Techno Crane Rigged Camera and Tutorial

Please view this informative video first, you will learn something important.

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Then View my tutorial on how to work the rig. Its easy but you need to know somethings first.

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"UPDATED" Here is the Technocrane in its official full release. Thanks To Mark, David and Matt for turning a concept into reality.

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Version 1A and 1E are very solid. You can read the thread to see the differences. I prefer 1E

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This is a very cool thing. It's far beyond my capabilities at this point, but I've saved it and both movies for future use. Thank you

EXCELLENT !!! thank you SUPER COOL will give it a roll

I dont think its beyond your capabilities. Just watch the videos and you will be using the Jib in no time,

Thanks for putting this together and giving it away.
Very cool!

OUTSTANDING, Jason!

I've only been playing with it for a few minutes and my brain has exploded. :-)

So incredible! Even for setting up still shots!

Much appreciated, sir!

Thank you so very much Jason, This is just what I needed.

Thank you! Nice rig.

Michel

Awesome Jason

This will be used. Thanks for the effort on the rig.

Steve

Thanks glad to help contribute. You can always pay me back by continuing to contribute Video tutorials, rigs, models, decals, and further research and development to the AM community.

Let me know of any problems before I take this out of beta.

Thanks again

Like to add my thanks as well.

I can definitely see how this will make setting up shots so much easier and more manageable to handle!

Thanks again...
Al

I gotta' say that I've been making use of the TechnoCrane rig for this latest batch of WBP strips and it really is some kind of awesome!

I am so glad to here it. I think the only addition I would like to make is asking Campbell Animation his permission to add the fish eye lens/wide angle lens distortion tool he created. It would be as simple as turning it on or off in a pose if you wanted to use it or not. His tool would be the icing on the cake in terms of realism. The trick with it is to use it ever so slightly when you are wide.

yes it's the best !

Very cool, something I never thought about. Here's a possible contribution/adjustment that adds an auto focus...I also moved the model to the ground plane and tweaked a few things. Hopefully, I didn't break anything that I wasn't aware of.

Hope it helps, Jason.

Ill have to check this out. When I brought it to the ground plane I broke things. I experimented with an auto focus based on the knull but I had trouble with it.


Just checked it out. Never thought to use an expression. smart thinking. It seems to work very well. The only suggestion I would make, just my personal preference would be to default aim at to on and auto focus to on.

Also I find that making video tutorials on things such as this not only helps others but myself because it forces me to more deeply explore it and give it a shake down. I appreciate the update.

David can you create a quick video tutorial on how you created the auto focus relation ships and expression? I tried duplicating it but it does not work as well as yours. I tried reading your expressions but I am missing something.

Sure, I'll record it late tonight when I get home.

Hey man, thanks that means a lot

OK - Little bit of a problem with the rig...... How do you stop it rendering? It doesn't render in shaded mode but it does render in final. The only means I have found to stop it rendering is make it inactive - and that sort of defeats the purpose as it doesn't move......

Maybe I am missing something?

I should point out that this was with the v15 version. I couldn't keyframe the v15 version either. V14 one seems to work fine. I guess the idea, like in real life, is to keep the camera equipment out of the shot

Cheers

I will take a look at V15 I have not thoroughly tested Davids version of the Technocrane yet. It is a nice step up from my version with the addition of Auto focus.

The geometry can be deleted without any ill effects. I had no problems keying things in the v15 version...unless I'm not attempting to key the same things.

w

can you be more specific about what you are keying.

Its working now. I killed the project and restarted AM. AM has been sitting open on my Laptop for just over 2 days finishing up an SO shot (I which I had that reliability with the OSX version ) so something must have gone a little loopy in the UI.

Cheers

Here is the tutorial, Jason.

Thanks David Very helpful.

Wow David you are a Jedi master at Rigging and relationships. Its a little tuf for me to fallow with out deeper explanations to what is happening and why you are doing things but thats just me. I will have to watch it over a few times while actually recreating what you are doing before I understand it completely.

Good tutorial over all. and very generous. Thank you again.

David

I am awaiting permission from Matt to add his Wide angle lens to the Technocrane. If I get permission would you be interested in rigging it? I can attempt to do it myself but I feel you will do a cleaner job with 100% success.

I didn't have a lot of time or I would have done a more thorough job. Hopefully, it'll be enough to steer people in the right direction. I went with an entire run-through so that I didn't take for granted what others already know.



Not a problem. Thanks for coming up with the idea, it will be a very helpful rig. I'm thinking that there should be some pose sliders for the near and far focus as well...they might not be used much, but they could come in handy.

