Camera Distancing/Snapback

[Racktor]

I'm trying to create a long video of my character Zikari's journeys through Istaria (hatchling->ancient). For this, I'm trying to edit the camera distancing and speeds so it looks nicer and less jagged.

What I'm asking is how you could get the camera to zoom as far as Solitaire managed to in their video FlyFree? I've been attempting to edit the tension of the camera, but the values don't seem to make too much of a different. 100 is being shot into space with seizures, 0 is instant-locking, and anything in between doesn't work or makes no difference. (10, 15, 50, 30...) I'll continue trying, but does anyone know which lines you have to edit to get this to work?

(I'm not sure if this would go in player customizations btw, since it's a question and this /is/ the Q&A part of the board..)

[Solitaire]

I believe that it is hard coded into the client that a normal player's client will limit how far you can zoom out. I was always unsuccessful trying to modify it. With a Dev client, I can zoom out an almost unlimited amount by default. However, I did that video when I was just a player and I had to do quite a bit of messing around to get it to happen. The key is the follow tension. If you set it to zero about where the position you want it you can fly quite a distance away before it will suddenly snap back. What I would do set it to zero, fly down to where I wanted the character to be then either start my filming with the camera stationary or I would set up a hotkey (/setpref cameraFollowTension #) to set the follow tension to a low number so that it would slowly move towards me.

If you set the tension very low, you can fly away from it which is a nice effect. The shot where I was running around the lava pools in Dralk I had the camera set up with a tension of about .5 or something directly overhead. I started running and it slowly moved down and tracked towards me but I was moving fast enough to run away. The shot where I was running along the beach on Draak and was passing the moving camera was done the same way.

If you want to have the camera move away from your character so far that you fade into the distance, set the tension as a negative number. It only works that way once cause when it snaps back to you it will go off in the opposite direction next time, usually through the ground. You can probably use a video editor to reverse the video to have it zoom into you from far away.

Setting the first person follow tension to a low number then flying with mouse look to direct your character gives some really great smooth camera moves. I overloaded my character once so I would fly slow then used that method to do a slow tour of my lair. It looked really good. For some fun, if I recall correctly, you can really cause the first person camera to go crazy by setting the first person follow tension to a negative number then using mouse look to move. It is uncontrollable and I can only imagine what another player must see cause if you go around -10 or so your character will rapidly spin and your view will go all over the place. You can get motion sick watching that.

There were a few other tricks I figured out like having an effect similar to a fish eye lens but I'll have to look at the commands again. If you have that list of commands that I posted way back when I think I included it.

[Racktor]

Thanks, Sol. ^^ I used a bit of the camera tension to 0 for a nice glide-away view when jumping out of Chiconis, and it looked lovely. Unfortunately, my character is actually a hatchling so I can't fly upwards and click the camera to sit somewhere... xD I'll improvise (jump off a high ledge, set it, then walk away maybe?)

I'm not sure I saw that list of commands, though. Not that old of a player and didn't actually start checking the forums often until about 6mo-1yr ago. I can search around, if it's still up, though. A fish eye lens... hmm.. wonder what cool things I could do with that.
Edit: Also, so I don't have to make another topic (I don't like making too many ^^; ), which program does Istaria use for animation, out of curiousity? I keep thinking it's Maya or something, but can't remember...

[GlindorOcculus]

Edit: Also, so I don't have to make another topic (I don't like making too many ^^; ), which program does Istaria use for animation, out of curiousity? I keep thinking it's Maya or something, but can't remember...

Istaria uses Granny 3D

[Solitaire]

Ok, being a hatchie would somewhat limit you. I had my ancient disguised as a hatchling for Fly Free so I could fly around where I needed the camera to be.

Something that could be interesting is to get a friend that has a computer that can make recordings. Have him/her fly their dragon around in first person with a low camera tension. They can do a fly by or pan from your character away to something else. If they /setscale their character to something tiny they might be able to get a camera shot from down low. An example might be your character running towards the camera and right over it. If you work together and plan the shots you might really be able to get some good footage.

The list of controls was way back. 4 or 5 years ago I think. I will try to find the post.

Maya is used for creating and animating characters in Istaria. But Glindor is correct about Granny 3D too. The models and animations are exported out of Maya using a Granny plug-in. The resulting files are used by the Granny engine built into the client to play the animations.