require wxSU to run would be brilliant.

Thanks for all your work.

AJ

Hmmmm. Sounds like nothing a new mouse wouldn't put right.

With a brand shiny new three button optical mouse - with scroll wheel - setting you back a grand total of £6 or so, why not indulge?

(Even if your computer doesn't have a USB port, a USB>old-school mouse connector will add around £1...)

When my last ball mouse broke, it was doing something similar to yours. I'm pretty sure it was a faulty connection in the cable, but it just didn't seem worth struggling with a >5yr piece of hardware, so I ditched it...

AJ

I'm always a bit confused as to why someone would WANT to write an article like this.

Whether or not the facts behind it are true (and I am deeply dubious), what is the motivation for writing/publishing it?

Al Gore and his 'followers' have a clear motivation - they are trying to stop what they see as a very real, man-made threat. I have never met someone who 'believed' in global warming who wanted it to be true - why would you want something bad to happen? Unlike followers of a faith (with which they are often compared), they would like the thing they 'believe' in to disappear.

So the writer of this article - do they WANT inefficient cars? MORE CO2 emissions? MORE use of oil? Everyone has a motivation - it's the root cause of actions. What do you think the motivation is here?

Just a thought.

AJ

Aerons are the way to go - the most amazing, most comfortable chairs on the planet. They're like gold dust at every studio I've worked in - I've only ever got my hands on a slightly gaffa-taped example deemed too 'shabby' for the flame suites... and it's STILL the best chair ever.

Only problem is that they're probably the most expensive chair on the planet, too (about $800-ish, or the same number of sterling )

http://www.hermanmiller.com/CDA/SSA/Product/0,,a10-c440-p8,00.html

Second best would probably be one of the ergonomic 'kneeling' chairs - but make sure you get a good version, and not a cheap import with really thin cushions, 'cos your shins will start to burn like crazy after a couple of hours.

I bought mine from:

http://www.sitkneelchairs.co.uk/

Hope that helps!

AJ

Nice matte painting there...

Watch out for your black levels, and this will be great.

Did you paint over the raw SU output, or was some rendering involved inbetween?

Take care

AJ

These are lovely - very clean and simple. Nice!

I'm not sure which style I prefer, though - I think I'm leaning to the cream / sepia image more.

What do the more sketchy styles come out like?

Take care

AJ

Thanks for commenting, everyone...

@monsterzero: Thank you! - still waiting to hear

If you've got minute, I'd really appreciate some feedback on some charcter work I've been doing. Characters have always been my weakest area, so I've been putting a bit of effort in there lately.

It's absolutely OT for this forum, though - PM if you think you might have a few minutes to spare.

In answer to your question:

The player path is northwards (the clocktower is facing due south) - though you've got me worried now.

What REALLY obvious thing have I not thought about?

Thanks for looking

Take care

AJ

Thanks for your comments everyone.

@tinanne: I'll see about getting some WIP shots together

@Anssi: I'm not too clued up on my architects, so I'd never heard of Gordon Cullen before. Kind of a shame, because he sounds like a bit of a legend. Thanks for the heads up - I've tracked down some of his work for further study...

AJ