Animated Pans....best way ?

[mmikee]

We do alot of pans where the camera does not move. Probably 1/2 of the animations on any given project. What would be the best aproach for these kind of shots ? I would like to be able to render one highres still and animate in post.
cylinderical camera ?
Any thoughts would be great.

Regards,
Mike

[natty]

Hi
You can render straight out of max a Pan, max will render 6 shots and stich for you.

[mmikee]

Hey Natty.
Will it look the same, as far as perspective, as rendering each frame ?
I just havent had the time to test it yet. I have a pretty dense scene to
render and I am at 50+ minutes per frame. That is way to long. There
are wood floors, wood doors, wood trim, and wood wainscot.
The only way that I have been able to get the render times down around 30 minutes was to remove the glossy reflections from all of the wood
exept the floor.

Well thanks for the info. Any more advice is welcome.

Regards,
Mike

[gunny263]

for a simple pan in post, you only need to render one image. The 6 images is referring to a panarama - not a panned camera move.

Try this - create a Photoshop doc at something like 1440x972 (double your video res). Next, use the rectangular marquee tool and change the style from normal to Fixed Size. Type in 720x486 and click somewhere in the new doc you just created. You should see a rectangle that represents your video display and as you move it around the image, you can visualize the panning effect you will get in post.

If you want to get a bit more sophisticated with it, think back to those pop-up books that were around when you were younger (making assumptions here). If you took a viewfinder and started in real tight on the background and pulled back to reveal the foreground elements, it would give you the illusion of moving through the space even though they are all 2D elements.
With render times like you decribe, you might want to look at isolating some foreground elements and rendering them out seperately. Some suggestions for what usually looks good: flowers, light fixtures or a table setting.

[percydaman]

I personally render out a still using spherical 360 cam inside of vray. Then you can photoshop the heck out of it and make it all gussy lookin. Then just map it onto a sphere in max, and throw in a camera. Just render using scanline if you want. BTW its a great way to do panned stills using 3d moblur. Actually its prolly closer to 2.5 moblur, but it looks great and renders pretty darn quick.

I never bother rendering moving camera animation in tight spaces. Its just wasted on the client, who will never notice the difference. I'm speaking of arch vis clients obviously.

[visualride]

I've been having great luck using the panoramic exporter render out of Max. I just discovered it few days ago and already have some decent interactive virtual walk throughs of a bunch of my 3d communities.

After rendering some pan views I did a quick Google search for interactive interfaces and came across TourWeaver by EasyPano. The trial software is extremely easy and produces good results.

Anyone have any other suggestions of other interactive panoramic viewers?