Author Topic: Walking up & down stairs  (Read 5710 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Guest

  • Guest
Walking up & down stairs
« on: October 19, 2006, 02:05:59 PM »
What's the best/easiest way to create a walk-thru using strictly AutoCAD (in my case, 2005) and walk up and down stairs??  I've started by drawing a 3DPLINE going down the stairs, walking around the room then up the other staircase.  Once I had my 3DPLINE drawn, I splined it to make it nice and smooth, but when the AVI was created, the smoothness of the 3DPLINE didn't look so smooth on the video.  It was rather choppy and kludgy to say the least.  (See the attached video).

So what's the trick to smooth walking??  I currently don't have the time to learn VIZ (nor do the projects I'm working on allow for it)..

deegeecees

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #1 on: October 19, 2006, 02:17:13 PM »
Try setting a higher Framerate.

High Framerate = more stillframes = Smoother video

Guest

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #2 on: October 19, 2006, 02:32:47 PM »
<sigh> I'll give it a shot and post back.... What I'm seeing right now from my latest run isn't looking very encouraging.

Greg B

  • Seagull
  • Posts: 12417
  • Tell me a Joke!
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #3 on: October 19, 2006, 02:34:34 PM »
What if you put carpet on the stairs?  It might be a little softer going up and down them.

Maverick®

  • Seagull
  • Posts: 14778
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #4 on: October 19, 2006, 03:22:48 PM »
Or maybe bend your knees.

Guest

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #5 on: October 19, 2006, 04:12:30 PM »
My frame rate is set to the max (25FPS) but it's still looking choppy.

Guest

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #6 on: October 19, 2006, 04:33:18 PM »
Maybe I'll go for a more dramatic, cinematic type of walk-thru (see attached ZIP).

Jeff_M

  • King Gator
  • Posts: 4096
  • C3D user & customizer
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #7 on: October 19, 2006, 07:37:54 PM »
Maybe I'll go for a more dramatic, cinematic type of walk-thru
Not bad at all....colors/textures are a bit drab  :-P

Guest

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #8 on: October 20, 2006, 10:45:54 AM »
Quote
Not bad at all....
Thanks.  I've just started to get my feet wet with this 3D presentation-type stuff.

Quote
colors/textures are a bit drab
Yeah, I know.  I'm just trying to get the walking up/down stairs thing sorted out first but it's not looking to promising (not with straight AutoCAD anyways).  The materials in 2005 are really lacking... :-(  can't wait to get my grubby little mits on '07!!   :-)

deegeecees

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #9 on: October 21, 2006, 01:45:28 PM »
Try Accurender by Mcneal & Associates. Much better materials/walkthrough apps.

Didge

  • Bull Frog
  • Posts: 211
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #10 on: November 28, 2006, 09:36:56 AM »
Matt,

Unfortunately I cant download your file (or indeed any from the swamp) while at work as my employer's firewall tells me "This request blocked as a risky executable file download. " so its difficult to determine where your choppiness is coming from.

Having done a fair few walk-thrus I would recommend drawing your motion paths with as few vertex points as physically possible, even after spline-curving complex paths, the subtle angular deflections along the path can still induce camera wobble, even if the path seems very smooth to the eye.  For example, rather than snapping to the nose of each stair tread, pick 1 point at the top of the stairs then 1 point at the bottom.

It also helps to keep your camera path seperate to your target path, this usually requires breaking your full animation into a serious of smaller scenes, it's more effort but the smooth results are usually well worth the extra effort.

If you haven't already, try the following code, I wrote this a few years back to create animations in Acad.   Acad2007's new motion path animator is surprisingly similar  :|

http://www.theswamp.org/index.php?topic=8775.0

<edit> fixed that url for ya.  Mav
« Last Edit: November 28, 2006, 10:06:47 AM by Maverick® »
Think Slow......

Guest

  • Guest
Re: Walking up & down stairs
« Reply #11 on: November 28, 2006, 09:50:58 AM »
Thanks, Didge!

I'll have take a gander at it.