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Can camera object (gizmo) be turned into a spline?

Anonymous

Can camera object (gizmo) be turned into a spline?

Anonymous
Not applicable

Hello gurus,

 

I was wondering if there is a way to convert camera object into an editable spline. I know it is a non-scaling object, but can the camera icon, target cube and plane, and connecting lines turned into just splines so it can be modeled furtherly??

 

Thanks,

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10DSpace
Advisor
Advisor

@Anonymous 

 

 

I was wondering if there is a way to convert camera object into an editable spline. I know it is a non-scaling object, but can the camera icon, target cube and plane, and connecting lines turned into just splines so it can be modeled furtherly?

 

No, as far as I can tell the camera Icon is not directly accessible to the user other than to change it's size in the viewport (via Customize>Preferences>Non-scaling Object Size.)   On the other hand, if you crank up the size of the camera in the viewports and screen capture the side and top views to use as image guide planes, it becomes a fairly simple modeling task to model it yourself using primitives and edit poly modeling techniques.   The target cube and plane are really simple so personally I would model a free camera (or physical camera if that's what you want) and add those later. 

 

Since your goal is to use it as a starting point for further modeling, this seems like it could work for you. 

 

Camera Icon side view.png

 

Camera icon top view.png

 

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Anonymous
Not applicable

Thanks for the reply,

The solution works perfectly if one or two cameras would be traced. In my case, I have more than 800 cameras (shots) that needs to be traced. The reason I need them as splines is that I want to generate meshes from the connecting lines between the target and the plane (pyramid shape).

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10DSpace
Advisor
Advisor

@Anonymous 

 

I see, so you are not interested in the camera body at all, but rather the pyramid defined by the camera focal point, the target distance and the FOV.  Is that correct?  May I ask how you were planning to use the resulting pyramid mesh?   I do a fair amount of camera planning of shots myself and may have scripted something that might be useful here or could be adapted, but it would help to understand your ultimate use in this case. 

Anonymous
Not applicable

@10DSpace 

 

Exactly, I am interested in defining the position, target and FOV of the each camera, not the gizmos themselves. Backstory is, each camera represents a scene in 3d space that is evaluated as good or bad by a beta tester. So, I want to visualize all the scenes that were evaluated by testers, and also give a color to represent the evaluation (green for good/red for bad). The overlapping pyramids should eventually show a crowd map that gives an idea about which parts of the space are good or bad for all evaluations.

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10DSpace
Advisor
Advisor
Accepted solution

@Anonymous 

 

OK here you go.  The attached max script will create a pyramid for each camera in a scene based on the FOV and target distance and then align the pyramid with the camera.  Works for Standard Target and Physical cameras.  Hopefully this is what you were looking for.  To install the script unzip it and then drag the file MakeCamFOVPyramid.mcr to a viewport.  The script will then be available in Customize User Interface where you can drag it to a custom toolbar, menu or hotkey it.   Hope it helps.   I tested it with ~ 100 cameras and it was very quick (less than 2 seconds).  may take a bit longer for 800 cameras ....  

Anonymous
Not applicable

@10DSpace 

 

Wow!! it works like a charm!

It generates the 800 pyramids in just seconds, and they are aligned with each camera even for different FOVS.

Thanks alot for for this very clever script, saves tons of time!

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