Create camera 'movement'

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Kingofaperture
40 Posts
Posted May 24, 2012
Yes, its me AGAINAGAIN!! Have alot of questions, though...
I was wondering how you 'create' your own camera sequence without parenting it to the regular 'blackouts' and those kind of things you parent a camera to.

Is it some way to create a own camera movement sequence??

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Vordwann
767 Posts
Posted May 24, 2012
Replied 13 minutes later
Well you can make your own custom model with just one vertex skinned to a bone that follows a path you want. You can also try stuff with hammer entities, but honestly the model you can parent the point_viewcontrol to is the best way.
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msleeper
4,136 Posts
Admin
Posted May 24, 2012
Replied 38 minutes later
The really old school shitty way to do it is to have two invisible trains. One that is parented to the camera so your camera can move (assuming you need it). And the other for the camera's "look at" entity, and have it fly around the path you want the camera to view.
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ChickenMobile
2,460 Posts
Posted May 24, 2012
Replied 46 minutes later
Making a camera move smoothly and accurately is very hard to do, hence why valve (in Portal 2) used animations to parent the player's view.

A point_viewcontrol will create the smoothest camera sequence but it 'smooths' itself into walls and other objects. If you want a perfect camera sequence, you will need to fiddle and test endlessly in order to turn where you want by setting speed and tracking speed of the camera while it is moving.

A point_viewproxy enables the player to move the camera around, however the camera is defined by its' viewing entity. This way you will have to parent it to a train or an attachment point in an animation to move.
The alternate way to do this is to create a prop_vehicle_choreo_generic and change the model to models/br_camera/br_player_view_end.mdl and parent the model to a train. (If this model doesn't exist it is probably not a Valve model :S) You can then forcefully make the player enter the vehicle and start the train to follow the path.
Example: tuberide_vehicle.vmf
There is also a camera you can use to affect the coop bots: a point_viewcontrol_multiplayer. This entity behaves like a point_viewcontrol however the smoothing camera movements are not included and is mainly just for taking over the player's view for disassembling etc.

Attachments
tuberide_vehicle.vmf
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Kingofaperture
40 Posts
Posted May 25, 2012
Replied 7 hours later
can i parent it to anything??
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Lpfreaky90
2,842 Posts
Posted May 25, 2012
Replied 35 minutes later

Kingofaperture wrote:
can i parent it to anything??

Try it :wink:
But the best thing to parent it to is a func_track_train I suppose...

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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Jun 20, 2013
Replied 1 year later
i had them parented to targets for awhile and suddenly that stopped working. infact portal 2 wont even open at all now
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ChickenMobile
2,460 Posts
Posted Jun 20, 2013
Replied 7 hours later

Fracture wrote:
i had them parented to targets for awhile and suddenly that stopped working. infact portal 2 wont even open at all now

Sounds like you need a verify of cache friend.

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User
630 Posts
Posted Jun 20, 2013
Replied 1 hour later
hmmm i Just did a Track_Train, and parented a Funk_Tank to it, and the camera to the tank.

So, the Tank gets a Target and the result looked (almost) Smooth,

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Fracture
797 Posts
Posted Jun 20, 2013
Replied 5 hours later
yeah the tank sounds like a better idea. I once had a camera parented to a func_door that went all "hey look, a thing i'm supposed to look at. very interesti- OMG WHAT IS THAT OVER THERE THAT IS COMPLETEY IRRELEVANT!?!?"