Importing animated camera from C4D

Hello,

I am new user of touch designer FTE, but I really like it, it’s a great software !! I’ve been playing with pilgrim R2 a bit in the past wich is quite similar, but les powerfull I’d say, maybe because they stoped developing long time ago …

anyway, my problem is I want to export a scene from Cinema4D containing a moving/scaling/translating cube and a moving camera. So I export with the FBX exporter to 6.1, but when I import it in TD, I don’t get the right camera pos, maybe I’m looking in the wrong place

when imported In TD I see it as a comp, inside the comp there is four elements, one of them is called camera, and has moving parameters, but I don’t see the cube, though when I import it in C4D, no problem.
thanks,

eubé

PS: i attached my FBX file
cube3.fbx (94.1 KB)

and here is a screenshot

Hey,
Thanks for your .fbx file. I’m taking a look at this issue. In your file the ‘lookat’ position (called the InterestPosition in the FBX file) is using a position in space instead of looking at the cube itself. The math to use this point is kind of strange so I’m still working on making it work inside TD.
In the meantime if possible try setting up your camera’s look-at to be looking at the object itself (if it isn’t already). It depends how the C4D exporter translates your file into FBX, but that may make it work.

You can alternatively just point to the camera’s lookat parameter to the Cube to make it look at it, inside of TD after the import.

hey malcolm !

thanks for your answer ! So I added a target tag to my cam, looking at my cube, and it worked … :slight_smile:

only thing is, my goal isn’t to make it look at a specific object but just do exactly the moves I have in C4D. In TD in the look at param of the camera if I put $FBX_IMPORTROOT/ I get the right camera translate view but not the roatation, it’s logicaly looking at the center of the scene …

UPDATE :

So I made a quick new scene for some tests, export it as FBX and I get some intresting results.

when imported, you get the right camera movement, just not in the right place somehow.
when you put in lookat “$FBX_IMPORTROOT/” it look to the center of the scene, it’s better looking, but still not the camera move it’s told to do.

So last idea I had was add a null object children of the camera, a bit in front of it, and set it to be the look at ( $FBX_IMPORTROOT/Camera/LOOKATME ), I feel it’s working better, but still it’s not the right camera move… and that I don’t understand …

and also why does the camera have to look at something ? because it should be okay without looking at anything right ?

cheers
testcube3_tricklookatme.fbx (264 KB)

I’m still stuck with this … hopefully I have a lot of work on the side.

though It would be cool to find the answer to my problem…

anybody ?

good day

me too.

youtube.com/watch?v=GW6YtHWI8hA

still no solution …

any wizards arround ? :slight_smile:

Making it look at the “./LOOKATME” gets it close… Then adding some transforms gets it almost exact…

XFORM
-8 Roll (maybe C4D has a auto camera level that does not export)
PRE-XFORM
-200 X Translate (Maybe the refrence centers of the camera arnt the same)
VIEW
30(ish) Focal Length (similar camera refrence point probally)

So there seems to be some inherent disconnects in the translation… but you can get it much closer with some modification…

Got slightly similar problem but I think its because 3d model is not centered when you import it.

Is there a way, a node to re-center an fbx. (align I take it is for something else since crash is instant when u plug it)

Its been major issue on most import I did, you could be there all night moving that thing to what you think is center.

thx

I need mathematical center of a 3d object freshly imported pretty much. is there a way?