Switching cameras in an animation?

DLSantini

I can't seem to figure this out. Not even sure it's possible(although I can't imagine why there wouldn't be such a feature.)

What I want to do is, rather than animating/moving a single camera, I want to switch from one camera to another during an animation sequence. Maybe that is something that is simple for a pro, and I'm just too new to know about, but every search I've done brings me to tutorials that only ever talk about using keyframes to animate a single camera, which I already know how to do and is not what I need.

I basically need the same short animation(as an image sequence, if that matters) from many different angles. So rather than having to manually render the same thing over and over with different cameras, I setup 8 different cameras at my required views, and one long (repeating)animation. But as I said, I can't seem to actually cut from camera to camera automatically during an animation sequence.

Am I really dumb, and the answer is right in front of me? Or is it not something that is possible?

pciccone

Hi.
You are, I believe, assuming that you need to render the animation from Studio to a movie clip. That is actually not a good approach.
All animations, at the professional level, are rendered as series of frames. That means single PNG files, one per frame. The animation is then assembled in a video editor, aka Non-Linear Editor, NLE for short. Rendering to movie clip is just inefficient, fraught with problems and leads to a lot of time lost.

As you do for live movie making, you shoot every shot individually, archive it, label it and then assemble it in the NLE.
Similarly you render one camera shot, store all the frames to disk, switch to the other camera, and render the frames. Continue until you have done everything. Then in the NLE you create the sequence.

Hope this helps.

DLSantini

Hi, thanks for the reply. I actually already do render the animation as individual images(PNGs). A movie clip would be useless for me. I'm using the images to create sprite sheets. My problem is that I have to sit at my computer and wait around, just so I can press the "Render" button over and over again. It only takes about 10 minutes to render each series of images, and I have to then change the camera, and press render to start the next one. Nothing else about the scene has to change at all, except which camera is used. When my project is fully under way, I will have to be creating a few hundred sprite sheets, each made up of 10-15 different animations/image sequences. And so far, I don't see any way to batch-render.

As a side note, I've been looking into buying your product for rendering the more detailed portrait images that go with the sprite sheets. lol

pciccone

I see. Then the only thing that can help you is to script the actions using DAZScript. Unfortunately, if you are not a programmer, that might be a bit too difficult.

DLSantini

Turns out, I AM an idiot. I managed to figure out how to do it with keyframes. Once I finish setting-up the scene, I should be able to use it as a template, and just load up any character I want and hit render, and it will render out all the frames I need to create a full sprite sheet. I'm glad I managed to figure it out, but now I feel dumb for starting a thread about it. Lol

madriver

Okay Zhono, so how DO you do it using keyframes?

DLSantini

madriver said:

Okay Zhono, so how DO you do it using keyframes?

I got a new computer, so I don't have anything installed at the moment. But I'll try to describe what I did.

Instead of using a different camera for each angle I needed, I used a single camera. I animated the position of the camera using key frames. But instead of allowing it to slowly move from one position to the next, which we don't want for sprite work, I made sure that it held it's position right up until I wanted it to move, and have it jump instantly to the next position.

There was something of a trick to getting it to work that way, since it is designed to extrapolate positions to help ease the animation process. Play with it a bit and you should get it easily enough, then save the camera move/animation as a preset. Load up any character you want, apply your walk animation, and your camera animation, and you're gold. You need to make a new camera animation that matches each walk/run animation.

For example, if you have a walk animation, where each full walk cycle is 20 frames, and you want the view from from/back/left/right, you would do this: Setup your character(remembering to lock the hips in place so the character will walk in place) and give the their walk animation 4 times(1 time for each angle/camera view. Then setup the camera for the front view. Create a keyframe for the camera location right at frame 0, and another key frame at frame 19(the number 20/last frame of the walk animation). And now for frame 20(the first frame of the new walk cycle) create another keyframe for the camera, but position the camera for the next view. Again create a keyframe for the camera on the last frame of that walk cycle. Continue on for each angle/camera view you need.

When you run the animation, you should see the for each full walk cycle your character does, the camera automatically pops into place for each view. Set the viewport to use that camera during rendering, set your render preferences, and render all the animation frames. Use your favorite sprite building software/plugin, and you are good.

I'm a DAZ noob, so I can't really explain better than that, especially without the software being installed on my new system. And I have stopped work on my project for the time being. But if I have a sprite sheet from my test still on my storage drive, I'll post it here so you can see that this does work.

*EDIT* Example attached. Just a quick test sprite sheet for RPG Maker. 35 frame animation, 4 walking directions. I also have another sheet like this, but facing diagonal direction, and then two more for running. Once I have the cameras and animation presets done, I was able to just hit render and it created all of the individual frames in about 20 minutes per sprite sheet. I then used Photoshop to build the sheet from the individual frames. It looked pretty damn good in a test game.

madriver

Zhono that is very cool, and thank you for the detailed explanation. I figured there had to be a way to do it on the timeline, I
just couldn't figure it out.

