Camera Path Animator 3.0 - Animate in Unity with Ease

Hey Jasper, what's with the huge grey boxes being spawned every time I create a path point? Is there an icon missing?

 

Yay - the forum stopped sending me emails again! Sorry for not replying JDuaneJ, eugh. The forum is the worst place to ask support questions - as I just don't come here often.
How far are you zoomed in? Are they GUI boxes or 3D boxes?
Not using icons as gizmos are unusable for us asset store publishers (
Let me know
Jasper

 

Thats cool. These are still showing up anyway. I'm pretty zoomed out of the cam path. The boxes seem to appear when I create an event, fov, or orientation point. They are GUI boxes it seems, they seem to be billboarding with the camera.

 

Okay cool. I'll look into how the 2d handles are dealing with tiny scales. They are the points you're creating on the path but they're not scaling correctly. There are guys making paths that are 2mm long through to 200km big. So much variation!

 

Hi

I wonder if there is a way to move the camera to a specific point so if you have 5 points and you are at point 5 can I call a method to either move straight (or reverse back )to point 2. Also can you have multiple paths in the same scene and call a new path if needed, for example if you wanted to turn around and move the camera backwards (as if the player had turned around and went back to point one without the camera just reversing (i.e. the player doesn't appear to be walking backwards, more that they have turned around and walked back to point 1 say)).

Thanks!

 

Hi Matt,
You can just quickly set the percentage like so percentage = 1.0f / (numberOfPoints-1);
I have no idea what you mean with the second point - it seems like two points? A second camera path? Players walking? Confused

 

Thanks! Yes it was a bit confusing! I mean if the camera moves from point 1 to point 2, then moves back from point 2 to point 1 is there a way of rotating the camera so it looks like the user has turned around and walked back instead of moving backwards while looking forwards

 

I have a few questions...
- I'm trying to use the Rift on the path but I'm getting allot of vibrations. Is it a fixed/late update isssue? I jave the latest version.
- When I attach the rift without the controller, it works well but one eye Chnages the FOV. Deleteing the FOV's in the panel doesn't fix it.
- I would love to use it at a point where its triggered, the player gets moved along the path and droped at the end. Is there a way to fly a camera to the start point? I get a hard jump when using playmaker to start the path.
- Is there an official playmaker action that supports ease types and more? Using invoke method is so basic.

Thanks! I've always loved using this for creatures, objects...

 

I've managed to get it working much better, but I am seeing a vibration when I attach my UFPS rift player. Its only in the beginning of the path, it goes away after the 2nd or 3rd point. I have the resolution as low as possible and have the player set to kinematic.
It's perfect when I just use my camera rig, fixed the FOV issue by turning it off :/
I do have an issue where at the end of the path my player isnt there, any suggestions on how to catch my player up to the camera? An event?
Thanks!

 

Hi Jasper,

I read many posts ago a request about the anim file export. Do you have done something? There is a way to record a .anim file moving the Camera Path Animator 3 connected with a main camera game object? I tried a bit but with no result.

My needs is to move a camera and record it in a anim file.

Thanks in advance.

 

Everyone - PLEASE EMAIL me for support requests - this forum has been very unreliable at letting me know you guys are posting anything and I rarely check it unless there is something telling me to pop in. So, if your post here doesn't go answered, nudge me somewhere else.

@Kafar, I'm guessing you're talking about Unity .anim files. It is on the list but it's not too high up to get done right now. Mostly, because I don't use it so I feel like it's not a priority and reverse engineering file formats is not a fun task. Of course, the more you guys say "This is a priority!" the more likely I'll get round to it and make it happen. Let me know if there is a specification for this file format though - that would really help!

 

Just tried out this asset for the first time, I set up a simple path and at the end it calls an event in my script. Most of the time it works fine, but sometimes the event gets called twice.

 

Hmm, I'll take a look.

 

I think it would be nice if there were playback controls in the inspector. So you can pause, stop, play and seek.

 

Hi Jasper,

Can I calculate the time spent of moving from A to B? For example from 10% to 20%.
If the speed is constant, I can use _storedTotalArcLength*(0.2-0.1)/speed.
What about if there are speed points in the path?

