Camera Angles

[shosey]

hehe, tk wins!!!!!

 

j/k

 

nice work tk

[Darth333]

Good work TK! You win!!!

 

*edit*

(note: the author of this post admits being in a conflict of interest, having beta tested the CamEdit tool:D )

[Fred Tetra]

If anyone figures out how the four floating point numbers in the camera's orientation work, be sure to post about it.

 

It'll save some time when I start working on the module editor again.

[messkell]

Originally posted by tk102

CamEdit now available for download.

 

 

 

 

Tk102, excellent progress on the camera scenario...I salute you.

[tk102]

Fred,

I think you're right about the Orientation field containing a quaternion. The 4 floats are probably the w, x, y, z values. Take a look at this website:

 

http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/algebra/realNormedAlgebra/quaternions/transforms/index.htm

 

There's code there for transforming a point in space along with an example.

At the bottom of the page are a list of 90° transformations that we should be able to demonstrate in-game if these are in fact quaternions.

 

The most dramatic and simple would be to make the 4 floats: 0, 1, 0, 0. That should put the camera upside down.

Edit: it doesn't

[Fred Tetra]

It turns out that I had already added camera editing support to KT, but I had forgotten; it's been a month since I looked at the code. (I'm moving and haven't had much time)

 

Right now, you can edit the X/Y/Z position and the four other "visible in GFF editor" fields (whose names escape me at the moment).

 

I will try a test where I set the cameras' orientations to some strange values and see what happens.

 

Can your editor do that, to save me some testing?

[tk102]

Yes, it can change the values. I'd test the hypothesis myself but I don't have the game on this machine and I'll be home kind of late tonight.

[Fred Tetra]

I messed around with the values a bit, but not enough cases to determine which field is which.

 

If I discover anything, I'll post it here...

[tk102]

I did a lot of experiments on an Endar Spire camera last night, trying to replicate the airplane pictures shown on the website that I posted. There seemed to be some limits in place, preventing severe rotations like vertical and upside down rotations. But the yaw rotations function as expected.

 

(Wish they'd used use yaw, pitch, and roll -- it would've so much easier to mod.)

[Fred Tetra]

Are the values indeed w,x,y,z, in that order? I thought it might be x,y,z,w, based on a conversation with a friend who does VR for a living. But then again, who knows?

[tk102]

I believe w is the first value because 1,0,0,0 has no effect at all (well, the same effect as 0,0,0,0).

[Amf12345]

I understand x,y,z, but what is w?

[tk102]

Go to the website I posted above, read it, and come back.

[tk102]

There is also the possibility that we are barking up the wrong tree. These may also be values for an axis angle transformation.

 

See:

http://www.euclideanspace.com/maths/geometry/rotations/axisAngle/index.htm

 

The first 3 values would be the axis and the last would be angle in radians(?).

 

Hypothesis: 1,0,0,3.1416 should make the camera upside down.

 

Edit: It doesn't either.

[Darth333]

BTW, in case you don't, you may be interested to know that lyt files seem to work in a similar manner. Here is a screenshot of the m01aa.lyt (Endar Spire) file: http://img47.photobucket.com/albums/v144/Darth333/Endar_lyt001.jpg

[tk102]

The .lyt files don't seem to affect door position. I think they are something different (doorhooks?).

In the .git file however, Bearing does play an important role.

http://img56.photobucket.com/albums/v170/tk102/image2.jpg

I believe Fred's module editor makes heavy use of that field ... ?

[Fred Tetra]

Doors are indeed positioned and oriented in the .git file.

[tk102]

Just a quick note about camera angles. It seems Bioware found camera placement as difficult as we do. In many dialogs you'll find a number of invisible###.utp placeables that are used as Speakers in dialogs. (They have tags like "carths_chest", and "sta45aa_invis_conv_target"). I'm looking at sta_m45aa.rim as an example, specifically k_sta_carth.dlg. What a pain.