No direct feedback on camera translation bezier handles

[Nicohk92]

I'm tweaking my camera moves and resorted to bezier interpolation for one.

Naturally I position the play-head around a bezier handle to see how manipulating it affects the camera position.

But nothing happens in the viewer! I need to move back or forth by a frame with the keyboard arrows to finally see the change. It's not live as it is with any object.

Very disappointing and making it very hard to use bezier on camera moves.

Can anyone reproduce?

Thanks

[Greenlaw]

It's working here...



Check that you have Show Path enabled. Also, I find it easier to work with when I split out channels to animate individually.

[Nicohk92]

Strange.
Maybe it's because you're in perspective mode with path enabled. Does it work with reset view (what you see is what you get) for you?

[Greenlaw]

Or do you mean when you have two viewports? Moho has never updated the second viewport in realtime. You have to release the mouse button to see it update. I always found that annoying too but it's not catastrophic.

[Nicohk92]

I only use one viewport but I'm showing what the camera sees. But it's not reflecting real time changes to bezier handles

[Greenlaw]

BTW, when I need realistic or more complex camera moves, I prefer to render out layer passes using Layer Comps and Moho Exporter, and bring the layers into a 3D animation program or a fully-featured compositing program like Fusion or After Effects. I do this because Moho doesn't support nulls for building advanced camera rigs. But for simpler camera moves I typically use in 2D animation, the Moho camera works fine.

[Nicohk92]

So that means you must render huge video sizes in order to get everything at good resolution (especially if lots of track-ins or zooms involved)

[Greenlaw]

I only use one viewport but I'm showing what the camera sees. But it's not reflecting real time changes to bezier handles

I'll check that out.

FWIW, I don't look through only the camera because I need to see the motion path to see what's being changed and how. So when editing the camera path, I normally switch to perspective view or have two views open to see both.

When I'm checking timing, then I switch to camera view. At that stage, I'm just sliding the keys on the timeline, and not working in the Graph Editor.

Anyway, BRB...

[Greenlaw]

Yeah, it works. In the example below, I'm editing the camera path from the camera's POV...



I'm only animating the position in this example because animating the Bezier handles from this view doesn't make sense. To understand how the handles affect the spacing between frames, I need to switch to Perspective View, as shown in my first example.

[Greenlaw]

So that means you must render huge video sizes in order to get everything at good resolution (especially if lots of track-ins or zooms involved)

It depends on the animation, but yeah, that can be an issue. But when I know I'm going to be doing that, I like to plan it out before I start the animation and set up my composition to optimize the resolutions I will be need.

For example, at DreamWorks, I sometimes got 8k background paintings from the art department, but I don't think I ever actually used the art at its full 8k size. Instead, I would chop it up or re-scale it appropriately for individual shots or for a long complex camera motion a single shot might require. I rarely, if ever, used the full 8k version because it could unnecessarily bog down my render times.

Hope this info is helpful.

[Nicohk92]

I'm only animating the position in this example because animating the Bezier handles from this view doesn't make sense

Well it kind of does doesn't it? I'm trying to see the change when my playhead is somewhere in the middle of a bezier handle. Bezier handles touch on areas of my timeline that are not at keyframes yes, but that I care about nonetheless.

And that's where the viewport doesn't follow for me.

[Greenlaw]

Ah! I don't normally think of it that way because the Bezier handles don't change the position of the camera in current frame when it's a keyframe. But I see your point: what if I want to see the handle's effect on the camera when I'm not on a keyframe?

Let me check that...BRB.

[Greenlaw]

Aha! You're right: The viewport doesn't update when I edit the handles when I'm not on a keyframe. I need to step forward/backward to force Moho properly refresh the frame.

I'm guessing this is because Moho is watching for changes to keyframed frames and not changes to non-keyframe frames? Yeah, maybe this is a bug. There were a few refresh issues that got fixed for 14.2, but looks like this one snuck under the wire.

[Greenlaw]

Something I just discovered: Moho can update the camera position in multiple views simultaneously. I had to split the channels to see that. If I don't split the channels, it behaves the way I'm used to seeing it. I don't know if this is new (probably not) or if it's always been this way.

But, for me, the real issue with multiple views is when I'm animating a character, and only the active view updates in realtime. It's not a huge deal (I've been using Moho in TV production for nearly 10 years,) but it would be nice to see this improved in the future.

[Nicohk92]

Glad that I'm not hallucinating! And yes, when using bezier to create an overshoot of my camera for example, I'd need to see where it overshoots to, which is of course not on the keyframe. But it's not a huge deal.
Thanks for looking into it though

As for multiple views, I don't mess with it too much. That project I'm on is purely 2d on a flat plane, and I'm just working off my laptop at the moment so I need maximize my screen space.