Vray Camera Modifier

Through the years that I have worked at companies I notice that most of the animators are not familiar with 3rd party render cameras and they end up animating with the default scanline camera. This causes me to have to go in and replace it by hand or with some half working script that replaces the scanline camera with the new one. Why not make the Vray camera a modifier you add to the camera. Now you would never have to replace a camera and would simplify cameras for Vray like no other 3rd party render engine out there. Most of all, this would put smiles on all render guys faces and help to improve our relationships with our fellow animators,

Cheers

Re: Vray Camera Modifier

What script are you using, which is only half-working?
If you’re referring to mine, what is it that doesn’t work for you?
And what would you like to see added to it?

I’m under the impression that if a “camera modifier” was possible in the way you suggested, it would have been done in the first place.
Nevertheless, i’d like to hear a dev take on this.

Lele

Lele,
Could you script be modified to replicate the keys from the max cam and its target onto the vraycam and its target?
That would be fairly easy wouldnt it?

no, it would not be :slight_smile:
That is, there’s LOADS of ways to animate a camera.
The simplest workaround for animated camera conversion is to convert the camera to a physcam at the first frame, and parent the camera and target to the original max camera.
That WILL be implemented soon enough, yes.
Copying controllers is way too too complex (ask the fbx format coders for more infos, lol) and can lead to mistakes.

Lele

Re: Vray Camera Modifier

You can simply link the V-Ray camera to the original one; in that case you can easily go back to the standard camera at any time.

Best regards,
Vlado

Re: Vray Camera Modifier

Sorry studioDIM, that came out horribly rude. I guess this was just an idea that I thought would be nice for a scene with 20 cameras. And yes, I do link the Vray camera to the scanline camera or run your script, just thought this might be a Farley easy and strait forward way. The great thing about the idea is that it would be able to make a Max camera a scanline camera or a Vray camera just by turning on and off the modifier. This would be nice if you have to render a pass in scanline and others with Vray. Or if you needed to pass a scene to another FX house or renderer like mental ray. Anyways, it’s a pretty crazy idea so I would understand if it’s too far fetched,

Cheers

Well, there is no problem to do this in theory, but the display in the viewports would be somewhat problematic…

Best regards,
Vlado

Re: Vray Camera Modifier

No worry for the “roughness” of the statement, i am the first to admit the scripts are free BECAUSE i spend little time on them.
They off-spawns of my daily work, being a lazy chap. :lol:

This said, and hearing what kind of situations you find yourself into, it should be fairly easy and straightforward to implement a few changes, or write a custom script for a batch of cameras (or have the script sense multiple cameras in the scene, and asking to convert the lot or just the selected one…).
And it should also be pretty straightforward to implement the parenting, and in case a naming convention which isn’t spitting out Physcam names as long as poems, or that could possiby present some form of table (the latter may prove a little bit more time consuming…)

I’ll surely look into it one of these days.

Cheers!

Lele

http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=151306#151306

I updated the script to parent the converted cam to the original one, so to preserve animation, and a batch conversion for all the visible cameras in the scene.
Have a look and let me know if it works as you expect.

Lele

Awsome!

thanks for the quick response, will check it out tonight before I leave work and get back to you,
Cheers! :slight_smile:

Cheers

Sorry for the delay, works great, thanks again for the update,
Cheers :lol: