Parent Controls To Cam?

[pixl]

Is there a way to parent control objects to an orthographic camera so that they remain in place and don't scale when the cam is used to zoom in on something?
Thanx.

[joojaa]

yes, just move the object under the cameras transform node. (note you must unhide the camera trasform so they are visible for you.)

[pixl]

I tried that, but the object moves out of view when the camera is zoomed in.

However, I figured out a better solution to the problem and posted it here:
http://www.highend3d.com/f/5250.html

[joojaa]

QUOTE(PixL @ 05/30/08, 04:12 PM) [snapback]286459[/snapback]
I tried that, but the object moves out of view when the camera is zoomed in.

Yes offcourse the trasform does not account for the cameras orthogonal width. You could use a trasform that calcilates the view width but even so it wouldt stick to a certain part of the viewport

[joojaa]

heres a minimal sample scene (trscripted to mel for easy access)

CODE
file -f -new;//to allow shorthand
polyCube -w 1 -h 1 -d 1 -sx 1 -sy 1 -sz 1 -ax 0 1 0 -cuv 4 -ch 1;
parent pCube1 top;
setAttr "top.visibility" 1;
createNode multiplyDivide;
connectAttr -f topShape.orthographicWidth multiplyDivide1.input1X;
connectAttr -f topShape.orthographicWidth multiplyDivide1.input1Y;
connectAttr -f topShape.orthographicWidth multiplyDivide1.input1Z;
connectAttr -force multiplyDivide1.output pCube1.scale;
setAttr "multiplyDivide1.input2" 25 25 25;
setAttr multiplyDivide1.operation 2;

Are you tryin to make a custom imageplane.

[pixl]

Thanks for taking the time to code that Jooja.
An interesting solution, but it does have a couple of problems:
In your scene the object needs to stay at 0,0,0, where I wanted to place it below the view cube - in fact - I wanted it to remain stationary like the view cube, no matter what is done w/the cam. Also, by scaling the object inversely to the cam, it gets quite large in the other views.
The reason I wanted to do this was to create a control to send the camera to a home bookmark, and, as mentioned above, I figured out a much better (and universal) solution by writing a bit of mel and assigning it to a hotkey.
Thanks again for taking the time

[joojaa]

dont use selection events... its not good for you. So no dot do thsikind of stuff in mel. use api.

QUOTE
In your scene the object needs to stay at 0,0,0

It does not its its transform does tough. So you can go into component mode and move points and they will stick as is. However the size of the camera works a but different then you think so you have no final control over its position on the stretched frame

I knew you were going to say that I accounted for it.

QUOTE
object inversely to the cam, it gets quite large in the other views.

You can isolate it off from other cams. You could do this with a glsl/cgFx shader tough but then you would allways need to have the object in shaded mode.

QUOTE
I figured out a much better (and universal) solution by writing a bit of mel and assigning it to a hotkey.

Yes buttons are always a worse solution to a hokey. Which is why i advice people NOT to do graphics user interface coding until they have scripted for a year or so. Reason being that person coming form a pure gui world has a myopic search for best gui possible (bet layout coolest button etc). But best script possible is to omit need for gui in first place.