In googling this topic I did find a script for Daz called camseq:

https://sites.google.com/site/mcasualsdazscripts/Home

This script allows camera switching between cameras during an animation and seems very easy to use.

There are also some other pretty cool scripts on this site.

Not sure if this would work for you but here it is. Thanks again.

Jan FreeForeststudios

Switching Cameras in an Animation is not a stupid Question at all!

As a TV Director, I am used to Multicam Projects, so if "Camera Switching" could be integraded on the Timeline, the Workflow will speed up a lot.

Rendering out the different Cameras, one by one, is taking too much precious Time, Time that I can't spend with Partner, Friends and Family :-)

So I hope the Daz 3D People will fix that little Programm as soon as possible.
Let's give Dazz 3D a Multicam Timeline. Thanks

jerickson_jel

I know this post is very old but I just discovered by using Puppeteer with a camera you can EASILY get the results you want.  Grab your camera and pose it then make a Puppeteer dot. Do the next pose and the next pose. Then keep a steady hand and just click and hold while in record mode. You also have the ability to do zooms and rotates with this but you can just go from camera to camera.  If you have trouble keeping a still hand just remap your mouse button to mouse keys on your keyboard and then you are set.  Just my method but it works really well and requires very little setup.

ShelLuser

jerickson_jel said:

I know this post is very old but I just discovered by using Puppeteer with a camera you can EASILY get the results you want.

No, this doesn't necessarily help OP. If you checked his other comments you'd know that the intent was to automate things so that DS could render on its own. The actual problem for OP was having to sit behind his PC, wait 10 minutes for a render to finish before he could change to the next view and press render again; once agian having to wait 10 minutes.

His idea was to use an animation to render the different images; so now he doesn't have to wait 10 minutes for the next render to start. Downside... you can't change cameras so the views he set up became kinda useless. Puppeteer won't change that; he'd still have to do the transitions manually.

I do agree with you though that another approach / workflow might have helped (not sure what was and wasn't supported back then... come to think of it: not even sure Pupetteer existed back then ;).

Anyway: while you can't switch cameras you can change the currently active camera / view port and record that change. At least we can now. I more than often "abuse" the timeline pane to add "onto" an existing scene. So say I have figures standing in one spot, and then I want them to stand in another. Instead of copying the scene and then getting to work I basically add a new point in the timeline, and then get to work. Two "scenes" in one file. And like I said: if you use the same camera then it can record those changes as well.

Chronopunk

DLSantini said:

 

madriver said:

Okay Zhono, so how DO you do it using keyframes?

 

I got a new computer, so I don't have anything installed at the moment. But I'll try to describe what I did.

Instead of using a different camera for each angle I needed, I used a single camera. I animated the position of the camera using key frames. But instead of allowing it to slowly move from one position to the next, which we don't want for sprite work, I made sure that it held it's position right up until I wanted it to move, and have it jump instantly to the next position.

There was something of a trick to getting it to work that way, since it is designed to extrapolate positions to help ease the animation process. Play with it a bit and you should get it easily enough, then save the camera move/animation as a preset. Load up any character you want, apply your walk animation, and your camera animation, and you're gold. You need to make a new camera animation that matches each walk/run animation.

For example, if you have a walk animation, where each full walk cycle is 20 frames, and you want the view from from/back/left/right, you would do this: Setup your character(remembering to lock the hips in place so the character will walk in place) and give the their walk animation 4 times(1 time for each angle/camera view. Then setup the camera for the front view. Create a keyframe for the camera location right at frame 0, and another key frame at frame 19(the number 20/last frame of the walk animation). And now for frame 20(the first frame of the new walk cycle) create another keyframe for the camera, but position the camera for the next view. Again create a keyframe for the camera on the last frame of that walk cycle. Continue on for each angle/camera view you need.

When you run the animation, you should see the for each full walk cycle your character does, the camera automatically pops into place for each view. Set the viewport to use that camera during rendering, set your render preferences, and render all the animation frames. Use your favorite sprite building software/plugin, and you are good.

I'm a DAZ noob, so I can't really explain better than that, especially without the software being installed on my new system. And I have stopped work on my project for the time being. But if I have a sprite sheet from my test still on my storage drive, I'll post it here so you can see that this does work.

*EDIT* Example attached. Just a quick test sprite sheet for RPG Maker. 35 frame animation, 4 walking directions. I also have another sheet like this, but facing diagonal direction, and then two more for running. Once I have the cameras and animation presets done, I was able to just hit render and it created all of the individual frames in about 20 minutes per sprite sheet. I then used Photoshop to build the sheet from the individual frames. It looked pretty damn good in a test game.

You, my friend, are a precious resource and I am glad I found this post. :)