Someone beat you to it in the fan videos thread. Still a great video though 
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Those guys do amazing work. Their mastery of demo camera movement is second to none.
The best comics are still 10�!
My City of Heroes Blog Freedom Feature Article: "Going Rageless?"
If you only read one guide this year, make it this one.
Super Reflexes: the Golden Fox of power sets!
WARNING: I bold names.
That's for sure. They were doing stuff with the camera in that DIes Irae video back in 2006 that I still can't pull off! Plus the music is awesome.
The camera movement is pretty simple. I tossed together a quick and dirty program that will let me do a single 360deg spiral from point a to point b using point C as the camera foci over a given time frame. Once you graph out the trig, the rest is just simple programming. I could probably add more detail if I ever need it.
Integration into a useful editor vs. crude cut and paste... thats different, but C&P works for me. I haven't really had the need for spiraling yet tho, but for a 2-D circle it works quite well.
Tanker Tuesday #72 Oct 5 @Champion
"I am not sure if my portrayal of being insane is accurate, but damn its fun all the same."
Yeah, just throw some trig at the wall and hope those polynomials come out right. That's what I do. Then I solve world hunger after lunch.
If I could count to 20 with my shoes on, that is.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
There are quite a few ways to define a spiral. A start point, an end point, number of times to go around, and a time to do the whole thing... doesn't quite do it. Your code is probably either keeping a constant angular velocity (degrees per second) or keeping the camera moving at a constant speed (which means the spin motion will get faster as the camera gets closer in, like it was in a whirlpool).
Dies Irae doesn't do either. That opening slows down the angular speed and true speed of the camera. And it moves upwards, to boot. For something like that I would want: Starting position, center point, how many seconds to move, starting velocity (speed and direction), inward velocity, angular acceleration, and inward acceleration. Then I would need to stick all that into a formula to figure out the camera's POS/PYR for the whole time it takes.
On the plus side, I could do it on a moving object just about as easily as on a center point. Perhaps a moving object that is already doing another spiral!
Aral and I chatted a couple years ago about how he accomplished his camera moves. Suffice to say, I did not understand a single word he said. It was compli-mo-cated.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
However he does it, its just trig and math in the end. You can define movements for part of the curve, then the next, add acceleration or decleration; again.. just math. The end result is no doubt pretty cool, but its probably just a custom tool he made. To hand plot all those points would be an exercise in futility.
(and angular velocity is maintained as to not "death spiral". Inward velocity is a function of point B. I assume a 2-D where point A is on the outside at psuedo angle 0 and the foci in the center. Point B's pseudo angle is then calculated (currently only clockwise). That gives me the angular distance to travel over the time interval. Once that is known, everything else just falls into place. Adding acceration would complicate it a bit, but not insurmountable. It would be easier to use camera scaling for acceleration and decleration if the object in view was not moving (accelerated or decelerated animation). I think we are digressing a bit from the thread,)
Tanker Tuesday #72 Oct 5 @Champion
"I am not sure if my portrayal of being insane is accurate, but damn its fun all the same."
Let's see, last time I did Trig............ 1988......
Straight lines FTW!!!
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(and angular velocity is maintained as to not "death spiral". Inward velocity is a function of point B. I assume a 2-D where point A is on the outside at psuedo angle 0 and the foci in the center. Point B's pseudo angle is then calculated (currently only clockwise). That gives me the angular distance to travel over the time interval. Once that is known, everything else just falls into place. Adding acceration would complicate it a bit, but not insurmountable. It would be easier to use camera scaling for acceleration and decleration if the object in view was not moving (accelerated or decelerated animation).
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That's easy for you to say.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
THAT video was full of win!
That's so far above what I generally think of as machinima that I'm not sure just what to call it.
Machina-ultima?
Aralcox came out with a new video called Pulse. Watch it here.