NewTek Discussions > LightWave 3D Support > General Support > Any tips for ArchViz camera rig?
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ArchViz maybe flattering myself but I have a big environment to fly through that will involved long paths and rotations. Obviously, I want to avoid any gimbol locks and keep my camera path smooth and at a constant speed, open to any tweak along the way.
Any secrets/tips you can offer before I start animating the camera?
There are some good ideas in use on that rig, although it is intended I think for film scenes there are some useful bits for Archviz.
just animate the path on a null... have another null child of that, and camera child of that. First null gets motion only, cam mostly takes rotation, except in a lock situation where u can turn on the intermediate offset null. For quicker setup... you're best off just lazily keying a separate null for the path, ignoring its speed of travel at any point, and then using DP motionInfo node to push ur cam setup along that path, giving you easy controls for setting/animating the speed smoothly.
@Andrewstopheles, I've tried that camera rig before but seems a little fiddly for this example, I get a little frustrated guessing which null controls what sometimes, slows me down.
@RH, done a few tests and that secondary "middle" null makes a lot of sense. Already got DPs motionInfo node in the bag, not sure what I'd do without it! I'll try a few dynamic parenting tricks for going between floors in a circular motion (ie, up a spiral staircase where the pivot point is offset from the camera). Perhaps combining a few spirally paths in Modeller and exporting might work..... I'll give it a whirl.
Very glad ur enjoying them. One thing u'll wanna look at perhaps re your spiraly stairs example, is to use a slide layer, like in the car rig, where an item gets the inverse position of its parent (done nodally in the vids, but obv also doable via constraints), and u got an animatble pivot, so u can go from rotating the camera on point, to pivoting around an offset centre without having to key constraints back n forth.