Working In 3D

[DK]

Hi.
I am trying to set up a 3D scene in AS. Traditionally I do all my 3D work in Lightwave so this is a new experience for me.
Firstly I am having terrible trouble with the Camera. The AS camera seems to stretch everything as you pan off screen in say
a rotating shot. Any ideas how to stop this?

Also, the Y and Z planes in AS are not polygon based so when you place objects onto an AS plane and then put the camera beneath the plane, all objects are completely visible from beneath???

Any ideas?
Should there be better settings in AS to handle these issues or am I missing something?

Thanks
D.K

[sbtamu]

Nothing you can do other than moving the layer deeper into z or turning off camera for that layer.

[DK]

Thanks for the reply sbtamu.
What do you mean by "turning off camera" for that layer?

[sbtamu]

Immune to camera movements.

[DK]

Ok....if I do that for the ground layer I can't pan the camera around the scene? So really what you're saying is 3D is still a very dodgy proceedure in AS

Cheers
DK

[patricia3d]

Thanks for the reply sbtamu.
What do you mean by "turning off camera" for that layer?

Please DK what its? Will this feature work in ASP8 please tell me some more about this feature, I want to use this
because I am also doing 3D with ASP like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QGFlyasOY8&hd=1

[DK]

Hi patricia.
Load in Tutorial 5.8 and take a look at the scene. It's basically a way of creating 3D environment IN AS but like I said,
it appears that there is very little in the way of camera controls and 3D environment.

Cheers
D.K

[synthsin75]

From http://www.kelleytown.com/forum/animato ... IC_ID=1990:

I also tend to use camera defaults of zoom about 25, y about 1.5 and z about 20; with the primary object of focus at z=0 with its base at y=0 as this is closer to "human eye" than the extreme fisheye that AS gives you by default

[DK]

Ok..Sorry to sound like a dunce but where exactly do you find these camera settings?
Is there a 3D camera in AS that I am not using? Do you just set the standard camera to these settings and just move the environment around?

EDIT: Ahhh....Now I get it. Just had to play around a bit. I was animating the zoom on the camera instead of moving the camera.

Thanks for the heads up synth

D.K

[synthsin75]

Those are just camera zoom and pan settings.

[hayasidist]

how I do it (and there must be loads of other ways too!).

#1: decide how much I'm going to use AS's 3d capability.. or not.

You can draw your own perspective etc using just the default settings as any artist using a flat canvas would do - you can paint as though you're looking down from the top of a tower or as though you're lying on the ground looking up; things in the foreground are big, things far away are small; real world paralell lines converge at a vanishing point blah blah blah.
If you want to show the view change as you come down from the tower "all you have to do" is copy your vector layer and, on the copy, push the points around to change the "painting" so that the scene is as it would be seen from the ground... put the "old" and the "new" into a switch layer, turn on sub-layer interpolation and that's the job done (except, of course, you'll probably need a load of tweens to make it look right...). All done with no camera movements, no use of z, no layer rotations or anything - just plain old animation in the frame-by-frame way of thinking.

By contrast, if you use AS's 3d capability to the full (and I mean way more than "just" emulating multiplane cameras) you need to set up everything as though it is in the real world.

decide on a scale. For starters let's assume 1 AS unit = 1 metre real world.

start with a camera setting that "works for you": as Wes has quoted me as saying: zoom about 25; z about 20, y about 1.5 then that's what we'll use. What this means is the camera has a "typical" (human-eye like) lens; it's 20 meters away from the subject; and you're holding it 1.5 meters above ground.

Let's start with the ground. For now we'll keep it simple and assume a nice flat terrain. make a vector layer, z=0; zoom the workspace all the way out (tiny litle work area in the middle of the screen) and draw a huge green fill-only circle; select all 4 points; and activate the point translate tool. TYPE 0 into the x and the y coordinate boxes; now activate the layer rotation tool and type -90 into the x rotation. reset the work area view. (at this point you can now pan your camera around a flat green land - which, as your camera is not at the centre, you'll notice the horizon change slightly as you do).

With the camera as said and a vector layer at z=0, the top of the screen is about 6 metres above the ground, so scale what you draw accordingly. If you want a mountain: create a vector layer, set z = -5000 and the top of the screen is about 1100 metres above ground. You can move the mountain to where you actually want it later. Draw "everything" so it has its base _points_ at y=0. If you keep the centre line of what you draw at x=0 that makes life easier. When you've drawn your assets place them in the landscape by moving _layers_ in the x/z plane (y stays at 0) and rotating the layers around the y axis.

Be aware (be wary!) of making adjustments to objects to give impressions of perspective etc if you're going to make full use of AS's 3d capability. Straight lines are straight. Vertical lines are vertical. Parallel lines are parallel.

You'll also need to get a grip on orbiting a camera around something... from the starter setting, the "other side" of an orbit is x=0, z=-20, pan 180; but you get there via camera x,z = (20,0) pan 90; and back via (-20,0) pan 270. If you have a (say) tree at x=3, z=4 and you want to orbit that at a constant 5 meters away, your camera starts at x=3, z=9, pan =0; goes via x=8, z=4, pan =90 to x=3, z=-1, pan =180; and back to x=3, z=9, pan=360 (which I'd typically key back to 0 on the next frame) via x=-2, z=4, pan=270. for a smoother orbit use more intermediate points.

and then there's layer order to manage, although the depth sort option is usually more than adequate for the task.

loads more techniques .. just ask.