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General Category => General Anim8or Forum => Topic started by: Pirmin on October 13, 2008, 06:12:51 pm

Title: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: Pirmin on October 13, 2008, 06:12:51 pm

Is it possible to combine two or more camera views in the same movie?
I would like to have a kind of PIP (Picture in Picture), a small view which shows the whole terrain from top view and the rest of the screen which shows a perspective view with more details.

Title: Re: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: lynn22 on October 13, 2008, 06:18:19 pm

I guess this will depend on the video editor that you use.

I have Ulead VideoStudio and there you can "overlay" a still picture in a size and location of your choice over the moving images.

Title: Re: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: sagedavis on October 13, 2008, 09:06:32 pm

I assume you were talking about in anim8or.
the answer to that is no.
What you need to do is render your cameras seperately, and then use some video editing software to do the picture in picture stuff (putting the two together.
I believe Ulead to be non freeware.
For some good freeware video editing software, check out www.debugmode.com/wax and http://jahshaka.org/ both are very good, and I use both.
Sage

Title: Re: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: Pirmin on October 14, 2008, 01:51:41 am

Thank you both. I will try the softwares and see which one suits me more.

Title: Re: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: ENSONIQ5 on October 14, 2008, 04:50:50 am

Another possibility from left field:  Mirrors!  You could model a plane to sit above the terrain, and a smaller, angled mirror to sit in front of the camera, periscope style, and set as a child of the camera in both position and orientation.  The smaller mirror would reflect the image of the terrain reflected in the top mirror.  A telephoto/wide angle effect might even be achieveable by making the top mirror slightly concave or convex.  Of course, you would have to use the ART raytracer for accurate reflections, and there would be some challenges with lining everything up and making the angled mirror appear properly square in the final render, but it might work!  Just a thought.

Title: Re: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: Pirmin on October 14, 2008, 04:52:38 pm

A very interesting idea indeed!
Because I have very little experience and also little spare time, first I must try the simple ways.
Maybe later on I might try the more sophisticated solution.
Thank you anyway!

Title: Re: combine camera views in a movie
Post by: Pirmin on November 01, 2008, 07:35:24 am

For the case that somebody likes to know how I finally implemented the PIP stuff, here it is.
- Render Movie as BMP for the desired views.
- Crop the images for the small film (I used IrfanView - Batch conversion/rename).
- Copy the small images over the large ones (Login to see the attached C# program).
- Make an AVI with VirtualDub.
  - File - Open video file : select the first picture of the series
  - Audio - No audio
  - Video - Frame Rate - Change frame rate to (fps): 24
  - Video - Compression - DivX - 1 pass - quality based
  - File - Save as AVI