How Are People Using Cameras

[user_deleted]

I was wondering how people generally bring cameras into Nuke?!
The most straight forward thing obviously is the chan import which is nicely integrated into Nuke so if you build a gizmo that needs a camera you can expose the internal camera's "import chan" button and don't have to worry about an extra camera input.

However, not everyone uses chan files in their pipeline so I'm thinking about converting some of my 3D gizmos so they can use either the import button or an extra camera input. Bit ugly me thinks so I wanted to know how people usually bring their cameras into Nuke (from 3DE, Maya etc.)

Every answer is much appreciate.

Cheers,
frank

[franziska]

Well i wrote a chan exporter for Max to get animation data across. As it seemed the most logical and easiest step. The script is also able to re-import the camera data from nuke to max and takes care of converting fov etc. But that's not a longterm solution as this means all cameradata has to be baked. So there is still no way to for example create a rough animation in nuke's 3d view, export the chan to max and do the fine work there, and re-export the final cam for compositing.

I was thinking about writing a connection that actually gets the real keyframe data across. The problem is that the export from max is completely unpredictable. a camera could have a list controller with a bezier keyframe controller and a noise controller with animated mix for example. So i'd have to take care of a) exporting the keys and tangents (and i already doubt that would match perfectly) plus create an expression with a matching noise (now i can hear you laughing) and blend those with another keyframe curve.

I am still thinking about ways to properly get camera data (and animation data in general for that matter!) across the two apps....it's a long and winding road i assume

thorsten

[user_deleted]

sounds like a good solution for Max. I was just wondering if it'd be worth while changeing my gizmos to iotionally take a camera input instead of usgin the load chan file. button. I decided to to this anyway.

As for your camera export from Max, I wrote a bake script years ago for Max (back in the days when I was still a 3D animator at Upstart! Animation in Wiesbaden ). It may actually still be hovering about somewhere in the internet but I doubt it still works as it should in the current version of Max.

Anyway, what I did was this:
* create a copy of the object you want to bake (in this case the camera.)
* align all positions and rotations with the source object on every frame of the desired range and create a keyframe (make sure to use the correct coordinate space so list and/or procedural controllers such as noise are taken into account)
* afterwards export the copy's channels into a chan file.

hope this helps and thanks for your feedback!

frank

QUOTE(instinct-vfx @ 06/20/06, 04:22 AM) [snapback]240255[/snapback]
I am still thinking about ways to properly get camera data (and animation data in general for that matter!) across the two apps....it's a long and winding road i assume

thorsten

[franziska]

well i actually got the baking script working in both directions. i didnt create copys tho, but simply grab rotation and position into an array and write it out as a .chan file directly. But as mentioned if you bake the animation you cant modify it...at least it

[user_deleted]

I think the reason I did the copy thing was that some controller types in previous versions wouln't spit out the correct transformation info and things like the link controller or surface attach controllers screwed up the local coord system.

So you mean you want to keep keyframes, tangents, procedural controllers and such when going into Nuke?
Don't think that's easily doable since the curve interpolation isn't always the same across packages and also things like noise controllers are based on different algorythms.

[franziska]

it

[user_deleted]

cam_scene_04_shot_05_max_linked_nuke_linked_max_linked_nuke_new_etc
ha, ha, true.
good luck with that