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Not a problem. Thanks for coming up with the idea, it will be a very helpful rig. I'm thinking that there should be some pose sliders for the near and far focus as well...they might not be used much, but they could come in handy.
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I agree

Ok David

I got permission from Matt below is the link to his lens. Thanks so much for rigging this. With the addition of wide angle lens distortion we will have a considerable leap in realism as compared to the perfection of the AM out of the box free moving camera.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showt...lens+distortion

I will create an update to the tutorials so people can become aware of it and how to use it.

Cool, I'll knock it out tonight.

Here's an update that includes the Fisheye lens and some tweaks that should improve a few things (rotations of 360 degrees on a few things, near and far focus, etc). I added a few cosmetic bones so that the geometry can be deleted and the outline of the crane is still similar and I moved the "Dolly" bone to the ground plane. Matt and Jason should double-check things to make sure I didn't break anything...I don't think I did, but, I could be wrong.

Let me know if there's something that needs to be changed.

The expression on the acme camera is causing an issue with the aim at constraint, the camera does not rotate on the X axis.

Thanks David

I will check it out

It seems the Aim at tilt does not work now. When I use the null to pan that works but moving the null up and down does not tilt instead it make the camera jump to a dutch aka slanted position.

Here's an update to check. Hopefully, everything works...we'll see.

Seems to work now David.

But I'm curious, why did you use 2 bones each for the pan, tilt and rotate, rather than just 1 bone and scale it in the negative Z axis in those poses? You could remove 3 of the bones and simplify the expressions.

Ok its probably best I check this for an hour or so and give a QA report but first. It looks like the offset pivots when in aim at mode and non aim at mode got broken.

In other words while aim at is on the fulcrum or pivot when panning or tilting is always at the point of where the image hits the lens giving no parallax.

This is a considerable problem in my point of view because real world cameras do not pivot at this point.

On the original rig V14 while in aim at the pivots were fixed but the fulcrum was offset giving a more real world parallax. This was a compromise because I couldnt achieve the adjustment of the pivots in aim at as I had in non aim at.

While not in aim at mode the pivots were adjustable to your liking. Now in your current version the pivot is also broken for the tilt but NOT the pan.

When I say broken I mean that although you can still adjust the pivot point the camera does not adhere to that pivot point when you tilt in either mode or pan and tilt in aim at mode.

Thanks again sorry for this hard work.

Try this Jason. This fixes the pivot problem, I think, and I edited the poses and expressions for the pan, tilt and rotate poses. The pivots can be changed while in aim at mode. Also added a translate to constraint on the auto_focus_distance so it works when the pivot is changed.

Thanks for fixing that, Mark!



I just didn't think of doing it that way. Thanks for the upgrade!



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Once everything that is presently in the Techno Crane is confirmed to work, I'm thinking a "Truck" percentage Pose would be a good and easy addition.

Thank you all for doing this rig, it's a great tool.

Michel

Thanks guys. I will test the rig out. as far as adding a "truck ability" I think its kind of redundant. Truck and dolly are basically the same thing. When you dolly you move towards or away from the focal point and when you "truck" your moving perpendicular to the subject. This can be achieved by just positioning the technocrane the way you want it. I cant say I have heard of a time where some one has truck and dolly in the same shot.

With that said sure go a head put it in, but keep in mind the "initial" goal of this rig was to try and more closely, virtually create, realistic, real world camera moves based on the Techno crane.

This rig has now become a community built rig so if you want it in and you feel its necessary than I say do it.

Ok QA report.

The pivots for Pan and tilt in non aim at mode are working. Meaning you get parallax because the pivot is not at the point the image enters the lens like with AM's free camera.

Unfortunately the pivots while in Aim at mode continue to not work correctly. I too was unable to solve for this problem. My work around was to constrain the cameras pivot while in Aim at mode towards the center of the camera so that it to could have parallax although it would not be adjustable.

I'm positive it's fixable, but I'm out of time for tonight. If Mark doesn't get to it before I do, I'll take a look at it late tomorrow night.

Just catching-up on your progress...sounds great. The Fisheye should be an option, as even if NO fisheye effect is asked for in the pose slider (the lens is flat) there is a rendertime cost because of the refraction...so a pose that turns it off or on or simply moves it off to the side like a real camera would do it. ( I havent DL'd the model yet to see if you already have something like this.)

Ok, I think I fixed it Jason. Let me know if it works correctly.

I think we hit the sweet spot folks. This version is perfect in my opinion. My Thanks to David,Matt, and Mark for donating their time and experties to the community in creating what I consider a valuable tool.

Your efforts will not go in vain. You will see the rig in practice for my presentation.

The one thing I would suggest is adding extra unconnected cps to the geometry, so it is only visible in wireframe and it doesn't render. Also, some of the geometry isn't necessary for the visual aspect.