 

Hi, is possible to get the freedom of move the camera to left, right, up, down, while camera animator is playing, looking ever to the target point?
Idea is to create a path,, but player can interactive moving (a few meters) the camera source point while animator is playing (without stop)
Is possible to get into the script and modify it in order to create this controller?
Thanks!

 

Hi Jasper,
I was wondering if there was a way to use the camera Path Animator with the Cinepro Cams. I have the camera moving along the path nicely but I can not get to the extra changes required for the different lenses unless I select the cinepro cams. I would like to animate the Cinepro camera to focus on different objects as it goes along the spline but when I select the camera I can not see what it would be seeing when it is on the path which makes it very difficult to animate. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Would the "Animate scene object in Editor" check box be the thing you're looking for (in the Animator component)?

 

No that will only work if I just want to animate still in the camera path Animator. It doesn't have all the options I need. The camera I am using has a few extra variables over the regular camera and I would like to be able to change these variables at different points along the path and interpolate them between points, similar to how you can change speed at different points along the path. But the only way to do that would be to select the camera pro which means that I now can't see where it is on the path.

 

Yeah - you'd need to write a custom script to deal with that. I'm looking into something that might be able to do this but in a more generic sense, so it could work with anything...

 

Ok thank you for letting me know. I look forward to seeing this possibility, it would be of great value to many I am sure.

 

Hi, maybe you could store the asset path into a variable in CameraPathEditorInspectorGUI, like

Code (CSharp):

1. private const string path = "Assets/shared/CameraPath3/";

and use it when loading the icons?

That way I'd have to change just one line instead of a bunch when moving the asset from the default path.

 

Thanks for posting a fix to the example projects so quickly.

 

Hi Jasper

Thanks for a great product. It has help me a lot although i do have a list of suggestions below to handle big landscapes. Mine is 80 km in diameter with a city in the center. The distance between points in the center is in the order of 50 meters and on the country siden in the order of 10 km. This is a real challenge for Camerapath.

I believe the following are easy to fix:
1) The distance between orientation indicators is a distance. I started out by about 2 meters which brought the editor to a complet halt for 5 minutes. I had to set i to 1000 for the editor to work.
=> I suggest defining the number of indicators pr interval. In this way the indicators can be used on paths that mix fixpoints with very big intervals (fx 10 km) as well as small intervals (fx 20 meters) ?

2) The current normalized percentage value for visualizing the path in the editor is useless for my path that is about 144 km long due to, i believe, 2 issues:
a) That camera moves too fast in the city where the interval are small
=> I guess this couldd be fixed by dividing each interval into steps. Ie if you have 19 fixpoints then the number of steps is 1800. The distance to move using the normalized percentage scroll bar is then defined by the size of the individual step ?

b) On the long distance the camera shows “nothing” as if the clipping planes are not set correctly. I use abnormal setting for the clipping planes ( 0.05 to 90000 meters ). Maybe the issue could be fixed by letting the user define which camera to use and then you could clone its settings for the editor preview ?


I guess the following issues are more difficult to fix
3) inserting and moving fix points in a path with very different interval sizes using the “catmull rom” interpolation seem to be provn to roundof error that make the path between 2-3 point go ballistic from time to time. I have, however, never lost a path so its just a usability issue
4) The transition between two paths with interpolation is very slow - as if the calculation of the next path takes too much time ?
5) The ease in and out are problematic. Linear do work but the easing out takes forever because its based on speed that is close to zero in the end of the ease out - i am guessing ?

 

this is fixed now

 

I still ended up doing it this way

Code (CSharp):

1. toolbarTexturesB[3] = (Texture2D)AssetDatabase.LoadAssetAtPath(path + "Editor/Icons/options.png", typeof(Texture2D));

since I placed the icons folder under the editor folder. If they're in a resources folder, they get included in the build, where they're not needed.

 

That's a good point - I'll move them in the next release to another folder.

 

Is there an easy way to scale an animation via scripts? I have a figure 8 animation that I would like to be able to make larger or smaller and faster or slower during the game. Thanks.

