Editor: Camera Path Editor ()

Description:

The Camera Path Editor allows you to edit camera paths defined by a number of keyframes. To get started, choose Camera Path from the Project > Create Object... menu and click on the Camera Path Editor button of the new camera path object. The editor will appear and automatically open an additional viewer.

Figure 1: Control panel of the camera path editor. The arrow shaped control buttons can be used to play forward and backward, to jump from keyframe to keyframe, or to step frame by frame. When the editor is off, the camera path provides a time port.

The original viewer (viewer 0) is the camera view, i.e., it shows the same as if you were looking through the camera, while the additional viewer will show you all of the keyframe cameras from a bird's eye view. In order to start your camera path, choose an appropriate view in the original viewer (see Section "Viewer Window" to learn how to do that) and click on the add button. Your first keyframe has been saved. The time slider should contain one red line and it should have advanced to 10. Now change the view in the original viewer and click on add again. A second keyframe appears and so on.

Figure 2: The camera path is shown in an extra viewer. You can click on a keyframe and modify the camera. The changes will be displayed in the original viewer simultaneously. The reddish icon represents the current camera. In general this is not a keyframe but an interpolated camera.

Once you have played your camera path using the play button, you may continue adding keyframes by simply typing the time for the new keyframe into the text field or by moving the slider and then clicking add. Note: The original view will not be changed when the slider is moved or the text in the text field is changed.

To change the time of a keyframe, jump to this frame, click on remove, type in the new time, and click on add again.

If you want to have a constant camera velocity on its path, press the const velocity button. Depending on the distances between the camera positions at the keyframes, the keyframe times are changed to be equidistant between camera positions.

Caution: Pressing the circular path button will create a new camera path and destroy the old one. The new camera path lies on a circle around one of the major axes with the center at the point the camera in the original window is looking at. The radius is determined by the distance of the camera position and the point the camera looks at.