Hi Matthias and all Matthias, thanks so much for all your work! I hope others will learn as much as I did from your tutes.
I have explored your files and played with Look-at construction objects a bit more, and made (for me) a bit of a discovery which I thought I would clarify for anyone it might help. My goal was to have a camera slide through a scene with simple planes with tree textures on it, with the the trees turning to stay facing the camera(but only rotating on the vertical axis). The attached file has one simple set up (Rect-1 always faces cam-1), and another setup with a camera and its target mapped to separate curves (Rect-2 and Cam-2, slide the animation time slider). Thanks Stefan for the help on this path part! The key for me was how to draw the axis for the Look-at object. In this case, the axis needs to be drawn in a vertical direction. The relationship of the axis you draw with the plane defines the angle relationship between them forever. You might consider making a construction line first to trace. I started by going into a front view creating a vertical plane centered on the origin (for the tree). While it's still selected, click the Look-at button on the construction tab. Now you're prompted to draw an axis. Go to the side view and draw it some distance away from the plane in the upward y direction. Now you can select this Look-at object and go the Spec tab and deselect Pitching and Banking. Now try moving the Look-at object around and watch the plane turn to face it. Try moving it up, and see that the plane doesn't tilt up or spin. Play with the Pitching and Banking settings to see how it affects the plane's behavior. Now you can drop the Look-at obect in a camera, or in a level, and it will continue to work. The Look-at object should be moved to the camera position point, as well as placed inside the camera in the select window so it stay with the camera. If you want to change the camera you want the planes to face, drag the Look-at object in the select window from one camera to another, and move the Look-at object to the new camera in the view window. It is also possible to set up several Look-at relationships initially, then drop the different Look-ats to different cameras, and simply turn off the Look-at's "Construction enabled" on the Spec tab for the cameras that are not your current camera. If you need a WHOLE BUNCH of trees to follow the camera, stack them all up on top of each other and select them before mapping to the Look-at object. They can be instances, too! As with all things Real, the options are only limited by your imagination once you get the hang of it. ;o) Thanks again, Matthias and Stefan. Chris Mungenast
cm-LookatCam.r3d
Description: application/unknown-content-type-realsoft3d
