Moho Forum

Stop motion , nice , I used to do some of that back the days , here's one I animated about 20 years ago (except the crappy titles effects) with a wind up bolex and no video split, when you had to animate for 2 weeks before seeing what you did.
MECHANISM

I don't mean just changing the camera for all purposes ( I do think the default should be able to be changed, though and saved but that's another issue)
Imagine doing a fly-through of a multi-layered set the camera would want to be wide (enough) to be visually dynamic ( fly-throughs with long zooms aren't much chop) while still avoiding the distortion we are discussing.

On recent projects I've had to manually reorient each layer to avoid this as the point to camera feature is really not doing the job.
Each layer should be totally flat _ like a sprite. You know what I mean , c'mon.

I like the robots. And the "scale twist" - I had just said words to that effect when the foot fell!
Oh yeah --- the days of sending exposed stock away and hoping "they" didn't screw up your hard work - I'm glad that time is (mostly) over... 2006 on the end titles - so re-mastered from 20 years ago??? Maybe the subject of another thread ...

anyhoo - back on topic. I guess the real pain is the "rotate to face camera" - I've just tried a few "fly-bys" on a WIP landscape - ("50mm lens") and didn't see any distortion to worry me - but then I did set a notional scale of 1/2 screen height = 1000feet (hill layers from z=0 through to z=-35; then sky at z=-140; terrain at z=0 rotated -90 around x is circular radius about 120AS units ). Camera flies from z=0 to z=-100; closest it gets to objects is probably about 0.1 AS units.

This is it – nothing fancy – just a try-out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0osi-9f7Sc

hey hayasidist, how do you know what scale everything is. there's no gauge to follow (another on my long term gripes) other than some arbitrary numbers.
It would be great to have some real notion of scale , this is a parallel complaint to the lens info issue.
In your example I don' t think the detail is great enough to show the distortion. You would need elements like trees houses or rocks - or just square cards that have an unarguably distinct form that show the parallax and parallels exactly.
That's is why I set up the example with the cards and the grid. The principle is shown there, you could make many other example to try and illustrate how to try to avoid it, it will make no difference in the long run . The distortion will happens more or less in any shot, sometime it will be negligibly noticeable (especially the long lens as we have discussed ad nauseam),others, like my example will show the issue in its more extreme form- which was exactly my intention. Believe me though the twist can be much much more extreme especially when using rotate to camera.

This is starting to be like a that theological argument where a scientist wants to talk about Australopithecus with someone who claims fossils are all a hoax.

I hope you understand and don't wish to just 'poo poo' my legitimate observation that does diminish ASPRO's quality and usefulness.

I should say this 'rotation' bug alone would force me to use other software for a big pro gig that I have coming up. I can't take the chance that the anomalous appearance will bite me in the arse , when I least need it.

No one can convince me it doesn't exist I can see it as a fact any time I wish, just by opening ASPRO and pointing the freakn camera.

Thanks for keeping this thread alive though hayasidist, I would rather hear someone say "Yes, that layer to camera doesn't work - it's bloody annoying."

I have a bunch of examples that I recently did that prove my point very well , unfortunately copyright prevents em from posting, I am also way too busy right now to make more examples , the grid and cards should suffice.

chucky wrote:This is starting to be like a that theological argument where a scientist wants to talk about Australopithecus with someone who claims fossils are all a hoax.

Your polarising view is making you completely miss the point Chuck. Fossils are mutated human skeletons which distort slowly over time in the earth.

I'll have another play with your grid ...

... scale - yeah - I should have put a better reference "size" in there... on the list of experiments too!

I picked the scale I did because it "works" for large landscapes. On the space thing I did last year I think I had 1AS unit = about 1 million miles. Makes me wonder if it woukld be better to have the camera / layer coords expressed (or at least expressable) in "world" rather than AS units.


I'm as anxious as you to sort this / find a workable way round "features" of AS camera when it's being used in anything other than a single flat (x,y) plane - for much the same reasons as you.

(and your "fossil" reference - don't know if you've ever followed the cartoon strip "BC"... image of cave man carefully laying out bones of a chicken, but adding extra wing-bones / bones from other animal .... "why are you burying those bones like that?" "to confuse future archaeologists")