 

Hey Jasper,
Path animation runs super slowly on my not very slow mac
1-2 fps in both editor and game view

Also when i click on multi-camera window I get this null ref:

I am on Unity 5.0.2p2
Mac OS X 10.10.4

 

@GoesTo11 I'm afraid not.
@Almakos I'll sort this out through emails

 

Thanks for this but It doesn't move smoothly! like there is lags in my game but I run on 60 fps. I don't know why camera doesn't move smoothly!!!!!!!!!

 

Could you email me more information? Camera Path obviously animates very smoothly but there are certain things that can happen to make the frame rate suboptimal. Send me your path as xml (in options tab), screenshots, videos, example scenes. Any further information will allow me to help you.

 

Thanks I'll do that but I faced another issue. when I use "Followpath" method there is lots of camera shake! Any advise why? other method works without problem.

 

That's an old issue. Update to the latest version on the store and if it's still present, email me and I can take a look for you.

 

Really awesome and needed asset! easy and cool

 

Hi Jasper,

Take a look to this pic, why the tabs are empty?
I use Unity 5 Personal Ed.
Thanks

 

Hmm. Try to delete the folder and reimport the Camera Path asset. Have you recently upgraded the version?

 

Solved. Thanks!

 

Phew, easy one.
XD

 

Hi again. for now I have no time to work with this but I'll need this for sure.
I would to use it with USequencer. have a question! can I do something to enable a Sequencer file at a point with Camera Path Animator?

 

Hi Jasper,

I have a little (I hope) issue with a path.
The problem is that the camera render the path with some stutters and the stored point resolution is red (take a look to the image below). What can I do for eliminate this issue?
Thanks

 

Hello,
How would I use the path as a rail, but allow the player to move fwd/back along the path, under player control, say using a FPS rigidbody player controller? Similar to the crash bandicoot setup but fully FPS.
thanks!

 

Good morning,

we are currently working on a project including a couple of long camera animations. This plugin seems to be a good candidate for this. However, one integral part of our project is timing. We need to have precise control over keyframes. For example. Keyframe 6 has to be exactly on 6.55 sec, keyframe 10 has to be exactly on 12.56 sec and so on.

We have read, that time based animation has been discontinued in favor of speed based animation and therefore we are wondering, if and how our requirements can be fulfilled using CPA 3.0?

If this feature is not included anymore how complex would it be, to implement it by ourselves on top of the current version?

Thanks,
Martin

 

Hello, Are you using Mac or PC?

I think that it happened the same to me, I also had the stored point resolution in red, and the way to fix this red warning is to modify the animation speed, I modified the value until the red warning was not showing anymore, the speed value that solved it was 50, and I have the automatic store point resolution checkbox activated

I am using MacOS 10.9.5 Maverick and Unity 5.0.1

 

Can you email me your scene or export your path to xml in the options tab?

 

Kafar, I have modified my last post so now is correct as before was wrong and is now is in reference to your question

I have discovered something very important related to stuttering animation

I had problems with the camera path animation stuttering a little, and thought that it was because the problem could come from this asset but I was wrong because then I have seen that it happened to all the animations in the scene and to all the animated particles effects

TEST TO SEE IF IT IS FROM YOUR SCENE, SCRIPTS OR THIS ASSET

So I tried to find a way to see if this happened somewhere else, and was surprised that when going to the Unity menu --> "About Unity" there is a scroll with the people working at Unity AND this scroll list was ALSO stuttering, so if this happens to you too, then the problem is not related to anything on your scene, scripts or this asset, and the problem is found on my Mac (or you Mac) and not related to Unity or this asset in any way

I will put later how I fixed it

 

Is it possible to generate a path using a script? rather than through the GUI.

 

Yes, it is. But there will be precalculations done when the path is modified so I wouldn't recommend it at runtime on devices that don't have much cpu bandwidth.

 

Excellent, is there an example somewhere?
Thanks for the heads up about Cpu requirements.
Also amazing response time to the question. Thank you.

 

I'm afraid there isn't an example, but the code is pretty clear (IMHO) and there is a very simple XML import process which will clue you in to how it can be generated.