Hi, folks!
I made a tutorial on better camera shots creation/management/navigation using an add-on I’ve made.
I also share a tip on how to add more realism to your camera animation.
Let me know what you think!
The add-on:
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This addon is great! It’s going to save a ton of time when setting up screenshots for marketing.
One thing it could use and I already added it myself is the ability to add a camera and shot at the current viewport view. This lets you navigate around the scene and very, very quickly setup shots with one button press. If you’re interested in the code, let me know and I can send you a patch.
There are some more enhancements that could be made to my patch to further increase the versatility. Such as an addon setting to set the frame offset(my code just looks for the next available frame and adds the shot there) and addon settings for default camera setup(right now I’m just hard coding clip start/end for my particular models) or just duplicate the currently selected camera when pressed.
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There’s an issue with the way this addon works that causes Blender’s UI to get progressively slower once you add a marker and bind a camera to it that is related to the number of objects in the scene It starts becoming noticeable around 6,000 objects and gets worse the higher the number. Unfortunately, the scenes I want to use this addon with are in the tens of thousands so it’s a real pain.
I’m looking for a solution myself but if you’re still out there and supporting this addon, I thought you’d want to know.
edit: I’ve narrowed it down to the post depsgraph update function hide_inactive_cameras. Commenting this out from being registered restores the UI speed to normal.
edit2: hide_inactive_cameras on the post frame change is also slowing down animation preview speed.
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Hey!
Thanks for reaching out! Sorry for the late response.
That’s awesome that you’ve enjoyed the add-on and have already added a one-click add shot + camera.
How about this logic: if a camera is selected, the “add shot” button adds a shot bound to that camera; if no camera is selected, it creates a new camera aligned to the current viewport view – like you have described – and creates a new shot bound that new camera? Does that makes sense for your workflow? I’m thinking that re-usability of existing cameras is better for animation so it’s good to still have it available.
Overall, great suggestions! I’m afraid I won’t be able to add them myself, unfortunately, because I’ve really had to stop developing this add-on. That being said, sure you can send me your patch, and I’ll take a look – I’ll try and add that one, as it’s a simple enough change.
You’re right. I’ve replicated the issue on my end.
Thank you for narrowing it down! Really appreciated.
I’ll investigate it and get back to you as soon as I have a permanent solution.