Hello,
I find it hard to create a smooth walkthrough animation in vantage (I have limited knowledge). The transition between “hotspots”, which are the locations of each camera, is hard to control.
I’m wondering if there’s a better way to do this kind of animation.
Is it just better to have the camera movement or trajectory done in Max instead?
Thank you.
Can you clarify what you mean by “hard to control”? You can use the context menus in the animation editor to control the transitions: Chaos Vantage
Of course, Vantage only provides basic animation controls. You can use your DCC application of choice (3ds Max) to create more complex animations.
By “hard to control” I mean that the transition works for camera movement AND time. If I wanted to smooth out the transition from one camera to the next space-wise (not time) so it doesn’t feel like a robotic movement, the timing is eased too, making apparent stops at each camera, when for a walkthrough it’s supposed to continue in a fluid movement.
EDIT: The “Smooth path” doesn’t feel very smooth honestly. I think that’s the issue I’m having
Hello!
Could you give us a file with the animation so that we can see the way it behaves and think of something? Otherwise doing the anim in 3ds Max is a solution, but if we can do something to solve the problem for the future, that would be great.
Here’s an example. See how clunky the transition is. This is with linear transition.
hello. it seems like you are trying to get some specific points of view as you are moving around. for me, that is more of a 3ds max camera movement animation(s). in vantage i tend to stick to simpler camera movements up/down, forward/back, rotate left/right and then piece those together in adobe premiere or, just have them all render as one animation with quick cuts to each camera.
some people are really good at getting smooth motion that might fly-around a point of interest using just 1 camera in programs like vantage, but i’m not one of them 
in your example you could try slow-out of the previous shot, then slow-in of the next camera. also remember you don’t have a camera target to animate which can help to smooth out rotates and such in 3ds max. so things seem a little stop and go.
Thanks.
What do you mean by “slow-out” and “slow-in”? If it means the built in “in/out quad” transitions then it won’t work well. If I do ease in and out the camera tends to zero speed, which is not what I want. So I had to use linear, but the break to the next shot is too abrupt even if “smooth path” is selected.
I can do it in 3ds max but my animation is about 16000 frames. Exporting that camera alone takes a long time for Vray to export each frame. Unless there’s something I’m missing.
yes, that’s what i meant the in/out quad. i don’t always remember ha.
oh, i see when you export it to vrscene it takes a long time. ugh.
in the past, i’ve used live link to vantage from 3ds max. then, i scrub to the beginning of the animation in 3ds max, wait for it to update to that view and click on create new camera in vantage. then i scrub in 3ds max to the very last frame of animation, wait for it to update in vantage and then click on create new camera in vantage.
then i drag those two cameras to the animation time line in vantage and i’m able to set a transition if needed (i think i go to linear). then render out the high quality from within vantage. haven’t done that in a while though.
Are you trying to create a turntable animation?
Hello again!
As others pointed out the interpolation seems to be an issue. We played a bit and got confused ourselves a bit and we were thinking you might have a similar problem.
1. You need to have all transitions to be linear, so that the movement speed is uniform (this does not affect the shape of the path, if it is “smooth” (bezier) it will be smooth).
2. And then you need to fix the camera speed along each transition segment to be the same, so that the camera doesn’t suddenly change its speed.
Hhere is a reminder where to find the options:
Hope that helps, if you still have issues, lets us know!
Got it. I’ll try that out. Thank you.
I think it would be good to have a way to smooth out the entire camera trajectory automatically, no? So, you create the whole sequence, press a button and it smoothes the trajectory and evens the timing across all the camera changes. This is helpful when in walkthroughs you need to follow a specific path that is not straight (like a zig-zag or roundabout) or you need to avoid hitting a tree for example.
@Luma3d I do not need to do a turntable. This animation was just an example to show the clunkiness of the transition.
