The Rebirth of CSTOOLS at NAB2012. First look at new cam system.

[eliss 0]

Dope. Excited to see it finished.

[highfive 0]

thanks for working so hard on the uber-technical dirty work so the rest of us don't have to excited to purchase this

[davidp158 0]

Hi. I'm a bit late to this party, but I saw the video NAB2012 video, and I'm interested in these updated CS Tools. Will the beta version include cupcakes?

[filmbot 0]

Bout time slacker. looking forward to this in April.

[C.Smith 0]

You need to change your location from Santa Monica, traitor

[hdesign 0]

Can't wait, Chris. It will work in r13, yes?

[C.Smith 0]

It will not. It is using things added in Python for r14. And by time it's released will have to be the very latest version because I'm needing some Python things fixed by Maxon to make it work completely. Like when I did the NAB show last year I was using a newer version than the other presenters were using because there was a bug fixed for me for that show. So, sorry to say it will be for the bleeding edge , current version when it's out. Sorry.

[Adam Farnsworth 0]

Any update on AutoCam release now that NAB 2013 is over?

[C.Smith 0]

Oh...Hopefully in the final stretch. It all works and is a blast to use as it's finally everything I wanted in a camera animation system. Just tweaking and modifying some. At this point I feel like I'm the boy who cried wolf when people ask me about it, so I hate mentioning dates at this point. Having a real job and a new baby has ways of sucking my programming time. Thank you for your interest though.

[C.Smith 0]

On CG Talk they were asking me about progress on Autocam so thought I would copy what I posted there. Some screen grabs and partial feature description on what is new since I showed at NAB 2012:

 

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This shows the cam list and Shot settings. As well as the ability to trim some of the algorithms (had to blur one I'm testing) that are going on to auto time your animation based on waypoint positions , rotations, and POIs. When I originally showed at NAB in 2012, all of the waypoints were equally spaced. Now there are many new algorithms that space them for you to start with. Things like how much direction change is needed can add weight (simulates sense of mass), if you are asking a camera to do a heavy rotation while not travelling very far it will give more time to the cam so it doesn't whip pan. It also takes into account how far waypoints are from each other relative to the whole animation. Every 3 waypoints creates a triangle which gives AC the area of the triangle and it makes adjustments in timings based on how much every group of 3 needs for distance, change of direction etc. All of this is automatic when you set the waypoints, but it gives you auto-keyframed timings that are close-to ideal for what you want. Then you will be allowed to do whatever you want to it from there if you want it changed or customized.

Here is the Waypoints tab. There is a Waypoints tab because as Autocam moves from waypoint to waypoint, all of their parameters are copied into these parameters that you can tweak from Autocam itself. Any changes you make are set on the waypoint objects. You'll see since I demoed it, there are now full stops, full eases, as well as a way to set the POI depth without having to leave Autocam. It creates a "Pivot Plane" which is a clipping plane only while you are adjusting the slider so you know where your POI is in the world from your render camera. You also see a "Create Mode" menu. (As opposed to Run Mode). You can now use AutoCam itself as a "brush" to populate your scene with waypoints. No more creating cams and then dropping them into a list. When in create mode. You set AC where you want it in the world, set it's name, pivot depth, any lens changes you want or stop oe ease settings and hit the create button and it left a new waypoint with those settings there and added it to the waypoint list. That way everything you do CAN be done within Autocam for the most artistic and natural experience of creating and tweaking.

Here you see the normalized velocity graph above the Main Timebar. The Velocity graph is normalized so that the most intense velocity change sets the width of the "waveform". This is a nice guide so that you can adjust the tick marks just below it and see how it affects the result. The time bar is now interactive, you can grab those tick marks and move them. If you go left or right they compress and expand their neighbors proportionally relative relationships are maintained as much as possible. Whether it compresses only after itself or before or after is a pulldown option. If you drag UP or DOWN on a tick mark it adds or takes away weight to that waypoint. Which makes it's neighbors repel away from it or attract to it proportionally. The auto-engine makes camera timing for you pretty damn perfect to begin with so when it's time to give the user the ability to override it, it's designed to do the least damage as possible to the relationships set up by the engine.

GUI section thus far. The top two things (drawing of cam and target path as well as the Velocity Graph) are marked as SLow, because every cycle it precomputes every single frame in your shot in advance to draw a very accurate plot on screen of where your camera is in space at every frame and a normalized velocity graph for the whole shot. So for example if your shot is 800 frames long, turning them on will need 800 extra cycles of calculation for every C4D frame. So you should use them for analytics then keep them off. I can't just draw a spline to screen because Autocam doesn't really use splines. It is a cocktail of many functions creating the path, add on top of that your ability to add stops, eases, etc, means that it needs to be plotted frame by frame. But the good part is when you add eases and all that you see it in the dot spacings of the camera path plot.

Cam Path Plot:

As mentioned above , this is a temporary clipping plane when you are moving the Pivot Depth so without leaving Autocam, you can set it to reach out and set the POI to touch something.

[daveglanz 0]

Ah, the legend of the fabled "new CS Tools!"

[C.Smith 0]

Ah, the legend of the fabled "new CS Tools!"

 

I want them to be my "Chinese Democracy".

[J Montreuil 0]

Your hair is way better than Axl's.

[tezuka 0]

Being pregnant so long can't be healthy

Edited August 23, 2013 by tezuka

[KushDesign 0]

Hey Chris,

I'm eagerly awaiting the new CSTools. Any update on the release?

[vozzz 2]

@kush: your website doesnt seem to be working.

[mike fix 0]

Any updates to this?  I'm guessing dead?