United3dArtists Archive

Is there a way to have a scene that is an animation of the construction of a building with control features that maybe get displayed in a trueplace atmosphere?

Let's say similar to what you might find when a contractor put a camera at a site and films the daily progress......so that at the beginning of the animation you start out with bare ground, and at the end you have a completed building.

Ultimately, I'd like to create an animation frame scroller control that I can move and stop at different points which might display that day on a calendar or counter to show where the building should be at that phase of construction. So I slider the scroller from left to right and watch the building being built....or the opposite way to watch the building being disassembled.

I would want the units to be more in the hours or 1/2 hours range instead of seconds....so maybe the animation would be slowed down as far as play rate proporationately.

Is this possible? Thanks for any help.

Regards,
Jeff

Yes this is possible but I think you need to approach this as an animation project in itself. A tool snapping pictures every 30 minutes won't likely help much... if you leave your project open for dinner with your family you will get 2 frames of no change you will have to delete.

If you are looking to impersonate time lapse photography you will have to make a number of changes as your animation progresses as well. If you are shooting an exterior shot the sun and other objects around the subject will have to move in order for the animation to be convincing.

Like any animation project you should create a storyboard and you can then decide on the number of keyframes you will capture based on accomplishing certain tasks. In the analogy of constructing a building you might start with a basement foundation and then keyframe each wall as it goes up.

Effective time lapse will need to show the buzz of activity around the subject. If you look at time lapse of growing plants you will see the leaves moved in every frame and the flower head will rise and fall with the sun and ground moisture conditions....


Good Luck

Thanks for the ideas...Well I guess I'm not going for a accurate frame by frame account of the work as if it were being filmed and then replayed quickly like a Benny Hill episode.

More like a time lapsed version but smoother. I think it could be done using a key framed method with the animation of the work stretching out based on the days it would take.

I would try to to shoot for a 2 minute animation, that equalled 60 days so that every 2 seconds is worth 1 day.

So that lets say your basement example might just rise from below the ground up in lets say 18 seconds or 9 days....and so on....the walls could rise up from within the basement walls to there appropriate height.

There would be a counter displaying the current day to be "Day 9" and would countinue to progress to 60 days at the end. The slider would then be able to move to whatever day needed to display that days project status.

Other tricks could be employed such as animating material from invisible to opaque over a specified time to show it appearing like maybe the roof appears that way for example.

I found an effect that somewhat matches the idea of the animation I am looking to acheive... just imagine this animation with a control scroll widget below it to pause, let play move backward..etc...similar to the current animation controls within truespace only in a way that that shows in trueplay as a widget and you could move around the model as it plays...

http://www.caligari.com/products/trueSp ... study3.asp"

It is from Marcel's brochure page about halfway down...the round stone building animation..

I'd even like some of that blur effect in spots.

I'm not shure of this but I have this suggestions.

Build the building in parts for example one part is the first floor one part the second and the roof one part.

Then do the animation thru hide object all parts from the beginning and then undhide and record 60 s for the first floor of the building. Then undhide the second floor and record other seconds. At Marcels building it seems as the building are under construction and maybee he used this way of rendering.

I have to explain more. Put 10 bricks on top of eatch other. Then hide all of them. Do an animation. 25 frames and unhide the bottom one, 25 frames and unhide the second one, 25 frames and unhide the third one and so on. In the end you should get an animation which shows bricks pile up one brick every second.

It should work.

A simple video of how it works. I have done in the same way i described before.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUI5mSW5KyM

Thanks tommy...that seems to be in the right direction...and I do see how Marcel's is done via animation...

I was hoping to control movement within the trueplay evironment. So that those bricks in your animation can be viewed from within the 3d space some how....so if you were in front and I was behind those bricks, we'd both see the bricks showing up from each of our point of views....if that is possible, then I'd like there to be a control slider to go forward and back in time.

So I guess its not a rendered animation playing...more like using the keyframe window in truespace to control content inside trueplay.

I am pretty sure it would be possible to create a Widget that scrolls the AE's frames forwards and backwards. Here is a Panel (Not Widget) that has controls for the hidden AE in truePlay2.
vi ... 3348#p3348"
The animated object has to be selected first in truePlay2 in order to Play.

I think this might be it...I'll have to study it for a bit. Even if it only showed forward/reverse/pause/play buttons.....this might do the job. But I do like the idea of a scroll widget best.

My next question that builds on the previous questions.....

1st question:
If this animation were to be controlled within trueplay via a slider....and collisions were on...and let's say part of the animation was a cube moving horizontally...and I make a another cube in its path while this animation is running...would the animated cube push the newly placed cube out of the way?

2nd question:
If this same animation were to be controlled within trueplay via a slider..... and I were watching this animation that someone else was controlling via the slider........and let's say part of the animation was a cube moving horizontally.....would I be able to grab this cube or manipulate it?

Just some odd questions I have about trueplay functionality.