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Sometimes linking a camera to the object is not enough; generally it is okay for wing shots, behind pursuit action, static cockpit views and gun turret action. But for a pilot's eye view, something extra is needed to add realism. The most effective way of imagining a specific point of view is thinking how your head would act in a similar circumstance, namely how would your view change with each turn, bank, acceleration (etc). Then think how you would view the situation as your head is being thrown from side to side, forwards and backwards. As your head is moving, your focus still remains on the item in front, namely a target or panorama. Realising this, we now have to incorporate it into 3D motion. The best, and easiest way to create a fighter's motion is using a spline as the path. Using this method, we can then easily amend banking, speed (etc) and even convert the path motion to keyframes if required for manual amendment. Firstly, we need to set up the heirarchy of the fighter, camera and any null objects (dummys) required to link the fighter to the motion; a general rule of thumb is not to bind objects directly to paths as if they do not bind correctly, it can be a hard time getting them back to their original position and rotation, also some irregular rotation and translation may occur. Create a camera where the pilot's head would be and extend the camera's target way beyond the exterior of the fighter's viewport; a good two to three fighter-lengths distance should suffice. Next, create a dummy and bind it to the path, and turn on 'follow path' (or equivalent). Now select the fighter, camera and camera target and move and align them to the dummy's position and rotation. Link the fighter to the dummy. Next, clone the dummy, ensuring that the path binding remains; in some 3D packages, you may have to re-setup the spline path motion, and label the new one "Camera Follow"; the reason should soon become apparent. Link the camera to the fighter's dummy and the camera target to the Camera Follow dummy. Now turn on banking to make the fighter and camera bank when moving round corners. What we have now is a simple heirarchy setup that, when the time slider is scrubbed, the entire fighter and cockpit camera (and target) should move with the dummy. You may have to amend positioning of the fighter and camera to ensure that the axis co-ordinates of the fighter match the dummy's exactly. This is to ensure that the rotation, banking, climbing (etc) is accurate; for example, a helicopter's axis co-ordinates would be just below the blades as that is where it's forward and rotational motion is derived from. The only other step now is to amend the keyframes of the path motion for the camera's target. Select the Camera Follow dummy's keys and move them back a couple of frames. Scrub the time slider again and you will see that (from frame one) the cockpit moves before the camera does. This is pretty much the motion desired and the fighter now moves before the pilot's head, and can now give an impression of the 'feel' of the scene, namely turbulance, tight corners (etc). To amend the positioning and intensity of the camera's motion, simply move the Camera Follow dummy's keys forward and backwards to decrease and inscrease. A further technique would be to additionally link the camera to a dummy that has offset keys between those of the fighter's motion and the camera target's, but ensure that the camera does not intersect with the pilot's chair, or even the cockpit. You could even link the camera and target to the one dummy and have it's motion trail the fighter by a frame or two. It all depends on preference.
Initially published: 3D World magazine, Issue 8, January 2001. Copyright © Pete Draper, January 2001. Reproduction without permission prohibited. |
