Walkthrough

[blueskydesigngroup]

I was hoping to create a walkthrough animation in Envision by exporting a VRscene file from rhino.

Lets say you walk down the street and into a building. The door opens and you go inside.
Can this be done in Envision or do you have to go through Enscape first to create the camera path?

I'm trying to avoid Enscape because all the materials are Vray

I was trying to use the keyframes in the camera animation timeline but there is no control over the path the camera takes between keyframes resulting in strange 360 turns.

Hopefully this can be done.

cheers
justin

[nayden_dochev]

Hi blueskydesigngroup,

You can animate a camera along path. Please check the tutorials here https://docs.chaos.com/display/ENVIS...mera+Workflows
In the Animate Cameras video, all types of camera animations are explained. The first half of the video focuses on keyframes and the second on how to animate a camera moving along a spline object.

Let us know if you need further information!

Best
Nayden

[blueskydesigngroup]

Thanks for this.

The video kind of stops short at the end as to what happens when the camera goes around the corner yet the focus point is still the car.

Can you have multiple focus points along the spline?
Can you still use keyfames along the spine?

Also it gets a little confusing on the time line as the camera shows a 4 second clip but the spline has a longer time frame and therefore they do not relate to each other anymore.

The main thing, like in Enscape, is to be able to walk around and look at different objects - ie keyframes of different camera angles along a path.......is this possible?

Cheers
Justin

[Ana Lyubenova]

Hi Justin,

Can you have multiple focus points along the spline? -> I believe this question can be interpreted in 2 different ways. If you want your camera to look at a specific object, currently only 1 object per camera is supported. If you, however, want to animate the DOF along the spline, this can be achieved using the respective keyframing. Have your camera positioned on the timeline. Then, select it from the timeline, and in the Details panel, you'll see the keyframes indicator next to each camera parameter that can be keyframed (see the attached image).
Can you still use keyfames along the spine? -> You can keyframe specific camera parameters, as described above.

The camera shows a 4 second clip but the spline has a longer time frame -> The camera block length can be adjusted via drag and drop, whereas the timeline length can be adjusted using the grips at the bottom.

Walking around and looking at different objects can be achieved. Here's a video that you can watch: https://youtu.be/IIPlc7BQlzA?si=Dv48GWNk9eEEg4tM

Regards,
Ana

[nayden_dochev]

Hi blueskydesigngroup,

Currently combining camera transformation keyframes with path animations is not supported and adding support is not planned but I will share this feedback with the team for consideration.

What you can do however is animate the target of the camera.
For example you can animate a cube to move along a path or via variations.
Then use the look at functionality to target the camera at the cube.
You can also hide the cube so that it is not visible in the final render.

Best
Nayden

[blueskydesigngroup]

Thanks for the replies. These all make sense.

It’s a bit disappointing that you can’t create a walkthrough video in Envision the same way you can in Enscape or Lumion. I was hoping to walk through a house, studio, or restaurant in first-person, exploring different aspects of the design in a single video. Enscape and Lumion make this process very easy. I was really hoping to transition directly from V-Ray/Rhino to Envision.

Enscape works well for this, but the lack of animation and the need to recreate materials led us to choose Lumion . I was hoping Envision would address these issues and enhance our workflow by sticking to chaos ecosystem.



Cheers
Justin

[Ana Lyubenova]

Hi Justin,

Your feedback sounds valuable though!

How do you find the idea of being able to transfer your Enscape camera walkthrough to Envision?

[blueskydesigngroup]

Hi Ana,

That would sound great. If you can just export the camera walkthrough from enscape would be good.
It does sound like a little bit of a work around as we would then need to subscribe to 2 software packages, and only use enscape for the camera path.

We don't mind using enscape but it doesn't take on vray materials as its only a one way package.

So if we can export a VRscene from vray rhino and then export the camera path only from Enscape and combine these 2 in Envsion that would work for us. Besides having to pay for 2 packages ofcourse

From a programing point of view, if you guys can add keyframes to a spline in the camera, the problem would be solved.

Cheers
Justin

[Ana Lyubenova]

Justin, I've misread your previous reply and thought you guys were using Enscape and then I rushed to validate whether Enscape camera export would also be a valuable addition.

To summarize, currently in Envision you can:

1. Move the camera, walk around, create key frames of the camera position (new key frames are created by holding the Shift key and dragging an existing timeline key). I believe this matches the Enscape workflow.
2. Have a camera moving on a spline (and lock it to look at a specific object if you will)
3. Have a combination of both these camera block types on the timeline and keyframe the EV and the DOF in both cases

Your feedback sounds reasonable and we'll investigate the best approach to solve the problem. Could be what you suggested at the beginning - keyframing the "Look at" parameter.

We would love to hear more opinions in that regard.

Best,
Ana

[marthamaatkamp]

I've been experimenting a bit with camera movement, in general it works fine - much better than the Enscape camera animation in my opinion, since the Enscape keyframes cannot be dragged and are very hard to adjust, timing-wise. Also Enscape doesn't allow object tracking so I'm much happier here.

For certain animations it works quite well to have two paths, one for the camera location, one for an object to track as a look-at-point.

For other animations it is better to have a path for the location combined with "follow path" and, if necessary, rotation parameters.

However, when, for example my camera position is static and following an object, the rotation parameter physically changes, but the rotation numbers are still editable even though they don't do anything. I think they should be grayed out to indicate non-editability...

Also rotation parameters make no sense for a camera. It should be yaw, pitch & roll instead, and interpolated accordingly... in that case, roll could still be animated and keyframed even when tracking a moving object that influences only yaw and pitch. (yeah I won't be animating the roll in that case, but someone more artistically inclined might

Another thing: when tracking a human who walks on a path, the feet are tracked, not the head or (for average) the chest area. Probably because that is the location of their origin, but we're trying to make an intuitive program, not a technical one, right?

And an item on my whish-list: export from SketchUp of all the scenes as cameras, or as one camera with keyframes (maybe offer a choice between these). Currently only the last active view gets exported, either when exporting through the bridge plugin or through the v-ray vrscene export.

[marthamaatkamp]

Oh and one more thing: I'd like to be able to animate a camera's focal length/view angle. Is this on the roadmap?