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Orbit tool and preview length questions.
Hey there.
There are a couple of things I would like some advice on, if anyone can help, I’d be very greatfull.
My first question is about the orbit camera tool.
When using the orbit tool to rotate the composition camera around my layers the camera seems to zoom in on the layers quite exessivly, infact when I rotate the compasition using this tool by 180 degrees the zooming in and out becomes so extreem that the rotation becomes hard to make out at all as the images become so zoomed in. I’ve tried adjusting the camera zoom to compensate for it but this seems to stretch the images out to much (though it’s a nice effect) how do I adjust for this?
Here is a quick render of a clip showing the over exagerated zooming.
My second question may seem nieve to some of you pro’s out there I know, it’s about preview length.
When working with fairly simple compositions (as in the clip above) my preview time is dropping to as little as a second, infact that composition will only preview in 1 second long chunks, it only has ten layers and around 10 effects. Should my preview times be getting this short? Is there anything I can do about it?
my specs are good for a PC:
Intel core 2 duo 3ghz
2X Radeon HD 4870’s
Windows XP64 with 8 gig Ram (AFX should see at least 4 gig).
Am I trying to create compostions on a machine with to lower specs, am I maybe being a bit nieve? (it is all I can afford).
I’m a bit stumped on this one and I could use any advice you guy’s might have, the composition above is still in it’s very early stages and already I cant preview it. 🙁 what should I do? what does it take to get you guy’s buy in simple terms?
EDD: Now for some reason AFX IS giving me longer preview times on this project, why is this? Could closeing and opening AFX help, Is AFX not clearing out it’s ram or something, this is really confusing, I’m searching the forums, anyone? 🙁
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2 Replies
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I think the first problem isn’t that you’re zooming in, so much as you’re orbiting ‘through’. Go to the middle of the orbit and viewing from the top, move the camera position to the left or right. That way the camera will go around better (although it will still need tweaking).
That said, it’d be easier to parent your camera to a null and move that around (one rotate key would work for the video above!) – videocopilot covers how this works really well in either lesson 07 or 08 of their Free training series – totally worth checking out – it’ll make 3D cameras easy.
As for the preview it does seem short, but it depends massively on what effects you’re using – however check your Cache settings they might be too low. (google around for what the recommended levels are).
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Thanks paul, I’m watching through their tutorials, there are a lot of them too, cool!
I’m still not sure that there isn’t just a simple function I’ve missed. When your actually grabing a layer and rotating it 180 degres with the orbit tool, there is no orbiting “through”, the tool simply rotates the layer, this is how I’d expect the end render to look, I need to capture that motion, keeping the cameras distance in relation to the layer at a constant.
but this does not happen when the composition plays back, the camera travels in a straight line between the start and end point’s that are recorded as keyframes resulting in (as you said) an orbit “through” the layer.Is there a simple way around this? imo the orbit tool is not behaving as it’s name nore it’s it’s “hands on” controling, would indicate, it’s “hands on ” movements seems to me to be completly detatched from it’s final preview. Though I’m no expert.
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