I am trying to slow down the camera that is following a path for two specific moments along the path, so that at those moments, the animation almost pauses, or greatly reduces in speed. What is the easiest way to do this? I have tried inserting more ticks between keyframes which is not creating a desired result. At those two moments, the camera looks towards specific objects, but currently does so much too quickly and abruptly. See attached file - I would like to slow down between ticks 395-410, so that the camera can focus on the two points in the distance momentarily, and as well at 678-685 so that as the camera pans around the courtyard you can actually see the space and doesn’t just whip around. The tweening seems to be too sharp but I cannot figure out how to make it more gradual and slow. Please help! CM_01-08-2014SPEEDTEST.3dm (6.7 MB)
Speed along the animation path is determined by curve parameter distribution.
Sections with lots of control points close together will make the camera move slower.
How do I manually modify the control point spacing though? Whenever I adjust the parameter constraint for the camera path, the view seems to jump all over the place and does not allow for a smooth transition between keyframes.
There are commands to insert control points in different ways.
You could draw an approximation of the animation paths as polylines and finally convert those to NURBS. Each segment will take about the same time to traverse. If you refine the camera path, you should also refine the target path to keep the segments matched over time.
Could you give me an example of a command to insert control points? When I select “show target point” or “draw points on target path” for the animation, the path that appears, and its corresponding nodes, are not editable. Perhaps I could be more clear, however, as I currently have one continuous look along path, and am rotating the camera’s view by using target to object constraints. I have tried modifying the weighting in all possible ways but still have very rapid and jolting transitions between keyframes, when I would like them to be slowed down. Thank you for your help!
Just adding knots to a curve is not going to change the parameterization in that way and effect the speed of the animation, moving control points around maybe—maybe, but I kinda think not.
My Bongo is not handy at present but you need to look at the tweening curves in Bongo to see where the funny changes in speed are and try different tweening styles to get something smoother. The defaults are frankly just not very good.
In Bongo time is managed through keyframes. A way to control the speed of a Constraint is to add keyframes changing the parameter of the Constraint. Speed.3dm (78.2 KB) is a tree step demo. Figure 1 is the plain constraint. In fig 2 a precalculated keyframe is added at the position where the speed change is planned (the blue line). In fig 3 the keyframe is moved (in time) hence making the object slowdown till is reaches the blue line. In figure 4 the technique is used to temporarily pause the movement, by adding a copy of the additional keyframe.
In your CM_01-08-2014SPEEDTEST model you used a rather complex method to realize the fly trough animation. Applying a camera Look Along constraint primarily defines the target of the camera. Additional panning is realized by adding Target constraints and manipulating the weight. The complexity makes the system hard to handle, mostly while the result of the combined weighting is fairly unpredictable certainly when a keyframe is moved or added, or when tweening-setting altered.
I feel you would be better off with a Camera to path constraint (no Look Along) for the transposition of the camera, combined with a single Target to object constraint making the camera look at point moving throughout the scenery. The ability to control camera movement and rotation via separate keyframes is a great advantage. The embryonic tryout CM_01-08-2014SPEEDTEST 002.3dm (6.8 MB) includes the desired slowdowns.
Hi Luc! Thank you so so much for all of your help. I really appreciate it. This is definitely an easier way to control the animation. My only confusion is when it comes to the curve editor - I do not have an option for custom so that I can control the curve handles manually. Any suggestions? I would like to be able to control the curves for the point that is moving through the scenery using the curve editor as well, but when I right-click on selected object keyframes, my only options are Linear, Cardinal, or Kochanek.
My pleasure.
By default 3D tweenig is applied to moving objects. In order to handle the CurveEditor’s curves manually, the 3D tweening option in the object’s properties window has to be switched off, hence making the Custom option available.
